Bob Arum Gives Grim Update On Errol Spence Jr. vs. Terence Crawford: ‘Unless Somebody Wants To Subsidize That Fight I Don’t Know How It Gets Done’

Bob Arum gave fans an update on a potential Errol Spence Jr. vs. Terence Crawford fight and it was not a good one.

Both Spence Jr. and Crawford have said the fight will happen and it could very well prove who is the best pound-for-pound fighter in the sport. However, the fight has still yet to be made and according to Arum, he says it might not happen unless someone subsidize’s the fight.

“Same problem,” Arum told FightHype.com. “It’s a big fight. It has a tremendous interest for people who follow boxing, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into revenue from pay-per-view, which is the biggest source, because of the piracy. The fighters realize how big a fight it is and they want to be paid big amounts of money and the promoter, in this case PBC, has to look at it and say you know, hey, we’ll put it on, we’ll give you nice guarantees, but you have to be willing to live with the upside, which the fighters realize now probably will not develop. Again, unless somebody wants to subsidize that fight I don’t know how it gets done.”

One thing Bob Arum and his team are thinking of doing to making this fight is dropping the pay-per-view price. He points to the UK where PPVs go for 20-25 pounds, so if he thinks if he does $25 here it may allow them to have more buys as people will be less likely to find an illegal stream if it is only $25.

“If you look at our friends in the UK and they still do robust numbers on the pay-per-view,” Arum said. “It’s a much smaller cost to get the pay-per-view in the UK, 20 pounds, or 25 pounds for a really big fight and people then don’t bother to steal the signal. They are willing to pay the freight. But if you start, as we do here, having $80 pay-per-views that’s a whole different exercise.

“The problem is it’s a theory. If we drop the cost of a pay-per-view $20, $25 … would people then forgo pirating the signal and pay that money to watch the fight legitimately? How do you then experiment?,” Arum said. “Because if you’re wrong—if you figured at the high price to get 250,000 buys at $80 and now if you go to $25 on a big fight, who’s to say it’ll stay at 250,000? My inclination is you reduce the piracy in that way but again to put up hard-earned money on the hope [that more buys are generated by lowering the cost of the pay-per-view]—that’s not a good business decision.” 

Regardless of PPV price, the hope for many boxing fans is Errol Spence Jr. vs. Terence Crawford happens in the coming months.

Do you think Spence Jr. vs. Crawford will happen?