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Front row seats still available, for a price
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Ray Lewis of Youngstown holds up 6 tickets for the up coming Kelly Pavlik fight. Lewis waited in line at the Chevy Center on Saturday morning during a big snow storm.
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Kelly Pavlik fans wait in line at the Chevy Center on Saturday morning, during a big storm.
By Joe Scalzo
Kelly Pavlik fans can pay $500 to sit a few feet from the ring, or $44.95 to sit a few feet from their TV sets for the Feb. 21 bout at the Chevy Centre.
YOUNGSTOWN — Kelly Pavlik’s trainer, Jack Loew, started this week with more than $100,000 worth of tickets. By Saturday morning, they were gone.
“I wish it was summertime and we had a bigger place to put everyone,” said Loew, whose fighter will meet Marco Antonio Rubio in a WBC/WBO middleweight title bout on Feb. 21 at the Chevy Centre. “Everyone wanted tickets and they were blaming me, like it was my fault.
“They all wanted $50 or $100 tickets. I said, ‘Hey, I’ll be happy to print you a couple fake ones.’ ”
Loew’s $50 and $100 tickets were gone within 90 minutes on Thursday morning after his phone number was printed in the newspaper. The $200 and $300 tickets were next to go, followed by more than 100 of the $500 seats, which were gone before noon on Saturday.
There were still tickets available late Saturday night, both online and at the box office, ranging from $200 to $500 each. You could also buy a pair on eBay from $160 (for two cheap seats) to $1,399 (for two ringside seats).
For Pavlik’s recent bouts in Atlantic City and Las Vegas, the higher-priced seats actually went quicker than the cheap ones, a trend that bodes well for future sales.
“The response is unbelievable,” said Top Rank chairman Bob Arum, whose company has promoted Pavlik throughout his pro career. “But we figured we’d do well and it’s a tribute to Kelly and what he means to this town.
“For him to do this, particularly in this economy, is very gratifying.”
If you didn’t get tickets, and you don’t have enough to buy from a scalper, you can also watch the fight on Top Rank Pay-Per-View for $44.95. For an extra $10, you can watch the fight in high definition — the first HD broadcast for Top Rank PPV.
The broadcast will feature both the Pavlik bout and Miguel Cotto’s WBO welterweight title fight with Michael Jennings, which will be broadcast from Madison Square Garden around 10:15 p.m. Pavlik’s bout is expected to start around 11 p.m. There will also be six undercard bouts in Youngstown, with the arena going dark to show the Cotto bout on the Chevy Centre screens. The pre-fight press conference and the Friday weigh-in will also be at the arena.
Two of Pavlik’s last three fights have been on HBO pay-per-view, and his last five bouts have been on either regular HBO or HBO PPV. But it made more financial sense for Top Rank to broadcast the event independently, since HBO charges a 10 percent fee on each broadcast, Arum said.
A typical PPV broadcast might generate 200,000 buys, which works out to about $4 million (once you subtract the amount given to cable and satellite providers), Arum said. HBO would then get $400,000. For big fights, it makes sense to involve HBO because the network will usually pay around $1 million for the delay, which allows them to replay the fight. That works out to a tidy profit for Top Rank.
But since Pavlik and Cotto are both coming off losses, and since both are fighting lesser-name fighters, HBO wasn’t willing to shell out big bucks for the delayed replay.
“We’ve developed our own ability to do pay-per-view, so there’s no reason for us to pay a fee,” said Arum. “That’s a needless expense. It’s as simple as that.
“In this economy, it comes down to saving money.”
HD equipment adds about $100,000 to the cost, but Arum believes fans will be willing to pay an extra $10 to see the bout in high definition, thus offsetting the cost.
“People watching in their homes are gonna see a great show,” Arum said.
The Cotto fight was originally supposed to be in Atlantic City, but Madison Square Garden expressed interest in the bout. Top Rank wanted to finalize details for both bouts before releasing tickets, which is why tickets for the Pavlik bout were delayed. (Cotto tickets go on sale Tuesday.)
Typically, tickets go on sale at least two months before a fight.
Although it’s been less than 2 1/2 years since Pavlik’s last fight in Youngstown, this fight is a much different event than Pavlik’s bout with Lenord Pierre at the Chevrolet Centre in November, 2006. Then, Pavlik was just an up-and-coming fighter.
Now, he’s a Valley sensation making just his second middleweight title defense.
“It’s gonna be something else,” said Loew.
scalzo@vindy.com