Why are UFC and boxing matches the only mainstream sporting events where fans need to purchase PPV to watch it live?
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Production and Advertising. You control the viewers this way. You set the price. You get the % of the gate, % of the food and the a cut of the alcohol sales. Then you get the pay per views, that is good money. It’s all about the promotion.
It’s because no other networks purchase the rights to show the matches. Broadcasts aren’t free to do though, so to offset the costs they collect money from people instead of networks.
The problem with fighting matches is you cannot guarantee how long the match will last. So, it is very difficult to sell advertising to make the money you expect to get from the event.
The Super Bowl lasts 4 hors, give or take, no matter what. So they know how much advertising they will be able to sell and actually show.
Same with baseball, basketball, tennis, etc…
A UFC fight might only last 1 minute into the first round. They won’t be able to sell 100 30 second commercials in the amount of time that match lasts…
These sports are organized in a kind of ad-hoc way. There’s no structured “season” guaranteeing a certain number of fights at certain times. Instead, promoters organize events based on who they can get and when.
It’s difficult to sell that to a traditional TV network. They have schedules to keep and prefer to broadcast roughly the same thing every week. Instead, you sell each event directly to the public via PPV.
PPVs are such a weird thing. I think that never existed in Germany, but we don’t even really use PayTV.
Who would pay fucking 30€ for a 3hr Event?
I have no clue how that works, who pays that? Not to mention you can probably easily watch it for free Online.
I havent paid for a ppv event in my life. Good ol black box pre internet and pirate streams with the internet
The fighting event can end in a matter of seconds after first punch (KO). The broadcaster will then stretch it as long as they can showing replays, award ceremony and a pre & post-match analysis.
Very little time to show commercials. In countries where it’s socially acceptable to serve ads non-stop (like US) this is incomprehensible for TV stations. Hence the PPV to top up the revenue loss and be able to afford to pay millions to contesters.
In countries where fighters aren’t paid “hundreds of millions” per fight, TV broadcasters can afford running few ads and PPV isn’t popular. Never paid for PPV in my life, it’s an alien concept here.
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