SOME 20,000 spectators paid an average of £135 ($175) to see the bout live at the Manchester Arena in Britain. Another 800,000 or so spent £7.50 to follow it on YouTube. An estimated 1m more were glued to pirated streams. The fighters in the ring had no boxing experience. But they have plenty of YouTube fans. KSI, a British internet personality (whose real name is Olajide Olatunji), has more than 19m followers. His challenger, an American vlogger named Logan Paul, has 18m. In the fight for eyeballs, Messrs Olatunji and Paul knocked out David Haye and Tony Bellew, two British professional fighters whose heavyweight clash in May attracted 775,000 paying viewers.
YouTube did not organise the contest, which took place on August 25th; the boxers did. But the video-sharing giant took an undisclosed cut of the earnings and ran adverts alongside the stream. The event’s enormous success has revived hopes that YouTube can get viewers to pay for content.
https://www.economist.com/business/2018/08/30/youtube-is-fighting-for-a-slice-of-the-premium-video-market
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