In the build-up to the fight between Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor this weekend, SportsClub brings you closer to the action with a daily view by GARY LEMKE.
For those TV viewers who would ordinarily not cross the street to watch Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor step into the same ring in Las Vegas in the early hours of Sunday morning, all one can say is, thank heavens for SuperSport.
Overseas friends and colleagues routinely react with surprise when told of the amount of live sport offered by the DStv channel. And a disclaimer right here and now: This is not an advert or a plug for the channel. It’s simply saying it like it is for South African sports fans.
From an international perspective, most English Premier League matches are screened live, there’s a surfeit of live La Liga, Formula One, motorcycling, rugby and other football, horse racing, tennis, athletics, cricket, swimming and more. Given the smorgasbord of sport on offer, a South African fan with access to SuperSport can claim to be among the most educated in the world.
[total-poll id=67029]
In 2015, MyBroadband conducted a survey with a sample of over 1,500 IT professionals and technically-minded people who had a DStv subscription of some kind. Nearly 60% of them responded by saying they would be interested in a stand-alone sports package. That hasn’t happened, and should you want the full premium bouquet, it will cost you R959 a month. Subscribers who aren’t interested in the rest of the bouquet, need to reconcile whether that’s value for money to satisfy their sporting appetite.
For this weekend’s showdown between Mayweather, the undefeated (49-0) boxer, and McGregor, the UFC poster boy with a boxing record of 0-0, the event – I find it tough to refer to it as a ‘fight’ – is one South Africans who have the DStv sports channels can watch for free as part of their R959 package. How does that compare elsewhere?
In the United States, where it’s all taking place, the pay-per-view price – one needs to pay a separate fee to ‘rent’ it live – is set at $89.95, with another $10 if you wish to watch it in high definition. At today’s exchange rate that amounts to over R1,300.
In Britain, the pay-per-view price is set at £19.95. That amounts to over R340. And if you happen to live in Ireland, the country represented by McGregor, the PPV cost is the equivalent of R425.
[total-poll id=67030]
In South Africa, one is spared from making that decision to make an additional, one-off dip into the pocket to view these two fighters. We probably will never know, but there must be plenty of purists who wouldn’t open their lounge curtains to watch Mayweather and McGregor strut their stuff if they were in the street outside.
The hype has definitely worked though – even if the nauseating, staged build-up of four ‘head-to-head’ promotions in the United States, Canada, England and Ireland, was more out of a low-budget, badly-acted movie than supposedly the ‘Sports Event of the Century’. What it shows is that history repeats.
In May 2015, Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao fooled the world when they slow-danced through 12 rounds of what was also hyped as the ‘Fight of the Century’. Mayweather took his record to 48-0 and the ‘Pacman’ complained that he hadn’t been at his best because of a dislocated shoulder suffered in training.
Few meaningful punches landed in the 36 minutes of ring ‘action’ and both are still smiling how easy it was to make $100-million. How many South African sports fans would fall for the same trick, had we been made to pay a separate pay-per-view fee?
Then again, the Mayweather vs McGregor meeting appears more showbiz and ‘entertainment’ than the prospect of a knock-em-down, drag-em-out brawl that has been promised. McGregor is guaranteed a minimum $80-million and Mayweather $100-million. These fees will rise, depending on how many PPV rentals they are able to muster. Both fighters have won, no matter who loses.
[total-poll id=67017]
