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MIKE REYNOLDS
PPV boxing continues to pack a flabby punch.
TVKO says its scorecard had the recent Lennox Lewis/David Tua heavyweight championship bout as the top attraction of what's been less than a knockout year.
Operators gave the fight mixed results.
"Lewis/Tua did better for us than Lewis/Grant and Tyson/Golota," says Ted Hodgins, director-marketing for Comcast in New Castle County, Del., where there are 95,000 addressable cable homes. Hodgins says Comcast scored a 0.82 buy rate for Lewis/Tua versus a 0.69 for Lewis/Grant.
The scoring was different on the cards of Karol Pinnick, PPV director for Insight Communications' systems in the Columbus, Ohio, DMA.
"Lewis/Tua, with a buy rate of 1.2-1.3, did slightly better than Lewis/Grant but not as well as Tyson/Golota. The Tyson fight was about a 1.6-1.7," she says.
While there was still some last-minute tallying taking place, when all the precincts are tabulated, TVKO expects it will have secured 420,000 buys for the Nov. 11 heavyweight title Lewis/Tua bout.
With a lot of late action pushing the average retail up to $46.50, the fight, which saw Lewis dominate the over-matched Samoan in a one-sided 12-round decision, generated roughly $19.5 million.
"Lewis/Tua was the highest-performing heavyweight fight of the year," says TVKO SVP-sports operations Mark Taffet. "There will be no need for a recount or a hand count to verify the accuracy of these figures."
SET executives say the Oct. 20 heavyweight bout between Mike Tyson and Andrew Golota generated 450,000 buys.
Is Tyson on tap next for Lewis, who won by a decision?
"We will do everything to support Lennox in his quest to fight the best heavyweights in the world," says Taffet.
Targeting both Hispanic and Anglo viewers, TVKO is looking to connect with marketing/media combinations to stoke buy rates for the Dec. 2 Felix Trinidad/ Fernando Vargas junior middleweight championship bout.
Billed as "Forces of Destruction," the Las Vegas bout is widely considered to be the fight of the year in boxing circles, pitting two tough, hard-hitting undefeated pugilists in their prime.
Commercials and promotional materials say, "Vargas rocks like a earthquake" and "Trinidad hits like a hurricane." The 60-second spot concludes with the line: "When two destructive forces collide, who knows what will happen?"
Trinidad, who hails from Puerto Rico, sports a 38-0 record with 31 KOs, while Vargas, a Mexican-American, is 20-0, highlighted by 18 punchouts.
"The boxing press has been writing that this is not only the top Hispanic fight of the year but a top-shelf fight in general," says TVKO GM/VP Tammy Ross. "Hopefully, when the fighters walk out of that ring, the writers will be calling one of them the fighter of the year."
TVKO's telecast, starting at 9 p.m. (ET) carries a suggested retail ranging from $44.95-$49.95.
The tale of the rate card tape for this fight gives operators who don't perform any marketing tactics a 35% cut of the revenues. Operators who run 375 cross-channel spots in specified dayparts and execute four marketing tactics will take 45%, while those whose buy rate benchmark hits 2.2% will receive 50%.
The cross-channel schedule cuts across 18-40 male-skewing networks such as ESPN, TBS, TNT, Galavision and Telemundo from 6 p.m.-1 a.m. weeknights and from noon-midnight on weekends
Ross declines to specify the marketing/ media allocation.
"The overall budget for Trinidad/Vargas exceeds most of the fights we've done this year," she says.
Ross acknowledges that the bout faces a short promotional window following Lennox Lewis' demolition of David Tua Nov. 11, but says that the concentrated push will benefit from people watching TV during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.
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