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.”
