By Steven Mclean: On Saturday night I booked and watched the Haye vs Ruiz fight. I was disappointed that there were advertisement breaks in between almost every round. The fight cost £15 on sky boxoffice hd. I don’t grudge paying for the fight itself, after all the fighters involved are putting on a great show whilst risking serious injury. Being a huge boxing fan I tend to buy most PPV fights via Sky, also from primetime now it is available, and watch any other boxing that is on Skysports and Espn that I also subscribe to. (I would also subscribe to HBO and Showtime if I could but sadly not available in the UK)..
The problem I have is not with normal shows like Skysport’s Friday fight nights, or Espn’s Friday night fights. I expect these shows to have plenty of advertising in between rounds and bouts. But why do PPV events on Skysports have this? I paid for the event and I want to see the full fight, including seeing and hearing what’s going on in the corners in between rounds, or indeed hearing what the commentators and other pundits have to say about the fight. Now the person that brought this to my attention is not a boxing fan, just a typical female who doesn’t enjoy sports however found the time to look up from her book on Saturday night to pass comment and ask why they have adverts on a PPV event? I started thinking about this and it made me a bit angry. I think she noticed this as every time an advert came on I was distracting her from what she was doing. I also thought about how it ruined the flow and feel of the event as every 3 minutes you are distanced from the event, getting up and going for refreshments etc. The atmosphere can’t truly be appreciated as not only were the adverts so frequent but they also had some of the most irritating adverts known to man. Surely enough money is made from the PPV sales to cover this?
I have a few questions to other viewers of PPV events.
1. Is this something that usually happens on skyboxoffice HD and I’ve just never noticed it before?
2. Is it only in the UK or do PPV events in the US have similar adverts throughout?
3. Do you think it’s fair when you pay a premium for an event and have to endure these advertisements?
4. Does the advertising revenue go to the TV Company or the fighter themselves?