Kery Davis, senior vice president of programming at HBO Sports, is responsible for overseeing negotiations and program planning for the network’s major boxing series “World Championship Boxing” and “Boxing After Dark,†as well assisting with the HBO Pay-Per-View series. Named to Black Enterprise’s “50 Most powerful African Americans in Sports†in March 2005, he was part of the HBO management team that negotiated the television contract for the 2007 showdown between superstars Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather, which raked in a reported 2.4 million buys.
BlackEnterprise.com sat down with Davis to discuss HBO’s sports marketing strategies, how the business is adjusting in light of this economy, as well as the May 2 pay-per-view event between Manny “Pacman†Pacquiao and Ricky “Hitman†Hatton. Here’s what he had to say:
BlackEnterprise.com: With the economy where it is, why should consumers shell out their hard-earned money for a Pay-Per-View event?
Kery Davis: I think boxing is an event-oriented sport.
It’s not like baseball where there are 162 games a year or basketball where there are 82. The best fighters in the world only fight 2-3 times a year so each time when they fight it’s a special event. And this is two of the best fighters in the world, two of the most popular fighters in the world. It’ll have the kind of electric atmosphere that fans watching a boxing event want to see.Is HBO reducing its number of pay-per-view events in light of the bad economy?
We have made a very conscious effort to do fewer pay-per-views and do bigger fights live on HBO. And what has happened — and I will confess that this is partly due to the economy — is that two years ago, a lot of the smaller pay-per-view fights, we simply couldn’t afford. If a fight was going to do 300,000 buys for example on pay-per-view and that might be a fight that we’d like for HBO, the equivalent price for us would be over $6 million, so it just wasn’t cost beneficial for us. But now that there are less pay-per-view fights that are expected to result in that range, that gives us an opportunity to afford bigger fights for live on HBO and we’ve [made] a conscious effort do that this year.
Is there a minimum threshold with regards to determining if the Manny Pacquiao and Ricky Hatton fight is a success?
I think the promoters may have different targets. For me, I think at least 500,000 buys. Now whether or not the promoters will be happy with that, you’d have to ask them. But I would think that financially, that would be successful for everyone involved. And I think this will exceed that significantly.
The mixed martial arts events have been gaining ground over the years. How much of that has that been at the expense of boxing?
I don’t think it’s apples-to-apples. I think that the two sports co-exist alongside each other. Mixed martial arts was doing extremely well a year and a half ago when De La Hoya fought Maywether and it did 2.5 million buys, which was the largest pay-per-view fight in history.
So it doesn’t feel like anyone said, ‘I’m not buying this boxing event because I’m buying this mixed martial arts event.’ I think the two sports can exist alongside each other and I think in some ways, maybe the popularity with mixed martial arts with young people can help bring more of them into to boxing arena because at the end of the day you’re still looking for an exciting fight between two combatants.
HBO isn’t promoting this fight via syndicated television stations and regional sports networks, but rather by Website ad banners. Can you tell me a bit about the rationale there?
Internet marketing has certainly increased in popularity, especially for younger people. We haven’t given up on traditional marketing. We’re still doing newspaper ads, we’re still doing radio. But I think having the ability to do pieces over the Internet where you can do more than just a 30 or 60 second spot or a half-page ad is beneficial. You can do various pieces — the knockouts of each fighter and one-on-one interviews with each fighter and that can all be part of your marketing and editorial campaign.
One of the things we’re trying to do is grow the next generation of boxers. We’re looking to introduce that generation of fighters to a younger audience and we’re doing that a lot through the Internet. We have something called Ring Life, which is a feature piece on young fighters that runs exclusively through HBO.com. And that’s our way of addressing the fact that young people are on the Internet and that’s where we have to find them.