"We've never had this experience with so many people ordering a fight. This must be a big, big fight," commented a local New Jersey Comcast cable operator hours before Saturday's pay-per-view clash between Manny Pacquiao and Miguel Cotto. After thousands of fans were having difficulties ordering the bout with their remote control, they promptly flooded the phone lines with complaints.
"We're sorry. We are just so overwhelmed with people trying to order this fight. So many people are trying to order it from their remote controls that it locked up the computer. It was processing so many orders, the computer was overwhelmed," she continued, politely explaining that the order would have to be manually processed. Although the incident occurred in a local market, it's a good indication that pay-per-view buys for the Pacquiao-Cotto bout will far exceed expectations. Preliminary results are expected to be in by Tuesday, but I'll go out on a limb and say we're looking a minimum of 1.5 million pay-per-view buys.
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