Pay-per-view (PPV) is a type of pay television or webcast service that enables a viewer to pay to watch individual events via private telecast. Events can be purchased through a multichannel television platform using their electronic program guide, an automated telephone system, or through a live customer service representative. There has been an increasing number of PPVs distributed via streaming video online, either alongside or in lieu of carriage through television providers. In 2012, the popular video sharing platform YouTube began to allow partners to host live PPV events on the platform. Events distributed through PPV typically include combat sports including boxing and mixed martial arts, professional wrestling, and concerts. In the past, PPV was often used to distribute telecasts of feature films, as well as adult content such as pornographic films, but the growth of digital cable and streaming media caused these uses to be subsumed by video on demand systems (which allow viewers to purchase and view pre-recorded content at any time) instead, leaving PPV to focus primarily on live event programs and combat sports.
History The earliest form of pay-per-view was closed-circuit television, also known as theatre television, where professional boxing telecasts were broadcast live to a select number of venues (mostly theaters, with arenas, stadiums, convention centers, and schools being less common venues), where viewers paid for tickets to watch the fight live. The first fight with a closed-circuit telecast was Joe Louis vs. Jersey Joe Walcott II in 1948. Closed-circuit telecasts peaked in popularity with Muhammad Ali in the 1960s and 1970s, with "The Rumble in the Jungle" fight drawing 50 million buys worldwide in 1974, and the "Thrilla in Manila" drawing 100 million buys worldwide in 1975. Closed-circuit television was gradually replaced by pay-per-view home television in the 1980s and 1990s. Though in modern times it is still sometimes offered by bars, restaurants and other commercial establishments.
Experimental PPV systems in the 1950s and 1960s The Zenith Phonevision system became the first home pay-per-view system to be tested in the United States. Developed in 1951, it used telephone lines to take and receive orders, as well as to descramble a television broadcast signal. The field tests conducted for Phonevision lasted for 90 days and were tested in Chicago, Illinois. The system used IBM punch cards to descramble a signal broadcast during the broadcast station's "off-time". Both systems showed promise, but the Federal Communications Commission denied them the permits to operate. Telemeter, an experimental coin-operated pay-per-view service, had a trial run in Los Angeles in 1952 and Palm Springs, California from 1953 to 1954, featuring first-run movies and live sporting events, until a lawsuit from a local drive-in and other issues forced it to shut down. The service then set up an experimental run in the Toronto suburb of Etobicoke, Canada in 1959, free from American antitrust laws and outside of the FCC's jurisdiction. Programming initially consisted essentially of first-run movies and fictional series. In 1961, Telemeter signed deals with the Toronto Argonauts football team and the Toronto Maple Leafs to broadcast away games; wrestling was also featured. Some original programming, such as a 1962 Bob Newhart stand-up comedy special, thought to be the first filmed pay-per-view television special were produced at Telemeter's Bloor Street studio and several Broadway shows and an opera performance were also broadcast. At its peak, 5,800 households were subscribed but the experiment was not a success and shut down operations on April 30, 1965, with only 2,500 subscribers. One of the earliest pay-per-view systems on cable television, the Optical Systems-developed Channel 100, first began service in 1972 in San Diego, California through Mission Cable (which was later acquired by Cox Communications) and TheaterVisioN, which operated out of Sarasota, Florida. These early systems quickly went out of business, as the cable industry adopted satellite technology and as flat-rate pay television services such as Home Box Office (HBO) became popular. While most pay-per-view services were delivered via cable, there were a few over-the-air pay TV stations that offered pay-per-view broadcasts in addition to regularly scheduled broadcasts of movies and other entertainment. These stations, which operated for a few years in Chicago, Los Angeles and some other cities, broadcast "scrambled" signals that required descrambler devices to convert the signal into standard broadcast format. These services were marketed as ON-TV.
Professional boxing during 1960s–1970s The first home pay-per-view cable television broadcast was the Floyd Patterson vs. Ingemar Johansson rematch in 1960, when 25,000 TelePrompTer subscribers mailed $2 to watch Patterson regain the heavyweight title. The third Patterson–Johansson match in 1961 was later viewed by 100,000 paid cable subscribers. Muhammad Ali had several fights on early pay-per-view home television, including Cassius Clay vs. Doug Jones in 1963, and Sonny Liston vs. Cassius Clay which drew 250,000 buys on cable television in 1964. Timothy Green wrote in 1972 that the 1971 Fight of the Century "started everyone counting up how much the purse might have been had it been piped into ten million American homes at a special price". Professional boxing was largely introduced to pay-per-view cable television with the "Thrilla in Manila" fight between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in September 1975. The fight sold 500,000 pay-per-view buys on HBO. There was also another major title fight aired on pay-per-view in 1980, when Roberto Durán defeated Sugar Ray Leonard. Cable companies offered the match for $10, and about 155,000 customers paid to watch the fight.
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