It’s been just over a year since Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao finally met in the boxing ring and set a record for pay-per-view buys, grossing more than $600 million in revenue. Unfortunately, the broadcast wasn’t without problems as several cable and satellite providers reported outages before and during the fight, with many viewers unable to process their orders as the system was flooded by potential buyers.
Days afterwards, as reports of Pacquiao dealing with a shoulder injury during the fight (and eventually tearing his rotator cuff) circulated, two Las Vegas residents filed a class-action lawsuit against the fighter, his manager and event promoters, asserting that fraud was committed against all of the fans who paid money to watch the fight.
https://youtu.be/LhC5PtMWNVo
One of the parties named in the class-action suit that isn’t happy about that development is Showtime. The cable network was eventually dismissed from the lawsuit, but not before it racked up nearly $700,000 in legal fees to mount a defense. According to Showtime, that never should have happened because Top Rank was obligated to defend one of its partners.
From The Hollywood Reporter:
“Under an agreement among SNI, TRI and others, TRI was obligated to defend and indemnify SNI,” states the complaint. “But at the outset of these actions, it was manifest that SNI and TRI, which was alleged to have known of and concealed the pre-fight injury, had starkly different interests. … At once, SNI demanded that TRI honor its contractual obligations to indemnify SNI and pay for SNI’s own counsel to defend it in these actions because of the manifest potential conflict between them. TRI refused.”
As might be expected, Top Rank and CEO Bob Arum dispute Showtime’s suit, saying they were under no obligation to protect Showtime from a financial loss and the contract agreement states as much. Upon the contract language being properly interpreted in court, Arum believes Showtime’s suit will have no merit. In the meantime, the cable network is threatening to longer do business with Top Rank as a result of this conflict.
“They say to me, ‘If we don’t pay the thing, then we’ll never do business with CBS and Showtime,'” Arum told RingTV.com. “So I said to them, ‘What the (expletive) is new? You haven’t done business with us in six years anyway.'”
This one will apparently take a while to untangle, people.
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