MANILA, Philippines – HBO plans to use the various assets of Time Warner in promoting the trilogy bout between pound-for-pound king Manny "Pacman" Pacquiao and Mexican warrior Juan Manuel "El Dinamita" Marquez.In the New York leg of the Pacquiao-Marquez global media tour, streamed live by TopRank.com, HBO Pay-Per-View division head Mark Taffet announced that they will be promoting the fight across various platforms.
"We will unleash a very comprehensive, cross-promotional and advertising line-up, utilizing powerful and broad reaching assets across Time Warner," Taffet said.
Time Warner is the parent network of HBO.
According to Taffet, Pacquiao-Marquez III will be promoted through CNN, TBS, TNT, Sports Illustrated and People, as well as through the digital outlets of TIME.com, SI.com and CNNMoney.com.
"Additionally, fight-related programming will regularly appear on the HBO Network, HBO Go, HBO On Demand, and HBO.com," Taffet said.
24/7 series
As part of the build-up to the Pacquiao-Marquez November 12 match, HBO will also feature the 2 fighters in 4 episodes of the award-winning reality show, "24/7."
24/7: Pacquiao-Marquez will premiere on October 22.
Taffet also announced that Pacquiao and Marquez will be guesting on an episode of Face Off with Max Kellerman.
"It will be a special edition when Max Kellerman sits between Manny and Juan Manuel, in that close setting for what will be a highly contested discussion about their first 2 memorable bouts," Taffet said.
The first 2 bouts of Pacquiao and Marquez both ended in controversial decisions. In their first meeting in 2004, Pacquiao settled for a draw despite knocking down Marquez three times in the first round.
In their 2008 rematch, Pacquiao was awarded a close split decision victory, thanks in part to his 3rd round knockdown of Marquez.
Showtime and CBS
This fight with Marquez marks Pacquiao's comeback to HBO after Pacquiao's May 7 fight against Shane Mosley was produced and distributed by Showtime and its parent network, CBS.
That fight, won by Pacquiao via unanimous decision, gave the Filipino champ the highest pay-per-view numbers of his career as Showtime used CBS assets to promote the fight, giving it a wider audience.
"Last spring, we decided that boxing needed to go into another dimension, and needed to have a greater appeal. We made a deal with Showtime-CBS, which did a magnificent job for us getting the message of the fight to an ever wide audience," Top Rank boss Bob Arum said during the press conference.
Arum’s decision to bring the Pacquiao-Mosley fight to Showtime-CBS was a major blow to HBO, with some boxing reporters saying that it led to resignation of long-time HBO Sports President Ross Greenburg last July.
"When it came to picking a distributor for this fight, we had the choice to make of who we would go with," Arum said.
Arum said that they would've gone back to Showtime and CBS, but senior executives of HBO convinced him otherwise.
"Richard Plepler and Michael Lombardo met with Todd duBoef (Top Rank President) and myself on numerous occasions and told us what HBO and Time Warner could offer us," Arum explained.
Plepler and Lombardo convinced Arum that they could "help us move to yet a higher dimension in selling this fight."
Prior to this fight, HBO has never offered to use Time Warner’s extensive assets to promote a boxing match, something Arum pointed out in the press conference.
"Up to that point, this wasn't possible. There was no effort made to get that message out to the wider public audience," he said.
With the more aggressive promotion of the bout, Pacquiao may be able to top the pay-per-view numbers generated by his match against Mosley.
According to Taffet, Pacquiao has generated 8.6 million buys in his 14 pay-per-view bouts, along with $451-million in pay-per-view revenue.
source: abs-cbnnews.com
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