Am I missing something here? Every sport in America charges you to get into see them in person, and then broadcasts over a network or cable station. How do fighting sports get away with charging pay per view for their fights. I understand that they get away with it because people pay, I’m just wondering why they follow an entirely different model from the other pro sports.
Perhaps …
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Major sports receive very large contracts with major networks (Fox, NBC, ABC, etc) for rights to televise those vents.
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People will continue to PPV the UFC events (you can throw WWE events in there as well).
IMO, boxing would be much better off trying to get networks to televise their events (like ABC Wide World of Sports, USA, and ESPN used to). PPV for any semi-meaningful events has relegated boxing to a sport of “die-hards”. PPV used to be for “Mega-fights”.
it won’t be long before all sports are pay per view.
It’$ called the da$h for the ca$h.
Both do their share of “freebie” events, but the major events are cash cows, and who can blame them. If I could PPV me taking a shower, I would.
Okay, maybe not, but you get the point…
I think you are mising the fact that the events are being paid for, just by different people. In the case of UFC, which I PPV’d on Sat night (Awesome fights) I carried the load for a comerical free broadcast. In the case of NFL, NHL, NBA ect they get paid by the networks for the right to broadcast the events, which in turn charge advertisers for air time during the event. We as viewers pay the price in wasted time watching the ads- thank God for TIVO.
I think the other issue at play is the limited commerical time available during fights. If you look at UFC with 5 min rounds and 1 min between rounds there is only about 3-5 min of commercial time available for each fight, that assumes the fight goes the full 3-5 rounds. If it ends in round one- almost no commerical time is there. I assume that most others that watch this stuff are like me in that during the fight I am glued to the TV so if an ad comes on between rounds I will watch. But as soon as the fight is over I loose focus right away. The only way for a fighting sport to change this would be to alter the sport completly- shorter rounds (higher chance of making multiple rounds) and longer breaks between rounds- boring! Whereas football, baseball, hockey type sports which last a predetermined amount of time and have long breaks for ads. I’d say the bottom line is that their business model is set by the structure of the sport, not by some grand business plan.
I guess the advertising thing makes some sense. However, UFC and boxing have sponsors ads all over the place in the ring, on the floor, on the walls, on the Round Card girls, etc, etc. Also, they can easily advertise between fights. Most fights don’t last too long, and it would be like watching TV for 10 or 12 minutes between commercials. Not too much lost there. I was just wondering why this started, but only in these sports. No other sports really do PPV much.
Not a chance. At least it won’t be exclusive PPV. The money made in advertising for the networks and the deals made between the leagues and the networks is WAY above what they could ever make on PPV.
M~
I am not saying there is not air time between fights, but that the air time is low rent air time. During fights people tend to sit for the fight then literally tune out between fights. I suppose not much different than half time of a football game where you get up and go to the bathroom, get some food etc. I bet the rates for air during a game are highest during the actuall game and lowest during half time. I’d also bet that during fights it is about the same, to the point that the networks actually have a hard time selling the air.
Yeah, that sucks that you can’t see the fights without paying…
There was a big workup just the other day about how the only sports the major networks pay for are the big three and hockey. Everything else we see on the weekend sports showcases is put together by third parties.
A third party producer, more like a promoter really, rounds up the sport, the advertisers, the locations etc and then goes ot nbc and says OK, we’ve got 6 weekends and we pay X. You provide us with airtime and legitimacy in the form of NBC sports logos and we handle everything else.
So the promoter delivers the product just about wholly finished to nbc sports. Good for nbc sports, good for the promoter etc.
I guess this is not exactly pay per view but it isn’t exactly what we usually think of as network sports coverage either.
Hey, thanks for posting that link. Got to see first hand how much of a dick Sobral was in victory…hope someone returns the favor someday.