People and Pop Culture
Closing Shot: Fighting For Attention
ESPN and Fox Sports set their rivalries aside and put serious promotional muscle behind the Wilder-Fury pay-per-view fight, creating the feel of a can’t-miss event.
Promos for the bout started on Super Bowl Sunday and continued right up until the fighters entered the arena.getty images
Tyson Fury wasn’t the only heavyweight to pull off an upset when he stopped Deontay Wilder.
The Wilder-Fury pay-per-view fight on Feb. 22 saw unprecedented collaboration between rival promoters and rival networks on a fight that clearly broke into mainstream conversation and generated interest that the once-proud division hadn’t seen in decades.
Wilder is promoted by Premier Boxing Champions, which airs fights exclusively on Fox Sports networks. Fury is promoted by Top Rank, which works exclusively with ESPN. To make the fight happen, they had to coexist. For it to succeed, they had to collaborate.
The same situation played out with the same two promoters five years ago when Floyd Mayweather beat Manny Pacquiao in the highest grossing PPV in boxing history. Then, Mayweather, managed by PBC-founder Al Haymon, and Pacquiao, promoted by Top Rank, were locked into deals with competing premium networks HBO and Showtime.
“In today’s world where there’s so much content and clutter out there, we couldn’t cut through all that without having these two monsters on our side,” said Top Rank President Todd DuBoef, who lauded all involved in the promotion for their collaborative efforts, which stood in contrast with some previously combative co-promotions. “Years ago, we didn’t have the challenges of YouTube and Hulu and Netflix and kids on social media, so we were able to build awareness for a big fight with a partner like an HBO or a Showtime. Times are different now.”
DuBoef refused to disclose sales, or even discuss specifics of how they were trending. Unlike HBO and Showtime, which often trumpeted their box office successes, ESPN and Fox Sports have kept buy rates to themselves since entering the PPV business.
Both networks piled content high in the week leading up to the fight.
On ESPN, Fury was the subject of an hourlong interview with Jeremy Schaap that aired at 7 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 16. The network had a “SportsCenter on the Road” setup in Las Vegas all week, producing fresh reports. Max Kellerman’s weekly boxing show went daily for four days. “First Take” aired from Vegas on Thursday and Friday. And during its prime-time NBA telecast the night of the fight, ABC cut to video of the fighters entering the arena.
Fox took its daily “Speak for Yourself” show featuring Jason Whitlock and Marcellus Wiley to Vegas, airing on FS1 Wednesday through Friday.
ESPN2 and FS1 both aired the pre-fight news conference and the weigh-in. ESPN and FS1 aired undercard fights from 8 p.m. until the PPV opened at 9. The preliminary bouts attracted 862,000 viewers to ESPN and 441,000 to FS1.
The promotional onslaught began in earnest on the unmatched platform of Super Bowl Sunday on Feb. 2, with eight spots, including two that aired during the game itself, seen by 103.5 million and 101 million viewers, respectively.
“We did a lot of new stuff that was clever and unique to try to get people feeling FOMO (fear of missing out),” DuBoef said. “We’re going to be gathering a lot of data from this event. It’s going to teach us about consumer behavior. … When you think about viewing habits and impulse habits and buying habits, we just don’t know how they’ve changed. This is a new world. And it’s moving quickly.”
