Sports
Mayweather-Pacquiao Gate Soaring
Floyd Mayweather Jr., left, and Manny Pacquiao, of the Philippines, pose for photos during a news conference, Wednesday, March 11, 2015, in Los Angeles. The two are scheduled to fight in Las Vegas on May 2. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
(ESPN) – The money that will be generated by the welterweight title unification fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao — already expected to be a slam dunk to break every revenue record in combat sports history — is growing by the day and could easily surpass $400 million.
The live gate for the joint Showtime/HBO pay-per-view fight on May 2 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas will generate a staggering $74 million from the sale of a little more than 15,000 tickets, Top Rank chairman Bob Arum, Pacquiao’s promoter, told ESPN.com on Monday.
That is more than 3½ times the gate record of $20,003,150 generated by ticket sales for Mayweather’s junior middleweight unification fight against Canelo Alvarez, also at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, in September 2013.
When Mayweather-Pacquiao was signed in late February, Top Rank and Mayweather Promotions were looking to double the gate record to $40 million, with tickets ranging from $1,000 to $5,000. Due to enormous demand, they raised the prices to $1,500 to $7,500 to max out at more than $50 million. Now, after shuffling the number of tickets in each price category and increasing the face value of the top ticket to $10,000, they have scaled the arena for about $74 million, Arum said.
