MANILA, Philippines - It’s not the type of numbers that would make Bob Arum’s face turn red.
Almost a month after the Manny Pacquiao-Tim Bradley rematch, it was reported yesterday that the fight did no more than 800,000 pay-per-view buys.
Prior to the fight, Arum had hoped to do over a million hits.
But he can’t be disappointed with 775,000 to 800,000 hits, as reported by SI.com. It’s how you look at it – whether the glass is half empty or half full.
It was a big jump from the reported 475,000 PPV buys generated by Pacquiao vs Brandon Rios in Macau last November.
SI.com cited “multiple sources†as the basis of the report, and that HBO, the giant cable and satellite TV network, had “declined comment.â€
Normally, it takes no more than two weeks for the pay-per-view figures of a fight of this magnitude to get published.
It took a lot longer than that for these figures to come out.
Pacquiao had an easier fight against Bradley than in 2012 when the Filipino boxing figure seemed to have dominated but lost.
That first encounter did close to 750,000 pay-per-view hits.
Then Pacquiao faced Juan Manuel Marquez for a fourth time, sold 1.15 million PPV buys, and lost a second fight in a row.