LONDON, United Kingdom, Oct 18 – Boxer Saul “Canelo” Alvarez scored one of the biggest paydays in the history of sports after signing a Ksh 36.8 billion deal with sports streaming service DAZN for 11 fights over the next five years.
The deal is worth a minimum of Ksh 36.8 billion ($365 million), an average of Ksh 3.3 billion ($33 million) per fight, according to his promoter Golden Boy Promotions.
Alvarez will kick off his DAZN deal December 15 at Madison Square Garden against Rocky Fielding, and then likely fight again in early May for a Cinco de Mayo match.
With the two DAZN fights, plus roughly Ksh 5 billion ($50 million) for his razor-thin win over Gennady Golovkin last month and several million dollars from endorsements, Alvarez should bank at least Ksh 12 billion ($120 million) over the 12 months.
The Mexican boxer has a strong chance to rank as the world’s highest-paid athlete next year in Forbes’ annual look at the top stars in sports. Scheduling Golovkin as his opponent in May, which would be his third fight with GGG, would goose Alvarez’s earnings even more.
HBO was the former home for Alvarez, who ranks as the biggest pay-per-view star in the sport after the retirement of Floyd Mayweather. But HBO announced last month that it would end its coverage of boxing at the end of 2018.
The premium cable network had set the standard for televising the sport for more than four decades, and its pay-per-view arm featured many of boxing’s biggest stars, including Sugar Ray Leonard, Evander Holyfield, Oscar De La Hoya, Manny Pacquiao, Floyd Mayweather and dozens more.
Alvarez’s deal with HBO ended after his win over GGG. The boxing world has been buzzing over Canelo’s next landing spot, with Showtime, ESPN and Turner all having been viewed as contenders.
“Being part of this historic deal will require me to prepare myself even more and offer fans even better performances,” Alvarez said in a release announcing the deal.