The pay-per-view boxing category will look to continue its strong 2023 campaign Saturday (July 29) with the much anticipated Errol Spence-Terence Crawford fight from Las Vegas.
The Showtime-distributed welterweight unification bout is the seventh major event for the PPV boxing category this year, with Showtime’s April 22 Gervonta Davis-Ryan Garcia event setting the mark as highest-performing fight the year so far with a reported 1.2 million PPV buys.
Showtime Sports president Stephen Espinoza said the Spence-Crawford bout pits two of boxing’s most popular and best pound-for-pound fighters together in a rare unification championship fight. The event, which retails for a suggested $84.99, is expected to finish among the top-performing PPV boxing events of the year, although Espinoza would not predict a specific buy number.
“It will be one of the two or three biggest PPV events of the year,” he said. “This is a bigger fight than anything else we've seen in the sport and should be one of the biggest [PPV] fights of the year.”
While Spence-Crawford may not break PPV records, industry observers said the fight will continue to boost the appeal of the category that still has several more big events scheduled.
“Davis-Garcia was certainly about what was going to happen in the ring but was also about the social media circus that preceded the fight, which helped its performance,” In Demand and PPV.com senior VP of programming and marketing Mark Boccardi said. "The Spence-Crawford fight will sell itself on what happens in the ring as opposed to a lot of other pay-per-view events that are sold during the marketing and promotional period leading up to the fight.”
As for what's next, the PPV boxing category will be back in play on August 5 with a fight featuring YouTube star Jake Paul and former UFC mixed martial arts champion Nate Diaz. In September, Canelo Alvarez will put his undisputed super middleweight championship on the line against former champion Jermell Charlo in a blockbuster PPV boxing event.
