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.
有近的2万人花了平均135英磅在英国曼彻斯特体育馆里观看拳击比赛。另有80万人花7.5英磅在Youtube上观看。据估计，有100多万人看盗版在线直播。台上里的拳击手并没有实战经验。不过，他们拥有众多的Youtube粉丝。英国网*K红**SI（真名是Olajide Olatunji）的粉丝超过了19万。他的对手，美国视频播主Logan Paul则有18万粉丝。在这场争夺眼球的比赛里，Olatunji和Paul击败了职业重量级拳击手David Haye和TonyBellew在五月的比赛的收视——当时有77.5万人付费观看。
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.
YouTube网站并不是8月25日的拳击比赛的举办方——是由两位当事人组织的。不过，这家视频分享网站获得了部分收入（没有对外分布具体的收入数额）并在直播中加载广告。这场比赛获得了巨大成功让YouTube重燃希望，让用户付费观看视频。
The platform continues to rake in money from advertising (Alphabet, which owns it, does not reveal how much). But wider concerns about fake news, data privacy and extremist content have not spared it. Several big brands pulled commercials from YouTube last year after finding that they were being posted alongside offensive videos.
YouTube一直都在广告里淘金（YouTube的母公司Alphabet没有透露广告收入数额）。不过，在对假新闻、数据隐私以及极端主义内容的关注越来越的情况下，YouTube受到的压力并没有减少。去年，一些大的品牌商发现自己广告与一些*力暴**视频共同*放播**时，撤掉了在YouTube投放的广告。
YouTube’s desire to convert some of its 1.5bn users into paying customers predates the ad kerfuffle. It has struggled to achieve this aim. Its subscription service, YouTube Premium, launched in 2015 as YouTube Red but was rebranded in May. It offers shows and films featuring YouTube stars (as well as some Hollywood names), plus ad-free streaming of all YouTube videos and access to music. YouTube keeps mum about subscriber numbers, but reports suggest it has attracted a few million. YouTube TV, which sells a bundle of live television channels (including CNN) to American viewers, reportedly adds another 300,000. The odd celebrity face-off is unlikely to change the picture much. Until YouTube works out a proper strategy, it will flail around to no great effect—much as the vloggers did in the ring.
YouTube想要在15亿总用户里有一些人能转化成付费用，但它却提前预知了网络广告引发的混乱状况。它一直地为这个目标努力着。Youtube的付费服务YouTube Premium在2015年以Youtube Red之名上线，之后在今年五月改成现名。这个付费服务提供YouTube网红（有一些名好莱坞的大腕）的表演和电影，以及YouTube无广告在线视频和音乐等。Youtub一直没有公布过付费用户有的数量，但有报道称只有几百的量。向美国观众提供众多电视频道（包括CNN）的YouTube TV据称还另有30万用户。上述两位网红拳击比赛并不太可能对Youtube的收入模式有任何改观。YouTube在找到合适的收入策略之前，仍然是乱拳出击的状况——与上述两位视频播客主在拳击台上的表现没有什么两样。
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来源：经济学人（2018.08.30）
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