Notes: Arum says he lost about $100k on Crawford-Postol PPV
Terence Crawford’s resounding decision win against Viktor Postol to unify junior welterweight world titles on July 23 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas was a money loser, as most expected it would be, but it did not lose as much as Top Rank promoter Bob Arum thought it would. Arum told ESPN.com that the fight generated between 50,000 and 60,000 buys on HBO PPV but a stronger-than-expected gate helped offset losses, which he said amounted to about $100,000.
“We lost a little money but very little,” said Arum, who said all along that he preferred for the fight to be on HBO but that the network did not have the money in its budget to buy the fight, forcing it to pay-per-view.
“Certainly if we had a rights fee that would have been the way to go but if I had looked for a rights fee I’d still be waiting for a phone call. Look, I got the fight on. It was an important fight for Terence’s career and he looked great. And (Oscar) Valdez won his (featherweight) title on the card, so it was worth it. I probably lost around $100,000 but the gate really surprised us. We were projecting it to be much lower but it did almost $750,000 and that really helped on a fight like this.”