What a difference a year makes.

This time last year, cable operators were still counting the windfall from the May 2, 2015, Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao pay-per-view fight, which generated a record 4 million buys and more than $400 million in revenue.

Fast forward to today, and the category is preparing for HBO’s July 23 PPV event between undefeated welterweight champion Terence Crawford and undefeated contender Viktor Postol -- with far fewer performance expectations.

In fact, the combined revenue and buy take of the category’s two fights so far this year — HBO’s April Manny Pacquiao-Timothy Bradley Jr. Fight and its May Canelo Alvarez-Amir Kahn fight — along with next Saturday’s fight won’t even come within a jab’s length of Mayweather-Pacquiao’s performance.

Still, with Pacquiao and Mayweather virtually out of the picture in retirement, HBO said it’s using this year’s PPV telecasts to nurture the next generation of PPV fighters, in the hopes that a few will break through and serve as the industry’s next big cash cow.

“When a promoter identifies a talented fighter and decides to build him up, at some point they have to throw them into the deep waters to see whether they have the thing that they could sell,” HBO vice president, programming, PPV, Tony Walker said. “Crawford is talented, he has an edge to him, and in the fight he’s going up against a fighter that is equally as skilled. Good competitive fights always sell, and it comes during a time where there’s not a lot of competition in the marketplace.”

Crawford has never headlined a PPV card, so it’s not surprising that Walker would not reveal projections for the PPV event. He added that HBO and fight promotion company Top Rank want to gauge Crawford’s appeal on the big stage.

“Manny Pacquiao didn’t generate a million buys in his first PPV event, so we’re going to see how it performs,” Walker said. “We’re optimistic — I don’t know a number, but I know that we and Arum are pretty enthusiastic.”

The industry has stepped up marketing efforts for the fight, committing to the traditional outlay of promotional spots, social-media promotion and other marketing tactics typical of marquee PPV events. With few PPV boxing cards on the slate, Walker said the industry is looking to maximize the revenue return from every fight that’s offered.

“All of the distributors are running cross-channel spots, digital ads and electronic program guide ads, as well as showing past fights featuring the fighters,” Walker said. “There is a lot of marketing around the show.”

While there aren’t any big PPV fights scheduled beyond Crawford-Postol, there maybe a silver lining for the PPV boxing category this fall. Published reports last week quoted boxing promoter Bob Arum as saying that Pacquiao will return to the ring then, just months after announcing his retirement following the Bradley fight.

Walker and HBO could not confirm a potential fall Pacquiao fight, but any in-ring appearance by the PPV category’s former pound-for-pound champion would provide a major revenue boost to the category, regardless of his opponent.

Pacquiao has generated the second-highest level of PPV revenue within the boxing category, behind only Mayweather.

The year 2015 will go down as a championship campaign, ratings-wise, for live sports programming — and particularly for live sports telecasts emanating from cable networks.

Live sports telecasts represented 19 of the top 25 programs on cable this year, according to ESPN, which is poised to finish as the most watched network on cable for the year in primetime.

Most cable networks carrying live sports events this year either set ratings records or generated strong performances from their coverage. ESPN set an all-time cable ratings record by drawing 33.6 million viewers for the Ohio State-Oregon College Football National Championship game on Jan. 12, while TBS garnered a network-record 16.7 million viewers for the Kentucky-Wisconsin NCAA men’s basketball Final Four national semifinal game on April 4.

Sports fans dished out record amounts of cash for pay-per-view events in 2015, bolstered by the May 2 Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight, which obliterated all pay-per-view event-revenue records by generating $400 million.

Sports fans also chatted up the year’s biggest sports events on Twitter, including NBC’s Feb. 1 New England- Seattle Super Bowl telecast, which drew a television show-high 25 million tweets, according to Nielsen.

With increased viewing via digital video recorder, video- on-demand and TV everywhere platforms taking a bite out of traditional TV entertainment-network ratings in 2015, sports telecasts remain one of the few video properties that continue to be DVR-proof and more than hold their value in the evolving television marketplace.

As more live sports games make their way onto digital platforms through TV Everywhere services like Watch ESPN and over-the-top game packages like “NBA League Pass,” the value of such content undoubtedly will continue to rise as distributors jockey to secure rights to content that will draw not only hard-to-reach male viewers, but legions of casual sports fans across all demos.

The beat will seemingly to go on in 2016 as big events such as Super Bowl 50 and the 2016 Summer Olympics — along with technological advances such as 4K and virtual reality — promise to further enhance the broad appeal of live sports programming and provide a win-win ratings scenario for distributors across traditional and digital platforms, as well as social media.