Digital sports service Flipps TV will live stream tomorrow night’s (May 6) Canelo Alvarez-Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. pay-per-view boxing match.

The company will offer the super middleweight fight via the website Canelo-Chavez.com in both English and Spanish at the fight’s suggested PPV retail price of $69.95, according to company COO Michael Weber. While the company is not offering the event on its FITE TV app which streams live boxing, mixed martial arts and pro wrestling shows, Weber said the fight will be streamed in high-definition and can be accessed on mobile phones, tablets and computers.

HBO PPV is distributing the fight via traditional PPV to cable and satellite distributors. 

Weber said this is the first major HBO-distributed PPV boxing match that Flipps Media has secured streaming rights to. “We have the technology and we have the resources to provide viewers a good program,” he said.

Weber believes the site will appeal to boxing fans who have cut the cable cord but want to see the fight. “More than 20 percent of US television households do not have cable or satellite,” Weber said. “We’re a great alternative to watch programming … we’re not replacing DirecTv or the cable operators, but we’ll do well.”

While the fight is also being streamed on fight promoter Golden Boy Productions’ goldenboyppv.com site, industry observers don’t believe that the streaming efforts will hurt traditional PPV buys for Alvarez-Chavez Jr.

“Other [PPV] fights have been streamed in the past, and I don’t think there was any degradation of PPV buys that we can see that we can be attributed to live streaming of the PPV events,” said Mark Boccardi, senior vice president of programming and business development for In Demand. “As an event, you want it on the biggest screen with the most reliable signal possible. We firmly believe that nearly all buys still come from the traditional consumption methods.”

While most televised professional and college sports games can be watched online on multiple devices, a good number of major pay-per-view ring-sports events have yet to enter the digital arena.

FITE TV is trying to change that. The mobile app, developed by digital media company Flipps Media, currently offers live boxing events, as well as pro wrestling and mixed martial arts content, streamed to mobile phones. The app is available via iTunes or Google Play and gives users the option of watching on their devices or connecting directly to a smart TV.

Through distribution deals with such event providers as Golden Boy Promotions (boxing), TNA (pro wrestling) and World Series of Fighting (MMA), FITE TV is streaming an average of eight live free and fee-based ring sports events per week.

FITE TV CEO Kosta Jordanov recently spoke to Multichannel News programming editor R. Thomas Umstead about the service, as well as his aspirations to eventually offer fight fans the opportunity to watch the biggest PPV ring-sports events online. An edited excerpt of their conversation follows.

RELATED:Spring's Live Ring Sports on Cable and Broadcast

MCN:Do people actually want to watch a fight on a mobile phone?

Kosta Jordanov: It depends on the content. The trend is that people are shifting to short-form clips, and for those people who watch that content, the size of the screen doesn’t matter that much.

When it comes to sports, however, people want to watch live sports on a large screen. For a three-hour show that you’ve paid $30 to $40 for, the small screen doesn’t work. You want to sit with friends, drink a beer and watch a fight on the large screen. That’s what’s so attractive about FITE TV. The biggest differentiator is our technical ability to connect the stream and bring it to the big screen. We don’t have any hardware for a specific box to be connected to the TV, and there’s no need for a cable subscription.

Basically, we do IP delivery over the big screen using the mobile device as a remote-control interface. The only requirement is that the mobile device and the TV have to be on the same network. The stream goes through a cloud service that we support going to the big screen.

MCN:What are some of the rights deals that you have with ring sports providers?

KJ: We already have deals with 35 event providers on the wrestling, MMA and boxing side. We have a deal with TNA [and] Ring of Honor, on the wrestling side; Legacy [Fighting Championship] and WSOF [World Series of Fighting] on the mixed-martial-arts side, and Golden Boy Promotions and Integrated Sports for boxing. There really isn’t a reason for a content partner not to work for us — it’s all upside for everyone involved.

We’re just one more distributor that they have to work with, but we have a slightly different reach. We’re reaching cord-cutters; people outside the country. We also help our partners with the promotion of the event through Facebook and Twitter ads, sponsored ads. We can also provide content to specific countries.

MCN:Do you see a time when you’ll be able to stream a major PPV boxing event from HBO or Showtime?

KJ: I think it’s doable. I think we would probably start with some distribution outside of the prime window, or it could start with streaming of prelims, weigh-ins and other supporting events leading up to the main-event card. Again, we’re just another Dish or DirecTV; we’re one more provider that can help provide revenue.

MCN:How does a consumer purchase an event to stream?

KJ: Through the FITE TV app, you can purchase the event just like you would through iTunes or Google Play. Once purchased, you get a confirmation from both FITE TV and from iTunes or Google Play.

MCN:The knock on streaming has been the piracy factor — there’s a lot of stealing of the signal when it’s on the Web. How can you assure event providers that you can eliminate piracy?

KJ: We have a very secure content-protection platform that we’ve been working on for the last four years. Through this platform, we’ve streamed content from CBS, Bloomberg [Television] and some of the movie studios that really have high requirements for signal protection. That said, every single signal can be hacked, but we’re actually more safe than traditional systems. It’s harder to steal the content from us than it is from cable.

MCN:Are there any plans to extend your content beyond ring sports?

KJ: We’re very focused on ring sports — we don’t have any plans to go to any areas until we own the space. After that, we may look at other events.