Last Saturday’s pay-per-view bout between Manny Pacquiao and Oscar De La Hoya put in a solid performance for HBO.
Pacquiao’s win over De La Hoya drew 1.25 million buys and generated $70 million in revenue, the best numbers for a PPV boxing event this year, and “a very solid number given the economic climate,” according to Broadcasting & Cable. In a better economic climate, “[a] fight of this magnitude … should have flirted with 2 million buys.”
Even with lowered expectations, the fight did not do as well as expected; promoters “had aimed for 1.5 million pay-per-view buys.”
Still, the fight ranks as the “third bestselling non-heavyweight pay-per-view bout in history“, and is only the fourth non-heavyweight PPV bout to draw at least 1 million buys, “with each of the previous three also featuring De La Hoya.”
Pacquiao/De La Hoya fell well short of De La Hoya’s previous PPV event — a heavily hyped fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr., which generated 2.4 million buys and $134.4 million in revenue.
