Johnny Nelson Talks DAZN PPV – “Time To Swallow A Bit Of Humble Pie”

Johnny Nelson took a small swipe at DAZN in a recent interview, saying many involved with the streaming service’s foray into boxing had ended up with egg on their face over switching stances over the us of pay-per-view.

Nelson, told Seconds Out that he understood PPV was a necessity in modern day boxing, but that DAZN’s ‘PPV is dead’ marketing was somewhat short sighted.

“Now they [DAZN] understand that you can’t operate and pay these guys such ridiculous money without pay-per-view.

It’s not greed of the promoters or the TV companies, it’s just finances. These fighters want to get paid a lot of money and the money’s got to come from somewhere.

It was probably a bit of a reality check, you can only give away so much money then eventually you’ve got to start making it back again.

It’s just a bit of an issue with how much they [DAZN] screamed and shouted about how pay-per-view is dead, so now it’s time to swallow a bit of humble pie.”

DAZN came under heavy criticism over their decision to make the trilogy fight between Canelo Alvarez and Gennadiy Golovkin pay-per-view in the UK, despite a 5am start time – with many fans taking to social media to announce they would be cancelling their subscription as a result.

This week’s upcoming fight between Chris Eubank Jr and Conor Benn will be the second test run of pay-per-view performance on the platform for a prime UK time slot, with the YouTuber card headlined by KSI in August also behind a paywall.

It will be interesting to see how the fight performs with a true boxing audience, as DAZN will look to recoup some of the heavy investment they’ve funnelled into boxing over the past few years.