Via Scott Gilfoid: First Class CEO Bob Arum predicts 500,000 pay-per-view buys on ESPN in the US for the British heavyweight bout between WBC champion Tyson Fury and Dillian Whyte.
With immense $41 million won the bid Top Rated last Friday with a budget bid for the Fury-Whyte fight, which must attract huge pay-per-view numbers in the US and UK.
It likely won’t be enough for investors to recoup their $41m for Fury compared to Whyte could be if it just sold as many UK-bought PPVs and filled a stadium. They will probably also need a large number of purchases in the US, and that is where the problem lies.
Scott Gilfoid predicts Fury vs. Whyte will sell out between 100,000 to 150,000 buy PPV on ESPN in the US That’s under ideal circumstances, assuming Whyte will help with the hard work of promoting the event.
Fury vs Whyte = not a seller on ESPN PPV
It’s just not a big fight on paper and any chance it has of hitting decent numbers will go down if Whyte chooses not to help with the event’s promotion.
If Whyte pulls his leg and chooses not to help Fury promote the fight to gain the interest of US boxing fans, we could watch the fight bring in only 50,000 buys on ESPN PPV. Simply put in English, it would be a PERSON.
Whyte, 34, is not a recognizable name among the average boxing fan in America. Indeed, you could argue that Youtuber Jake Paul is more known in the US than Whyte, which means it will be a challenge to attract American fans who want to open their wallets to pay the $75 asking price for Fury-Whyte.
If ESPN PPV drops the price for Fury versus Whyte to around $15, it’s going to bring in a big deal. However, they won’t do that, because it will still require a large amount of buying to help investors make their money back.
500k PPV purchases is a VERY ambitious number that Arum is predicting for a Fury-Whyte fight, as that means the match will yield more buys than the two Deontay Wilder-Fury fights that took place on PPV.
🇬🇧 British. Heavy weight. War of
You see how it goes down?#FuryWhyte | BT Sport Box Office pic.twitter.com/bnH6UObT9E
– Boxing on BT Sport (@BTSportBoxing) January 29, 2022
Fury’s odds against Whyte to come close to 500,000 PPV buy in the US are close to zero. What works against the war yielding those types of numbers is as follows:
- Whyte an unknown to US fans
- Dillian’s recent knockout loss to Alexander Povetkin
- No US visibility for Whyte
- Schedule fights for UK time slots
Whyte is similar to Chisora
For American boxing fans who know Whyte, many of them see him as some sort of heavyweight Dereck Chisora. In other words, a slow, clumsy, easy-to-hit and very average guy.
There is nothing impressive about Whyte at all. The only reason he was required to join the WBC was that the sanctioning body ordered him to fight the badly flawed Oscar Rivas in a title elimination in 2019 instead of a quality heavyweight.
What it takes to sell a showdown between two British heavyweights in the US would be for Whyte to fight in the US for two or three BEFORE facing Fury.
It’s too late to make that move and Whyte probably won’t agree to it because he’s sold a lot ticket in the UK. If he comes to America to fight, it will be a ghost town for his fights.
