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Mayweather vs Mosley
Pittsburgh Fight Sports Examiner | Scott Heritage
Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer is known for his bold pay per view predictions, but his latest might have topped them all.
Not satisfied with his previous prediction that Mayweather vs. Mosley would merely break the all time pay per view record, he now thinks they could nearly double it.
Speaking to the media today at the final press conference, Shaefer said:
"I am not going to say that we are going to break the all time pay-per-view record. I am not going to say we are going to do 3 million either. 4 million pay-per-view buys are possible,"
Schaefer's buy rate predictions have been getting bigger and bigger as the fight has drawn nearer, and obviously 4 million is his most ambitious figure yet. Most doubt that this figure is achievable, but Shaefer has been right about this kind of thing before, and does have access to early sales figures and predictions from insiders.
The current pay per view record is 2.15 million purchases, which was for the May 5, 2007 Oscar De La Hoya - Floyd Mayweather fight. At that time though there were two big draws present, and both Oscar and Mayweather had sold well independently of each other before and after they fought.
Mayweather's last fight was a thrashing of an undersized Juan Manuel Marquez, which sold over one million buys even though the challenger was given very little chance against the returning Mayweather.
Mosley hasn't been seen as a huge draw in the past, and even against other big draws such as Oscar De La Hoya he has never put up huge numbers. His biggest to date was his second fight with the Golden Boy, which sold 950,000 buys, although much of the interest in this was the rematch angle. This was a big number back in 2003, since then Mosley has been hit and miss in his appearances, and until his last fight against Antonio Margarito was thought to be a spend force.
There are a couple of factors with this fight could enhance Mosley's selling power though. Firstly the fight is between two American athletes, which isn't something that happens all that regularly these days. This is significant simply because the United States is the biggest pay per view market. Of the biggest pay per view selling fights of all time, the vast majority of the fighters have been American.
A second factor could well be that Mosley is almost the complete opposite of Mayweather. Fans who don't like Mayweather's brash and at times arrogant demeanor are still buying the fight because he is against someone humble and quietly spoken in Shane Mosley.
Thirdly his first appearance on the 24/7 series will have helped Mosley to gain a slightly larger fan base than he would have had otherwise. At the age of 38 he isn't going to become a star overnight, or at all in fact, but the reserved Mosley is getting the exposure his pre fight talk tends to lack.
Source: Examiner.com
