PPV Sales Are In For Wilder vs Fury 2, Numbers Disappoint
The pay-per-view (PPV) sales are in for the massive Wilder vs Fury 2 bout. Unfortunately, it seems that the numbers were not as good as they could have been.
It was expected that Wilder vs Fury 2 would be pretty successful on PPV. Although their first meeting would only do around 300,000 buys, the rematch was highly anticipated. Therefore the predictions headed into the rematch, was that this fight would do as well as 3-4 million buys.
Unfortunately, the numbers are in and they are rather disappointing. According to reports, Wilder vs Fury 2 only managed to pull in between 800,000 and 850,000 PPV buys. However it is believed that many more people saw the fight than that, with a large portion of views coming in the form of illegal streams found online.
“The main culprit is theft of the signal,” the report states. “According to Wayne Lonstein of VFT Solutions, which tracks signal piracy, there were between 10 and 20 million live views of the fight on the major social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, and there were nearly 10 million more that were viewed as video on demand. Many of those latter views were only slightly delayed.”
Now this is not to say that the fight was not worth the price of PPV. The fight was extremely exciting, all the way up to the 7th round, where Deontay Wilder’s corner threw in the towel. Regardless, this is the nature of combat sports in this day and age. Illegal streams are becoming increasingly easier to find, and the effect it has on PPV sales of any event are getting more and more drastic.
Nevertheless, expect things to tighten up by the time Wilder vs Fury 3 happens. Either way, this is a sign of bigger issues than just this one match.
