On the heels of this past Saturday’s Anthony Joshua-Oleksandr Usyk heavyweight championship pay-per-view fight, the PPV boxing industry is gearing up for two more heavyweight fight cards heading into the fall.

Fox Sports will deliver the September 4 PPV bout between former heavyweight champion Andy Ruiz and top contender Luis Ortiz, followed by an October 15 fight between former heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder and Robert Helenius.

Fox Sports Executive VP and head of programming Bill Wanger said that the two fight cards look to take advantage of increasing interest in the heavyweight division, which has featured several PPV events over the past four years. 

Since 2018, six PPV boxing events featuring either Wilder, Ortiz or Ruiz have drawn collectively more than 2 million PPV buys, according to industry sources. The fights are led by the second bout between Wilder and current heavyweight champion Tyson Fury, which drew more than 800,000 PPV buys, according to industry sources.

Wilder is stepping into the ring in October for the first time since losing his last two fights to Fury, with the hopes of eventually regaining the heavyweight championship belts. Ortiz and Ruiz are both looking to position themselves for another shot at the title by winning their September matchup.

All three fighters are chasing the current WBO, WBA and IBF heavyweight champion Usyk – who on August 20 defeated former champion Joshua for the second straight time in the rematch of their September 2021 fight – as well as Fury, who holds the WBC title. Fury announced his retirement earlier this summer, but industry observers say a potentially lucrative unification fight against Usyk could lure him back into the ring. 

Outside of the heavyweight division, the PPV boxing category is counting down to the September 17 Canelo Alvarez-Gennady Golovkin trilogy fight. The first two Alvarez-Golovkin fights in 2017 and 2018 generated a combined 2.4 million PPV buys, according to industry sources. ■

Fox Sports on Saturday will conclude its 2019 pay-per-view fight schedule with the Deontay Wilder-Luis Oritz heavyweight championship rematch fight. The event, which retails at a suggested price of $75, will be Fox Sports and its partner Premier Boxing Championships’ inaugural foray into the heavyweight division after three welterweight PPV main events. 

The first fight between the two heavyweights in 2018 -- won by titleholder Wilder in a 10th round knockout -- aired on Showtime.

I recently spoke to Fox Sports Executive Vice President and Head of Programming and Scheduling Bill Wanger about the marketing and promotional effort for Wilder-Ortiz, as well as Fox Sports’ PPV boxing plans for 2020. The edited transcript of the interview appears below.

What makes the Wilder-Ortiz rematch bout a pay-per-view event, given that the first fight aired on the Showtime premium channel?

I think the heavyweight division is back with a vengeance, and there are a lot of interesting fighters and storylines emerging. Deontay Wilder is as big as they come in the heavyweight division both literally and figuratively, so we thought it would be a great opportunity to showcase him on PPV. We schedule these PPV events strategically to have some of the best ones in the fall where we can take advantage of our promotional machine within NFL, the baseball playoffs and college football. The fight came together and here we are.

How much promotion are you putting behind the fight?

Promos for the fight have been running for a couple of weeks, and we have produced more than 10 hours of shoulder programming. Our countdown show debuted (on Nov. 9) delivered close to 700,000 viewers. We are also producing four Fight Camp episodes, and the first episode of that series, which aired after an NFL telecast [on Fox broadcasting], delivered 2.2 million views.

Do you expect this fight in the heavyweight division to perform on par or better than your first three fights, which were all based in the welterweight division?

I think this fight will be right in the neighborhood of some of the past fights we’ve done. We’ll get a better read on that next week, but we have every confidence that this is going to be right in line with how we’ve been doing. I don’t see the difference in terms of the marketability of the divisions. They are all kind of equal in terms of stature so to speak.

Having said that, how many PPV buys do you predict for Wilder-Ortiz?

As you know, we don’t comment on those numbers.

How would you characterize your partnership with Premier Boxing Champions one year into your multi-year agreement with the boxing promotion company?

We’re just completing our first year of the deal and its all systems go. We have a great relationship -- we’ve really built a boxing infrastructure within Fox Sports over the last year, and we’ll continue to hone it. We’re really looking forward to 2020 -- there could be some epic fights coming up.

Looking ahead to 2020, will you continue to same pace of scheduling a PPV fight each quarter for the year?

I think the four to five in the calendar year is the sweet spot for us. There are some real interesting things that could be happening both in the heavyweight division and the welterweight division. Outside of that you have the 154 pounders and the 168 (pound fighters) where we’re looking to have some strong unification bouts -- some of which will be on the Fox broadcast channel.

When Showtime and HBO teamed to distribute the Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao pay-per-view boxing event in 2015, it brought together the two champions of the PPV distribution business.

That fight went on to set the all-time record for pay-per-view boxing event buys while solidifying HBO and Showtime’s position as the preeminent distributors of high-profile  boxing events.

Fast forward just four years to today, and the PPV boxing marketplace has changed significantly. Sports streaming services such as ESPN+ and DAZN have muscled their way into the business and have secured the rights to marquee fights like the Nov. 2 Canelo Alvarez-Sergey Kovalev fight and the Dec. 7 Anthony Joshua-Andy Ruiz Jr. bout -- both championship fights will stream live on the DAZN $20 monthly subscription service -- that a few years ago would have cost fight fans $60 or more to watch via PPV.

When fights do make it to the traditional PPV platform, such as the Nov. 23 Deontay Wilder-Luis Ortiz II heavyweight championship match, its Fox Sports -- and not Showtime or HBO -- more often than not delivering the event to boxing fans. In fact, Fox Sports has distributed four of the six major PPV boxing events in 2019, including Wilder-Ortiz. 

HBO last year hung up its PPV boxing gloves and completely stepped out of the TV boxing ring, due in part to the emergence of streaming competitors DAZN and ESPN+. Showtime -- which rang in 2019 with its January Manny Pacquiao-Adrien Broner PPV event -- is still a major player in the game, but recently negotiated and passed on the PPV rights to the Wilder-Ortiz rematch after the premium service distributed the March 2018 first bout between the fighters. 

“We did negotiate for the right to distribute the Wilder-Ortiz event via Showtime Pay-Per-View, but ultimately, we chose not to move forward ... the proposed deal terms didn’t make sense for us,” Showtime president of sports and entertainment programming Stephen Espinoza said. “Our strategy going forward remains unchanged, as we will continue to deliver the best boxing on TV for our subscribers and deliver, when the time is right, the sport’s biggest pay-per-view events.”

For Fox Sports, which distributed via PPV the Errol Spence-Mikey Garcia fight in March, the Manny Pacquiao-Keith Thurman fight in July and the Spence-Shawn Porter bout last month (pictured), the addition of Wilder-Ortiz is another piece in its growing portfolio of PPV sports content. 

“Fox Sports is thrilled to be working with the PBC and the most exciting heavyweight champion of the world, Deontay Wilder, for his next title defense against Luis Ortiz,” Bill Wanger, Fox Sports executive vice president and head of programming & scheduling said.“Deontay fought on Fox in 2016 and 2017 and had more than 2.5 million viewers watching each time. His popularity has exploded since then, and we’re expecting this to be a can’t-miss night of boxing.”

If Wilder wins, industry sources say Fox Sports is expected to team with ESPN to distribute a Wilder-Tyson Fury rematch fight during first quarter 2020 in what could be the biggest PPV event since Showtime's 2017 Mayweather-Conor McGregor PPV fight. It would also usher in a new generation of boxing content providers working together to bring the biggest PPV fights to the category. 

“Much like when HBO was going against and working with Showtime, I think you have the same dynamic today, but it’s been reinvented for a new set of platforms,”sports analyst Lee Berke said.