Usually when two marquee premium ring events compete against one another, one or both of the events tend to suffer from a performance perspective.

But this past Saturday’s live UFC card on subscription streaming sports service ESPN+ and Showtime’s Manny Pacquiao-Adrien Broner pay-per-view boxing match drew impressive performance numbers despite the competition, according to the distributors.

The inaugural Jan. 19 UFC Fight Night on ESPN+ event in New York featuring 13 live fights -- including TJ Dillashaw’s 32-second knockout win to defend his flyweight championship -- drew a whopping 568,000 new subscribers for the $4.99 per month ESPN+ service on Friday and Saturday combined, according to ESPN officials.

The event was the first collaboration between the UFC and ESPN as part of a new five five-year distribution deal between the two companies. The network has already announced its first quarter UFC event lineup -- which includes more than 36 hours of live UFC action on ESPN+. The network is hoping its UFC content will continue to boost subscriber numbers for ESPN+, which has already surpassed the 1 million subscriber mark in less than a year after its April 2018 launch.

In Las Vegas that night, Showtime was offering its first pay-per-view boxing card of 2019 featuring boxing legend and current welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao and former champion Adrien Broner. The fight, in which Pacquiao scored an easy, unanimous decision win, drew approximately 400,000 PPV buys, according to published reports. While the performance pales in comparison to the 4.5 million buys Pacquiao generated for his record-setting 2015 fight with Floyd Mayweather, the fight -- at a suggested retail price of $55 -- reportedly performed above expectations.

It’s also marks a good start for the PPV boxing category, which will offer two more fights over the next three months, including Fox Sports’ March 16 Mikey Garcia-Errol Spence Jr. fight, and ESPN/Top Rank Inc.’s April 20 Terence Crawford-Amir Kahn welterweight championship fight. 

ESPN will throw its hat into the pay-per-view boxing ring in April when it teams with boxing promoter Top Rank Inc. for the Terence Crawford-Amir Kahn welterweight championship fight.

The April 20 Crawford-Kahn fight marks the first time ESPN and Top Rank have co-promoted a major PPV boxing card since the two reached a distribution agreement in 2017. It’s unclear how much the fight will cost consumers, or how viewers will be able to access the PPV event.

“Showcasing Crawford-Khan as the first pay-per-view event under the Top Rank on ESPN banner is truly a cause for celebration. Crawford is a world champion, a global phenomenon and perhaps the best pound-for-pound fighter in the sport and Khan is a fighter that everyone wants to see every time he steps in the ring,” said ESPN executive vice president, programming and scheduling Burke Magnus in a statement. “This is what boxing needs, more big-name showdowns, and this fight is a perfect example of the vision that we had when we teamed up with Top Rank.”

The Crawford-Kahn fight is the third PPV boxing match scheduled thus far in 2019, following this Saturday’s (Jan. 19) Showtime-distributed Manny Pacquiao-Adrien Broner fight and Fox Sports’ March 16 Mikey Garcia-Errol Spence Jr. fight. 

Halfway through 2018, many industry observers had written off the pay-per-view event category as a dinosaur whose best day were behind it and would soon be replaced by an emerging digital streaming platform that was going to outbid the industry for the biggest  sports events and properties.

Fast forward to the end of December, and the old school distribution platform looks to have picked itself up off the mat and positioned itself to fight again in 2019. 

Showtime’s Dec. 1 Deontay Wilder-Tyson Fury PPV heavyweight championship fight ended a run of big events that kept the category relevant to sports fans.

In fact, the strong performances of four, fourth quarter pay-per-view events have shown that consumers are still more than willing to dish out big dollars to watch marquee events on their big TV screens despite the launch of several new, low-cost subscription sports streaming services like DAZN and ESPN+ that offer marquee sports events.

The PPV event category didn’t have a major PPV event until September’s Canelo Alvarez-Gennady Golovkin middleweight championship fight, but the rematch bout between the two warriors reportedly drew 1 million buys, the gold standard for the category.

Alvarez weeks later would sign an exclusive 11-fight deal with upstart sports streaming service DAZN, but his most recent PPV fights proved that there was life beyond PPV boxing revenue champions Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao.

In October, the UFC would set PPV records with its UFC 229, which pitted arguably the mixed martial arts outfit’s biggest draw, Conor McGregor, against champion Khabib Nurmagomedov. The fight inside the ring – Khabib defeated McGregor – along with a post-fight melee helped the event draw a reported UFC record 2.4 million PPV buys. Next year looks promising with the UFC’s new media partner ESPN now both selling and promoting the mixed martial arts outfit’s PPV events going forward.

