By Edward Chaykovsky
Top Rank's CEO Bob Arum is very pleased with the pay-per-view buyrate figures for his November 5th card, which a main event with Manny Pacquiao capturing the WBO welterweight title from Jessie Vargas at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas.
The pay-per-view was distributed and produced by Top Rank. HBO, who handled nearly all of Pacquiao's pay-per-view events in the past, took a pass on the fight with Vargas - because they already had a pay-per-view event in November - with this Saturday's fight between Sergey Kovalev and Andre Ward.
Accordung to Arum, the pay-per-view sold “a little over 300,000” pay-per-views - which is around the same number generated for Pacquiao's third fight with Timothy Bradley generated in April - which HBO handled and produced.
Arum believes that because there was no taped delay a week later, which is usually the case when HBO distributes the card, more people opted to purchase the show.
“Why would we need HBO Pay-Per-View going forward?” Arum said to Mike Coppinger of USA Today. “What do they add that we weren’t able to do ourselves. I think the fact there was no delay helped the numbers.”
“We presented a great show. We made money. Everybody made money. You don’t hit a home run every time. We hit a single or a double. I’m very pleased.”
There are now rumblings of a potential rematch between Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. - which drew a record smashing 4.6 million pay-per-views last year in a joint effort between HBO and Showtime.
Mayweather, who sat ringside for Pacquiao's win over Vargas, retired last September after defeating Andre Berto.
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