Bob Arum is very confident of Tyson Fury’s drawing power ahead of his Top Rank debut on ESPN+.
During a recent media conference call which Fightful participated in, the long-time promoter talked about Fury’s June 15 fight against Tom Schwarz, which is going to headline an ESPN+ card from Las Vegas. Fury’s return to the U.S. last December against Deontay Wilder saw a relatively moderately successful pay-per-view event that saw more than 300,000 units be sold despite both men making their pay-per-debut that night.
With Fury becoming more of a household name in the United States, Arum believes it will translate to a massive boost in subscriptions for ESPN+, the streaming service that launched in spring 2018. Back in February, the company announced that it has more than two million subscribers, thanks in large part to UFC events being a part of ESPN+ content throughout 2019. Speaking on that, Arum recognizes both Top Rank and UFC are part of the same network, but refuses to avoid trying to one-up UFC. In fact, Arum says Fury’s upcoming fight will attract more subscribers to ESPN+ than UFC did with its inaugural event on the streaming platform earlier this year.
“This weekend’s event is very important for boxing. Look, even though the UFC are cousins of ours at ESPN, they are still competition. They’ve done extraordinarily well and ESPN had the announcement of their big subscription boost right out of the gate. With Tyson Fury coming up on June 15, we’re gonna get more new subscribers than they did with their debut in January,” Arum said.
Arum would also go on to say that Fury’s ESPN+ debut will have more new subscribers than pay-per-view buys from last December when Fury fought Deontay Wilder. Highlights of the media call can be seem at this link.
Fury vs. Schwarz will headline a two-fight card on ESPN+ from the MGM Grand Garden Arena on June 15. The undercard will be televised on ESPN2.
