Pacquiao-Vargas does roughly 300,000 buys

Top Rank promoter Bob Arum tells RingTV that the Manny Pacquiao vs. Jessie Vargas PPV, which he distributed independently, did roughly 300,000 buys.

“They’re still coming in,” Arum said of numbers from the Top Rank-produced broadcast. “It’s harder to get without HBO. But about where the Bradley numbers are, around the same. A little over 300 (thousand). The numbers are what the numbers are.”

This number is actually lower than Pacquiao’s previous fight against Timothy Bradley earlier this year. That fight, which had HBO’s backing, reportedly did between 400,000-500,000 buys. Despite that, Pacquiao-Bradley III actually resulted in a net loss due to the higher cost of producing the card. Arum says despite this lower turnout for Pacquiao-Vargas, he actually turned a profit.

“I think it’s a good number,” he said in a phone interview. “We’re pleased with it in the way we set it up. Everybody made a payday. You can’t expect in this environment to hit a home run every time. We’re up against the election, which meant that DirectTV and Dish and the cable systems are running election ads. But again, as long as you get a single or a double — fighters are happy with that.”

Arum continued by saying that the PPV results were encouraging enough that he will put on more cards distributed directly through Top Rank, instead of HBO. He also gives Stephen A. Smith his stamp of approval as a boxing commentator, despite a rotund rebuke from most fans.