Deontay Wilder’s return fight against Robert Helenius brought in an embarrassingly bad 75,000 pay-per-view buys in the United States for their October 15th bout on FOX Sports PPV at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
Wilder (43-2-1, 42 KOs) knocked out his old sparring partner Helenius (31-4, 20 KOs) in the first round to pick up his first win in three years since 2019.
Given the fast knockout and the low punch output by both fighters in the one round of action, the boxing fans that purchased tickets and paid to watch it on FOX Sports PPV couldn’t have been too pleased with the product that they got for their money.
Despite having an excellent undercard with Caleb Plant battling Anthony Dirrell, the event failed to bring in big numbers on pay-per-view.
It’s unclear what numbers the event organizers were aiming towards with this card, but you’ve got to believe their target was well above 75,000 pay-per-view buys.
The factors that could have hurt the buy rate for the Wilder-Helenius card were pricing it at $74.99, well as staging it on the same night as the rematch between undisputed lightweight champion Devin Haney and George Kambosos Jr.
It would have been smart to lower the price of the Wilder vs. Helenius event to somewhere around $39, which is what the Terence Crawford vs. David Avanesyan card is going for on December 10th.
Wilder-Helenius is a similar albatross-level fight as that one, but unfortunately, the promoters might not have seen that ahead of time. Hence, the decision to price it at $74.99 and put it on the same night as the Haney vs. Kambosos Jr II rematch.
“The Deontay Wilder-Robert Helenius fight generated approximately 75,000 pay-per-view buys in the United States, multiple sources with knowledge of the event told Fight Freaks Unite,” said Dan Rafael to Fight Freaks Unite.
“The figure includes buys across all platforms, be it linear pay-per-view on cable television and satellite services as well as digital platforms such as PPV. com and FITE. tv.”
If you want to put a positive spin on the PPV numbers, you can argue that it could have been far, far worse. 75,000 PPV buys isn’t that bad for the Wilder vs. Helenius fight because it was a fight that should have been shown on regular FOX instead of sticking it on pay-per-view and assuming boxing fans would be willing to purchase it.
