HOW THE NBA LOCKOUT MAY HELP AND HURT THE PROMOTION OF PACQUIAO-MARQUEZ III
By Jason Aniel
PhilBoxing.com
Wed, 12 Oct 2011
San Mateo, CA?When the National Basketball Association (NBA) officially announced the cancellation of the first two weeks of the NBA regular season, many sports fans began speculating the effects of the player lockout in the sport of basketball and other sports. Some believed that the postponement of the NBA season would garner greater interest in other sports, in the United States, like the National Hockey League (NHL) or Amateur College Basketball. However, in the world of boxing, the effect of cancellation of the NBA season may have both positive and negative effects in the upcoming months.
Top Rank and HBO announced that the promotion of the Pacquiao-Marquez III fight would be the biggest and most expansive promotion of a PPV fight in history. Not only would HBO provide its award winning 24/7 realty show, but also the show would air on repeats on other Time Warner Networks like CNN. Additionally, heavy marketing and advertisements for 24/7 and the PPV would air on major sporting events televised on TBS and TNT. Already, in-game ads have aired on Major League Baseball playoff games that are aired on TBS. It was anticipated that once the NBA season started (after the baseball season concluded), similar ads would also air when NBA games would be televised on TNT. This gave Pacquiao-Marquez III an advantage over Mayweather-Ortiz, which had similar advertising campaigns, because the fight took place during the beginning of the NBA season. However, with start of NBA season beginning at the earliest on November 14, 2011, the Pacquiao- Marquez III PPV would likely not have its ads aired to an NBA viewing audience.
While the lack an NBA season may hurt the promotional campaign for the Pacquiao- Marquez III fight, it may have some indirect benefits in the upcoming weeks. First, with no NBA games, the sports fans, and more importantly, the sports media needs to talk about some live sports that are currently taking place. While the NFL dominates the media coverage in the U.S., boxing may get an added boast of coverage if mainstream media takes an added interest in the fight because of the need to compensate for the lack of the NBA games. The UFC is ahead of boxing in media coverage in the U.S. Other than ESPN Friday Night Fights, there are very little boxing news and preview shows on the major networks. Unlike the UFC, which has its countdown shows on cable television as well as UFC news shows like MMA live on ESPN. One of the major reasons why Mayweather and Pacquiao PPV have done so well on PPV is because of realty shows that cover the fight like HBO?s 24/7 and Showtime?s Fight Camp 360. The more people are exposed to the fight, the more they can be convinced to buy the fight. And in the current state of boxing, it?s all about selling the fight and making fans pay to watch the fight on television.
Pacquiao-Marquez III may potentially benefit from added coverage from major sporting outlets. Maybe on a night where TNT was scheduled to air an NBA game, they instead air the first two Pacquiao-Marquez fights. Maybe on the Wednesday before the fight, instead of ESPN airing highlights of 4 NBA games, they instead show highlights of the press conference with analysis and reaction to the press conference. Outside the U.S., the lockout of the NBA players has little to no effect on the success of the Pacquiao-Marquez III fight. However, a struggling sport, as a whole, like boxing should take advantage of the NBA lockout and provide some compelling match-ups in 2012. A high profile event like a Manny Pacquiao fight could draw a new audience to boxing, which will benefit the sport as a whole. Fans will wait and see.
Contact this writer at sportnjordan@gmail.com or on twitter www.twitter.com/sportnjordan
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Jason Aniel.
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