On Saturday Fox Sports will distribute its first pay-per-view boxing event featuring the Errol Spence Jr.-Mikey Garcia welterweight championship fight.

The PPV fight card, which will take place at AT&T Stadium in Dallas and retail at a suggested retail price of $74.95, is the second PPV boxing event for the industry in 2019, following Showtime’s Jan. 19 fight between Manny Pacquiao and Adrien Broner, which garnered a reported 400,000 PPV buys.

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Fox Sports’ fight coverage will begin at 8 pm with FS1’s live coverage of several undercard fights before the PPV event launches at 9 pm. More than 3.1 million viewers have already sampled shoulder programming surrounding the Spence-Garcia bout, according to Fox officials. 

I recently spoke to Fox Sports executive vice president of live operations and research Bill Wanger about Fox’s decision to jump into the pay-per-view boxing ring with Spence-Garcia as well as performance prospects for the fight.

Why did Fox Sports choose this fight as its inaugural foray into the PPV boxing arena?

This is a unique fight. You have two of the top pound-for-pound best fighters on the planet, so we think it’s can’t miss TV. Plus, we have the intrigue of Mikey Garcia going up two weight classes to face a bigger Errol Spence. They are both undefeated and world champions

Areyou confident that the name recognition of the two fighters is strong enough to attract both hardcore and casual boxing fans?

I think that’s where our marketing and PR teams come in, and they are working hard to promote this fight. We have the power of Fox behind this, so we think it will attract the casual boxing fan. We’ve been airing quite a bit of shoulder programming to help promote the fight that’s run on Fox broadcast, and that’s been a great way to capture the interest of the sports fan. We’re also using all of our cable channels, including Fox News and FX, to promote the fight. We also have an extensive media buy outside of the Fox family to promote the fight across all platforms.

Will the fight be available on a digital streaming basis?

Yes, the fight will be available for purchase on FoxSports.com where you could watch it on any device. History tells us that [online buys] fall in the neighborhood of 8% to 10% of the overall buys typically.

Having said that, do you have any general predictions on the PPV performance of the event?

We don’t generally comment on potential sales figures for pay-per-views.

How many PPV boxing events are you looking to do this year?

We’re going to have approximately four to five pay-per-view events a year. They’ll be an announcement shortly on our next PPV card.

In general, how important is boxing to the Fox Sports brand?

I think you can see by all the marketing that we’ve been doing since we started our new deal with [Premier Boxing Champions] in December that the sport is important to Fox. We felt that some of these great fighters, particularly in the glamour divisions like heavyweight and welterweight, were really underexposed. We felt that with the power of Fox and the Fox Sports brand we could elevate these great PBC fighters. We’ve already had a couple of fight cards on the broadcast network that have done over two million viewers. We’re very invested in Premier Boxing.

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. 

After a slow 2018, the pay-per-view boxing category is expected to come out swinging in 2019.

Already two fights are positioned to vie for boxing fans’ dollars in the first quarter of next year, which would match the number of marquee fights distributed in all of 2018. Fox Sports will join the ranks of PPV distributors when it offers its first ever PPV event in March.

Fox and fight promoter Premier Boxing Champions will distribute the March 16 welterweight championship fight between current titleholder Errol Spence Jr. and four-division world champion Mikey Garcia, part of 10 televised fight cards to be carried by Fox Broadcasting and FS1 in the first three months of 2019. Fox and PBC announced the fights -- part of a recently signed, four-year agreement between the two companies -- during a Tuesday afternoon press conference. 

Fox Sports’ PPV distribution of the Spence-Garcia PPV fight is significant for a category that will lose one of its most dependable partners in HBO Sports, which after a 45-year run will stop airing live boxing matches beginning in 2019. If successful, Fox’s first PPV boxing event could set up the possibility of future big ticket PPV events featuring some of the top fighters in the sport, including welterweights Keith Thurman, Danny Garcia and Shawn Porter; and middleweights Anthony Dirrell, Jermall and Jermell Charlo.

The Spence-Garcia fight is expected to be preceded in the PPV arena by a proposed,  Showtime-distributed fight between current PPV boxing champion Manny Pacquiao and former four-time champion Adrien Broner. The fight would mark the return of Pacquiao -- the second-most lucrative PPV fighter in history behind retired boxer Floyd Mayweather – to the PPV ring in more than two years.

The fight would also mark Showtime’s second PPV bout in as many months, following its scheduled Dec. 1 Deontay Wilder-Tyson Fury heavyweight championship fight.