During a media interview captured by Fight Hype, Matchroom promoter Eddie Hearn breaks down how he views the current role of PPV in the marketplace, why he thinks it’s too abundant in the United States, and getting blamed for Teofimo Lopez’s loss to George Kambosos. Check out some excerpts of what Hearn had to say below.
Hearn on pay-per-views role in the sport at the moment
“I think the whole pay-per-view argument — I think pay-per-view is in a terrible, terrible place. I think pay-per-view will always exist for the right fights and the big stars. But there’s too many fights on pay-per-view. You go back to Crawford-Porter, what was that, 135,000 buys? Catastrophic. And by the way, two great fighters, brilliant fight. And this isn’t me hating on fights, I’m just talking reality.
“Gervonta Davis against Isaac Cruz on Sunday, what does it do? 100,000? Less? That last time out, you’re talking about Leo Santa Cruz, a household name. Barrios was a world champion. And then Isaac Cruz, listen, he’s tough and game but it’s not that it’s a bad fight, it’s coming off the back of — this is the problem, you’ve got Crawford-Porter comes two weeks after 700,000 buys or whatever it was, Canelo Alvarez. And then after the (Crawford-Porter), two weeks later you’ve got Gervonta Davis against someone no one’s ever heard of…he’s a good fighter, Cruz, but let’s be honest, no one’s ever heard of him, right? And then next week you’ve got Jake Paul against Tommy Fury. And then two weeks after that you’ve got Charles Martin against Luis Ortiz. What the fuck’s going on?!
“What I’m saying is that if I did that in England we’d get killed, right?…It’s amazing for DAZN, because a DAZN customer is saying ‘well actually this is much better value than buying these individual pay-per-views.’ And to answer your question about pay-per-view, I think DAZN pay-per-view discussion is just potentially having functionality to do it for specific fights. Sometimes a fight will come along that maybe the model of subscription does not work. Could be AJ against Tyson Fury in the UK — you can’t put that on DAZN UK, has to sit as a pay-per-view. So having the functionality to do pay-per-view makes them very powerful.”
On his reaction to Lopez-Kambosos and Teofimo Sr. saying they should’ve kept working with Top Rank instead of Matchroom and DAZN
“We had a great relationship with them both, we treated them with nothing but respect. They were brilliant by the way, the way they helped with the promotion, they did everything that was asked. They told me before ‘thank you guys so much, you guys are the best, DAZN, Matchroom’ — they got beat and they should never have boxed on DAZN. I mean it’s just absolutely ridiculous. And he called me and he messaged me and he said ‘I can’t believe what you did!’ This is after the fight. And I just went back to him and I said ‘Mate, we treated you with utmost respect. Watch the fight back, look at people’s comments who thought you lost the fight fair and square. Dust yourself down and come again.’
“I don’t hold it against him because it’s emotions, it’s family, you know what I mean? And sometimes you behave irrationally when the emotions go out of control. He’ll be back, he’s a great fighter.”