Title fight on live TV, if you’re in the U.S.

Canadian fans still stuck with pay-per-vew model

Friday night at the Ricoh Coliseum, fast-rising prospect Errol Spence Jr. will be in the co-feature of a fight card headlined by a world title bout, bringing to the ring a pedigree that appeals to a broad range of fans.

An Olympic quarterfinalist in 2012, Spence is undefeated in 17 pro fights, mentored by Floyd Mayweather, and Friday night faces his toughest test against South Africa’s Chris van Heerden.

Given the stakes, Spence understands his bout is as attractive as the light-heavyweight title main event between Montreal’s Adonis Stevenson and American Tommy Karpency. He made his feeling plain in the few words he uttered at Tuesday’s news conference.

“Everybody tune in,” he said. “It’s going to be a great show.”

Except tuning in won’t be so simple for Canadian viewers.

In the U.S. the card’s top two bouts will air live on the basic cable network Spike TV as part of the Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) series. Boxing power broker Al Haymon conceived the series in late 2014, spending $20 million buying airtime on network and cable TV, hoping to broaden boxing’s audience.

But in Canada only early undercard bouts will air live on TSN. The action will then shift to pay-per-view, where the audience narrows, and where watching the highest-profile fights means handing $60 to a cable provider. Why the disparity? Blame it on a sport caught between business models.

As Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao and boxing’s other reliable pay-perview money makers near retirement, promoters are moving away from premium programming in favour of free TV and basic cable. The goal is to convert higher viewership into increased sponsorship dollars, and six months after its debut PBC now counts Corona beer and1800 Tequila among its corporate partners.

But Stevenson’s promoter, Yvon Michel, owns the Canadian broadcast rights to his fights, and says there’s still a robust pay-per-view market, especially in Quebec. And when Stevenson’s last fight aired on free TV as part of a two-fight PBC broadcast, Michel says boxing fans called to complain, saying they’d rather pay to see a whole card than watch two fights for free.

“If there would have been someone in Canada who wanted to buy broadcast rights then it could have been distributed more widely,” Michel says. “But that was not the case.”

The result is a disjointed TV experience for Canadian viewers and a situation ironically reminiscent of the 1950s, when promoters kept their cards off the air hoping to safeguard ticket revenue. Event co-promoter Les Woods says the pace of ticket sales has picked up since a slow start in August, and he expects to sell at least 80 per cent of the roughly 3,500 available seats at Ricoh.

“The boxing community are the ones that need to get behind this,” said Woods, head of Global Legacy Boxing. “It’s important that supporters of boxing are the ones buying the tickets.

“(General) sports fans are the ones buying the tickets right now.”

Friday’s fights at Ricoh compete indirectly with another bout in which Haymon has a stake. Mayweather, whom Haymon advises, faces Andre Berto in a pay-per-view bout on Saturday.

Woods says some of the corporate customers who bought ringside tables to his company’s debut event last October are in Las Vegas watching Mayweather in what the fighter says is his final fight.

But that’s not necessarily negative, he says, since it shows there’s still a deep-pocketed local audience for boxing.

And Michel is confident the Mayweather bout won’t cannibalize payper-view sales of Friday’s event because his market is so specific.

“Mayweather will not sell much in Quebec,” Michel said.

TSN will broadcast the entire card next weekend.