In a major move for the pay-per-view business, industry PPV event aggregator In Demand will close its doors at the end of 2025.
In Demand CEO Dale Hopkins in a Friday memo to staffers said the company, owned by Comcast, Charter Communications and Cox Communications, will close at the end of 2025 and transition services to its owner companies over the next 18 months.
“We will do everything in our power to minimize any disruptions to our partners, owners, affiliates, and most importantly, the customers who have always been our North Star," Hopkins said in the memo. "It's never easy to make the decision to close a company, but with the rapidly evolving media landscape, the board determined this was the most sustainable outcome.”
Formerly known as Viewer’s Choice before being branded In Demand in 2000, the company has served as the distribution liaison between event promoters and MVPD’s for hundreds of major pay-per-view boxing, wrestling and concerts, including the 2015 Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight, which drew a record 4.6 million PPV buys.
In 2022 the company launched the PPV.com app, allowing viewers to order and watch PPV events digitally. The app will continue to operate beyond the In Demand shutdown, said the company.
“Over the last four decades, the innovative, talented, and dedicated employees of In Demand took a groundbreaking concept and built a solutions-driven company that is the gold standard of our industry today,” she said.” I am proud of our continued achievements and service over the years.”
In Demand’s decision follows Showtime’s 2024 departure from the PPV boxing business.
Hopkins told Multichannel News that despite the decision to close In Demand in 2025, the PPV transactional business on both the linear and digital platforms is still strong. Indeed, the PPV event category is coming off a strong 2023, which delivered its first 1 million buy boxing event in more than two years with Showtime’s Ryan Garcia-Gervonta Davis event.
“Keeping boxing and other [PPV events] on linear cable and also on the PPV.com direct-to-consumer app continues to be a very important goal for the industry,” she said.
As for In Demand’s legacy, Hopkins said the company helped revolutionize the industry’s transactional business. “We were able to develop a turnkey, soup-to-nuts solution of VOD and PPV delivery for the entire cable industry from the early days of video delivery to now,” she said. “Our partners will continue to deliver these products to consumers and support the companies that supply the content.”
