I know very little about boxing or UFC but a quick google suggests that these are the primary, maybe only sports sold on a pay per view basis in the US. So my two part question is a) Why did boxing and UFC settle on PPV as the best way to monetize the sport and b) Why don’t any other sports do PPV?
My guess:
The interest is high enough and the supply limited enough that it’s possible to make money by charging for a few shows rather than have to advertise on many shows.
The interest might be similar but that interest lies mainly in seeing the top performers. This leads to a limited supply for boxing/MMA because while the top performers in hockey/baseball/basketball/football can compete dozens of times a year, a boxer or MMA fighter who fought that frequently would break down before the year was out.
Also, perhaps because junior leagues are more readily available for hockey/football/etc so that if those sports became harder to watch, substitutes could easily enough be found by watching amateurs or taking part in the sport oneself. Amateur fights and fans who compete themselves in fighting sports is a lot less common.
I don’t know if it’s still the case, but from about 1999-2009 or thereabouts, it wasn’t uncommon to have PPV college football games. Usually they were middle of the pack power-5 conference teams that didn’t get a huge amount of TV exposure.
I’m most familiar with Texas A&M during that time-frame; unless we were playing UT, OU or a ranked opponent, the games were usually PPV.
Now that we’re in the SEC, and posting better records, there’s like one game a year that’s PPV- usually a non-conference pushover (last year it was Sam Houston State)
Also, the advent of things like the NFL League Pass and other package deals have kind of negated the utility of having a lot of PPV games. Still, looking at the Dish Network site, it looks like for $99.99 I could PPV the ICC Cricket Cup from Australia this year.
Boxing PPVs go back to the days when PPV meant having to go to a movie theater which broadcast the match via closed circuit. (This is also how the first two or three WrestrleManias were broadcast nationwide, before in-home PPV capability was common.) There is enough interest in watching these events live that the organizers feel that they can make more money via the PPV route than having it air on commercial TV and getting the money from the broadcasting network.
The reason this is not done for, say, the Super Bowl or the Olympics is, the appeal for these events is so massive that there would be a backlash if they were not available on TV, and “free” TV at that; also, they can charge so much for the commercial time that there wouldn’t be much, if any, financial advantage to doing it on PPV… There are enough complaints that the college football national championship game is only on ESPN.
Actually, “PPV Olympics” was tried, sort of, in 1992; NBC set aside three PPV channels that would air events not aired on the main NBC broadcast. However, the prices were so high, and the level of events so low (the sort of thing that would be on Bravo or CNBC today), plus the fact that they still managed to leave some events (e.g. judo, field hockey) out entirely (and, in fact, made this a selling point), that there just wasn’t enough interest.
One way to answer this question is to ask, who makes the decision as to how to telecast an event (be it the Super Bowl or a title bout). Then ask, what are that person(s) financial incentives?
For a boxing bout, the boxers and their promoters make the decision. Their financial incentives are short term. It would be better for the sport of boxing if more big-time bouts were on free TV, but a title fighter doesn’t care about that. He’ll be washed up in a few years. He needs to cash out now, and PPV offers more short-term money.
For the Super Bowl, the NFL makes the decision, based on the wishes of its team owners. The owners care a great deal about the long-term health of their sport. It drives their franchise values. They need long-term fans, and lots of them. They need a business model that will keep generating revenue for 5 or 50 or 100 years, long after every current player has retired.
So boxing goes PPV and the Super Bowl goes free, and over time these decisions become self-reenforcing. Boxing loses the mass market, but retains the few intense fans who are willing to pony up for PPV. The NFL has some intense fans, but also (especially for the Super Bowl) a boatload of casual fans who would never buy PPV, ever. Each business model works for its buyers.
Pay-per-view is basically the house that Vince McMahon built.
That’s the long and short of it.
First of all, I don’t see it that way. Second of all you’re not answering the OPs question. Every major boxing match was PPV long before Pro Wrestling became the industry it is today. I suspect Wrestling Entertainment has a larger following than pro boxing; which in turn means more PPV events; but I hardly think Vince McMahon built that house - so to speak. I’m more inclined to agree with MichaelEmouse. There was no regularly scheduled championship boxing matches. There were only one or two a year. People like Mike Tyson were a HUGE draw for people wanting to see an epic fight.
There was a time, 40 years ago, when the Indianapolis 500 was PPV. To see it live, you went to a movie theater. The TV broadcast didn’t air for several days. It wasn’t until the 1980s before the nation outside Indianapolis could see it live (still isn’t broadcast live locally).
I’m not in the advertising business, and haven’t studied the demographics of different sports’ fans, but one POSSIBLE explanation is that boxing fans tend to come from lower socio-economic groups, and aren’t very attractive to advertisers.
If there were millions of yuppies who loved boxing, it would be on prime time TV. But IF boxing fans are disproportionately poor and/or disproportionately black or Hiuspanic, advertisers won’t be interested in them.
So ,if you can’t get much ad revenue, you have to charge the viewers directly.
Alternatively, they could come from a variety of socio-economic groups, but none of which is large enough to advertise to. If a sport appeals to old people, advertise denture cream. If it appeals to middle-aged men, advertise sports cars. If it appeals to teenagers, advertise pot. If it appeals uniformly to all three you can’t advertise anything without wasting 2/3 of your views.
Actually, in the 1970s, it aired later that night (usually starting at 7 or 8 Eastern - I can’t remember which, but the race took longer than three hours - on ABC). The only time it didn’t air until “several days later” was because of rainouts.