Last weekend’s pay-per-view boxing mega-event between Miguel Cotto and Floyd Mayweather looks to have done some serious business for HBO. The event, which also featured a “big name bout” between Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and “Sugar” Shane Mosley, featured two of the sport’s top three draws facing off.
Here’s the info from the HBO press release:
The 1.5 million buy total generated $94 million in pay-per-view revenue.
The performance of Mayweather-Cotto ranks as the second highest grossing non-heavyweight pay-per-view event in boxing history. No. 1 all-time is Mayweather’s record-setting showdown with Oscar de la Hoya ($137 million) in 2007.
Notes after the jump…
- I know someone is going to say “yeah, boxing can only do 3-4 big PPV’s a year.” So let me address that by saying, yes, you’re right. Mayweather, Cotto and Manny Pacquiao are the only guys who can really draw in huge numbers on PPV right now. We’re going to find out soon what Canelo can do in his next fight as he’ll be headlining a PPV, likely against James Kirkland.
- The good thing is, boxing promoters got smart to the fact that they need to put only stuff that is huge or which has no better distribution on PPV. As long as they’re doing big numbers on the few PPVs they run and doing good numbers on HBO/Showtime, things will keep rolling along without problem. As an aside, Hopkins vs. Dawson II did well over 1.5 million viewers on HBO also.
- Floyd gets a big cut of the PPV money and Cotto gets a little bit as well. Mayweather will probably bank close to $50 million when all is said and done.