One of the biggest phenomena of Saturday’s Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao pay per view fight was how many people were streaming the event through the Periscope app as they were watching from their homes. Some intrepid streamers were bold enough to go live inside the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas where the fight was taking place.
As estimates of the fight buys look as if this will be the largest pay per view in history, HBO, Showtime, and promoters for both fighters are exploring whether to go after Periscope and the streamers who went live from their homes.
Todd DeBoef, president of Top Rank Boxing which promotes Pacquiao told ESPN that he’s not sure how much Periscope hurt the PPV numbers, but one thing is for sure, “We are going to seek whatever remedy we have to go after people who essentially stole our product.” Periscope took down many streams, but others popped up as fast to replace them.
In advance of the fight, HBO and Showtime sought and received a temporary restraining order against HDboxing.net which had promoted a free stream of the fight. Both networks were aggressive in protecting their intellectual property before the fight, but now after the fact, it appears Periscope was the bigger threat rather than websites.
In addition, the amount of buys overloaded cable providers causing subscribers to miss the undercard forcing HBO to institute a 45 minute delay for the fight so viewers could join at the start of Mayweather-Pacquiao.
It was a very strange night for cable and boxing and with Periscope’s arrival on the scene, pay per view now has another force to deal with in protecting a big event.
[ESPN]
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