Today on Forbes.com, a story was posted detailing the historic levels of revenue which will be produced by the May 2 Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao fight. The event could gross anywhere from $400 to $500 million, leaving Mayweather set to rake in $150 million or more, and Pacquiao $100 million or more.
The focus of the story, and on nearly all other coverage of the paydays and revenue for Mayweather vs. Pacquiao has been how great it is. After all, boxing can’t be dead with those figures, right? Right.
But the real issue isn’t the historic paydays the fighters are receiving. It’s that they’re receiving those paydays at our expense, to the tune of historic price gouging, insane ticket prices, and $100 pay-per-view telecasts. By the way, fight fans, that’s something that ProBoxing-Fans.com published on February 20th. Everyone else is a bit slow on the news.
Here’s a portion of the article shedding light on how the fight is going to produce that much revenue:
The wild card in whether the fight ultimately grosses $400 million or $500 million is the pay-per-view number. Mayweather-Alvarez holds the current record with $152 million in PPV receipts and around $200 million for total revenue. The current record for PPV buys is 2.5 million for Mayweather vs. Oscar De La Hoya in 2007. The May fight is expected to crush both PPV numbers with at least 3 million fans buying the fight, grossing more than $300 million.
The paydays for Mayweather and Pacquiao will be determined by the PPV buys and the ongoing negotiated split between the pay-TV distributors and HBO/Showtime. The usual split is 50-50, but HBO and Showtime are proposing to keep 70% of the pot this go around with most of that filtering down to the fighters. The fighters are set to split their share of the pot 60-40 in Mayweather’s favor.
Of course, without $1,500 back row tickets which never even make it to the public, and $100 pay-per-views, the fight wouldn’t be grossing so much, would it?
But don’t worry – Mayweather vs. Pacquiao was made for the real fans, right? Right.