November welcomed golf to the PPV event category with the Tiger Woods-Phil Mickelson match. The event reportedly drew in the neighborhood of 1 million PPV viewers. (Most PPV distributors refunded the event’s $19.99 fee to subscribers after a technical glitch forced sports streaming service Bleacher Report Live to offer the event free to its subscribers.)

The reported 325,000 buys for the action-packed Wilder-Fury fight -- which ended in a draw -- helped the category set the tone for what it hopes will be a robust lineup of fights in 2019. Already two boxing shows are on the docket: Showtime’s Jan. 19 Pacquiao-Adrien Broner fight and Fox Sports’ March 16 Mikey Garcia –Errol Spence Jr. championship fight.

Further, industry executives say new content companies are exploring several non-ring PPV events that could further expand the category’s reach in the new year.

Showtime and HBO enter the TV boxing ring together on April 29 to co-televise the Vladimir Klitschko-Anthony Joshua heavyweight championship fight – the first time the two networks have come together to televise a non-pay-per-view boxing match.

After the fight however, the two networks will retreat into their neutral corners with two distinctly different strategies on distributing live boxing matches.

Showtime, which only a few years ago was arguably the most prolific distributor of marque pay-per-view fights in the industry, is now focusing on putting its biggest and best fights via its premium service and on broadcast television through its sister broadcast network CBS.

In fact, the network’s last high-profile PPV fight was Floyd Mayweather’s fairwell fight in September 2015 against Andre Berto. That came four months after Showtime and HBO hooked up to co-distribute the Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight -- the most lucrative PPV event of all time.

Since then, Showtime has offered several quality primetime fights featuring the top names in boxing today, including welterweight champion, Keith Thurman, heavyweight champs Joshua and Deontay Wilder, and former champions Danny Garcia, Shawn Porter, and Adrien Broner.

The network recently released its upcoming fight schedule that will offer big fights featuring light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson and welterweight champion Kell Brook among others, but none that will be offered on a PPV basis.

That leaves HBO as the main distributor of PPV boxing fights. The network, which has already distributed one high-profile PPV boxing event this year – the March Golovkin-Daniel Jacobs fight drew 170,000 buys according to published reports – will return to the PPV ring next week (May 6) with the highly-anticipated Canelo Alvarez-Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. fight. Also on tap for the pay network is a June 17 Andre Ward-Sergey Kovalev light heavyweight championship rematch and a potential July PPV fight featuring Pacquiao.

As for tonight’s Klitschko-Joshua fight, Showtime will air the fight live this afternoon at 4:15 while HBO will distribute the bout on a taped delayed basis at 11 p.m.

Spike Tv’s first Premier Boxing Championship fight card of 2016 delivered knockout ratings for the network.

Spike’s April 1 Adrien Broner-Ashley Theophane boxing card averaged 873,000 viewers, the network’s most watched PBC fight since the network launched the series last year, according to network officials.

The Broner-Theophane fight itself drew more than 1 million viewers from 10:36 to 11:21, making it the most watched PBC fight in network history, said network officials.

Showtime is taking a jab at social media to promote its upcoming May 3 Floyd Mayweather-Marcos Maidana pay-per-view event.

The network has teamed with welterweight champion Mayweather’s promotional company and the cable operators to offer as many as 20 to 25 short-form videos surrounding the fight on each outlet’s respective Instagram, Vine and Facebook pages. The videos take full advantage of those burgeoning social media platforms that offer 10 to 15 second clips, letting fans keep up with the fighter’s training and appearances leading up to the fight.

“Each group will have its own set of individual content tailored for them that is organic to their own marketing,” said Showtime Sports executive vice president and general manager Stephen Espinoza. “Each of the platforms will have their own videos and will be distributing them in their own voice … the fans aren’t seeing the same videos that are posted by Showtime, Mayweather or the cable operators.”

The social media campaign will be bolstered by a multi-million dollar media campaign that will feature ads on high-profile sports events like the NBA playoffs. “For Mayweather fights in general we cast a wider net …we go after the casual sports fan and the general sports fan that may only watch one or two boxing events a year,” he said. “We know for that viewer if they’re only going to buy one or two event a year it will be a Mayweather fight.”

In addition, In Demand is offering eight classic boxing matches featuring several boxers on the Mayweather-Maidana fight card, including Adrien Broner and Amir Khan.

Espinoza wouldn’t predict how many PPV buys the fight will generate, but the network’s Sept. 14 Mayweather-Canelo Alvarez PPV event drew 2.2 million buys – the second best performance in PPV event history.