Eddie Hearn says he’s interested in inking Manny Pacquiao to add him
to his DAZN streaming service if he’s a free agent now. Hearn isn’t
quite certain or not whether the 39-year-old Pacquiao is no longer with
his long time promoters at Top Rank. Hearn is in a race against time to
sign enough top name fighters to make his deal with DAZN work
financially by year 2.
If Hearn isn’t profitable by year two, it’s likely that his deal with
DAZN will end. Pacquiao would help bring in subscribers despite being a
mere shadow of the fighter he was 10 years ago. The casual boxing fans
in the States are familiar with Pacquiao and they would be inclined to
pay the $10.00 per month subscription price for DAZN in the U.S.
It’s going to cost Hearn a lot of money to sign Pacquiao. If Hearn
is seriously interested in adding Pacquiao to his DAZN steaming service,
he’s going to need to pay him a lot more money than he recently offered
Adrien Broner. Pacquiao may not be the fighter that he once was years
ago, but he’s still a highly popular fighter.
Hearn could use a big name star like Pacquiao to his DAZN service, as
the fighters that he recently signed aren’t popular. Hearn has failed
to sign the top talents to his Matchroom Boxing stable despite having
recently signed an 8-year, $1 billion streaming deal with DAZN. Hearn is
badly in need of a star to get the other fighters to fall in line and
start signing with him.
Pacquiao rejuvenated his career last weekend in destroying WBA World
welterweight champion Lucas Matthysse in a 7th round knockout in
Malaysia. It was a good comeback fight for the former eight division
world champion Pacquiao. He’d been out of the ring for 12 months since
losing to Jeff Horn by a 12 round unanimous decision in 2017. Before
last Saturday’s fight, Pacquiao was viewed as an over-the-hill fighter
and completely done.
Hearn
says he wants to match Pacquiao against Matchroom Sport fighter Amir
Khan. Hearn would prefer to make an in house fight between Khan and Kell
Brook, as he promotes both of them. If Hearn can add Pacquiao to his
stable, a fight between him and Khan would be a much more significant
fight than Khan-Brook. Hearn would likely disagree and believe that the
British boxing fans would still prefer to see Khan and Brook fight, but I
don’t think that’s the case in reality. At this point in Brook’s
career, he’s an injury prone aging 32-year-old fighter that left his
best behind after losing to Gennady Golovkin in 2016.
“I don’t know his situation with Top Rank but if he is a free
agent we’ll definitely be talking to Manny Pacquiao about fighting on
DAZN,” Hearn said to Fighthype. “[Amir Khan is] definitely a
potential fight. I’d like, still, to make the Kell Brook-Amir Khan
fight…I hope it happens but we’ll see.”
Khan, 31, would do most of the work when it comes to promoting the
Pacquiao-Khan fight if he were to sign with Hearn for his DAZN streaming
service. Pacquiao looked great against Matthysse, but that was against a
fighter that is well past his prime. Khan would be a really hard fight
for Pacquiao. Matthysse made Pacquiao look better than he actually is
due to how far past his prime he is. If Hearn were to sign Pacquiao,
there’s a possibility that he would want to have him milk his WBA 147
lb. title for as long as possible if he’s bringing in the subscribers to
his DAZN service.
Hearn believes that his DAZN streaming service will supply better
content than ESPN+. However, Hearn still doesn’t have the fighters in
his stable to provide the superior contender compared to ESPN+, which
shows mostly Top Rank fighters.
Hearn recently added these fighters to his DAZN streaming deal:
– Jessie Vargas
– Maurice Blocker
– Artur Beterbiev
– Demetrius Andrade
– Daniel Roman
– Jarrell Miller
Obviously these are not the biggest names in boxing. The World Boxing
Super Series (WBSS) has done much better in adding fighters to their
tournaments to attract interest. Hearn should have attempted to add the
WBSS tournament to his DAZN service.
Hearn will have heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua defending against
Alexander Povetkin on DAZN on September 22. Hearn could get a lot more
fans interested in DAZN if he matched Joshua against WBC heavyweight
champion Deontay ‘Bronze Bomber’ Wilder. A lot of fans would subscribe
to DAZN if Hearn would stop delaying the Joshua-Wilder fight. Hearn’s
plan appears to be to match Joshua against Povetkin followed by Jarrell
Miller and then Dillian Whyte in a rematch. Those two fights will likely
take up all of 2019 unless Joshua decides to get in a third fight. I
don’t think he will. Miller and Whyte won’t bring in a lot of interest
in Hearn’s DAZN deal.
“I think the content will be better,” Hearn said about his DAZN streaming service in comparison to ESPN+. ”There
you have a situation where there’s a linear broadcaster, and they’ll be
mixing and matching the content — some on the air, some on the [app] —
which is gonna be part of the strategy. Here, this is gonna be purely on
the DAZN app. So all the content’s there, all the fight cards, from 6pm
to midnight, all the chat shows, all the build-up, you’ve got the World
Boxing Super Series, you’ve got our U.K. shows, you’ve got Bellator as
well. It’s $2.50 a week! So our plan is to flood you guys, to keep the
content rolling, keep the news coming, to get everyone involved — make
it a platform for the fans. So that’s the difference.”
ESPN+
costs half as much as DAZN, and it has bigger names like Terence
Crawford and Vasyl Lomachenko. DAZN may need to drop the subscription
price if they want to get fans to subscribe in great numbers. Certainly
from the standpoint of the less than stellar fighters that Hearn has
signed recently, he’s not likely going to be able to do better than
ESPN+ in terms of subscribers. If DAZN had started out at a lower price
like ESPN+ at $4.99, it would improve the chances of it doing well.
Starting out at $10.00 is a foolish thing. DAZN needs Errol Spence,
Keith Thurman, Erislandy Lara, Jarrett Hurd, Jermell Charlo, Jermall
Charlo, Danny Garcia, Regis Prograis and Manny Pacquiao.
Hearn will need to add true top fighters for him to bring in enough
subscriptions to keep his DAZN deal going beyond the two-year period. A
lot of boxing fans believe that DAZN will move on if Hearn doesn’t bring
in a high number of subscriptions to justify the money that they’re
giving him. Hearn has a lot of money to work with from his DAZN, but he
hasn’t been able to use the money to lure the best fighters – Deontay
Wilder, Errol Spence Jr., Danny Garcia, Mikey Garcia, Shawn Porter,
Jermell Charlo and Jermall Charlo – to sign with him.
Hearn tried to sign fading but still popular Adrien Broner to his
DAZN network for a 3-fight, $6.75 million deal, but he turned him down
and posted the offer on social media to ridicule. The Charlo brothers
weren’t interested in signing with Hearn for the money he was offering
them. If Hearn was willing to make huge money offers, they might sign
with him. Hearn isn’t used to offering the big money that many U.S
fighters require
.
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