Chavez – Martinez does 475,000 PPV buys

According to Dan Rafael of espn.com, last Saturday night’s Middleweight showdown between Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and Sergio Martinez drew an estimated 475,000 Pay Per View buys.

“It’s an extremely solid number,” said the head of HBO PPV Mark Taffet. “I expect the figures to go up as we collect more of them.”

“It significantly exceeded our original expectations of 250,000 buys,” Taffet said. “Fight fans had been talking about and looking forward to Chavez-Martinez for a year. The pay-per-view performance simply reflects that the fans got the fight they wanted.”

“Pay-per-view fights typically have an average of five or more viewers per household,” he said. “Based on the group viewing phenomenon of pay-per-view, it’s likely well over 2 million people watched the fight.”