Fox Sports enters the pay-per-view boxing ring Saturday (February 5) to distribute the Keith Thurman-Mario Barrios welterweight boxing match as it gears up for what could be a busy year in the genre, according to executives.
The fight, which marks the former welterweight champion Thurman’s return to the ring for the first time since a 2019 split decision loss to Manny Pacquiao, is the first of what Fox Sports and promotion company Premier Boxing Champions hopes to be quarterly PPV boxing matches featuring some of the most popular and successful fighters in the sport.
It also comes on the heels of a busy end-of-the-year lineup of Fox Sports boxing events, which included a Christmas night fight card on Fox broadcasting and a New Year’s Day PPV event featuring heavyweights Louis Ortiz and Charles Martin.
Fox Sports executive VP, head of Programming and Scheduling Bill Wanger discusses the Thurman-Barrios fight as well as the company's PPV boxing strategy for 2022 in an interview with Multichannel News/Broadcasting & Cable senior content producer R. Thomas Umstead. An edited version of the interview appears below.
Picture This: What was most appealing to you about Thurman-Barrios from a pay-per-view perspective?
Bill Wanger: With Keith, as one of the top stars in the sport, coming back from a bit of a hiatus and with Mario going up in weight class, I think it's a really intriguing fight. Also, the PBC put together a great undercard.
PT: How do you see the PPV boxing landscape developing in 2022 and how aggressive will Fox Sports be in distributing PPV fights?
BW: I think there's room for a pay-view-event per quarter. In the ring [welterweight champion] Errol Spence is out there, as well as [middleweight champion] Canelo Alvarez and [former heavyweight champion] Deontay Wilder, so I think that there are plenty of opportunities to develop PPV events. One of the things we're focused on is putting some of the young up and coming stars in front of a large audience on Fox. At the end of the year we featured [super middleweight] David Morrell, [lightweight] Frank Martin, [middleweight] Joey Spencer and [welterweight] Vito Mielnicki Jr. Having those young up and comers on Fox really helps grow their profile and is good for the sport.
PT: With so many viewing options fans have to watch sports, Is the pay-per-view boxing model still viable?
BW: Yes I do because fans are accustomed to it. If you put out a good product, they will pay for it, and I don’t see that changing any time soon. I think it has a bright future. I also see PPV buys from digital continuing to grow. We’ve seen that since we’ve started doing pay-per-views at Fox back in 2019. Our digital buys as a percent of our overall buy continues to increase, and I see it growing. But the traditional way that people buy pay-per-view events through their cable or satellite system is still a very viable option for people and still represents the majority of the buys.
PT: Are there any new technological innovations that Fox Sports will look to feature during its upcoming pay-per-view boxing events?
BW: From a technological standpoint, we're very much focused on audio enhancements, bird's eye view camera angles, super slow motion and great storytelling. Some of the things that we're doing from a digital perspective to allow fans to get very up close and personal with the fighters is something that we call All-Access. We have embedded cameras on fight night that, for example, will follow Keith Thurman and Mario Barrios from their hotel to the arena to the locker rooms and really give fans a fly-on-a-wall perspective. It helps with the [PPV] buys because people get interested in what's going on and learn about the fights and then click the button to buy.
