Las Vegas, Nevada: Say what you like about undefeated boxing legend Floyd Mayweather and mixed martial arts star Conor McGregor’s upcoming contest it looks set to be one of the most lucrative in history.
Tickets, TV sales, sponsorships and betting could generate close to $600 million (Dh2.2 billion) in sales, according to experts, when the two meet on Saturday night. The fight may not go down in history as a classic but it is poised to be the richest since Mayweather took on Manny Pacquiao in 2015, a fight that generated $623 million in overall revenue.
The fight will be held at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, which lists a capacity of 20,000 for boxing. Mayweather-Pacquiao’s 2015 fight generated a record $72.2 million from the sale of 16,219 tickets at the smaller MGM Grand Garden Arena.
Patrick Ryan of Eventellect, a ticket management firm, expects Mayweather-McGregor to generate around $70 million in ticket sales but said that he wouldn’t be surprised if the fight does generate more than Mayweather-Pacquiao.
“They can’t sell as many $10,000 seats but there are more at a lower level. This is an exhibition not a title fight, people don’t pay premium prices for an exhibition,” he said.
That said Ryan believes there will be no empty seats come fight night. Casinos will comp tickets to high rollers and the excitement the fight is generating means it will be a capacity crowd.
UFC president Dana White believes the fight will be the most lucrative pay-per-view of all time, surpassing the record-shattering figures of Mayweather-Pacquiao.
“We’re gonna do the numbers that everyone has been talking that we’re going to do,” White said recently .
“Everything is tracking right now to say that we’re going to kill this thing. So it’s looking really good. It is the most distributed event in pay-per-view history, in over 200 countries on pay-per-view. This fight will reach over a billion homes worldwide.
Mayweather-Pacquiao attracted 4.6m PPV at an average price of $99, that equaled $455 million. White is expecting around 4.9 million buys for Mayweather-McGregor which would be $485 million at $99 a pop.
Both Mayweather and McGregor like their bling — and their bling likes them.
Mayweather even turned his love of Swiss watchmaker Hublot into a taunt during one of the fighters’ press conferences.
“You’re a microwave meal with a cheap-ass watch on — step your game up,” said Mayweather, pointing to his Hublot Big Bang watch.
Getting Hublot’s name on Mayweather’s shorts will reportedly cost the company $3.5 million and the fighter will make millions more from splashing brands on other areas of his shorts, his cape, boots and even the pillow where he will rest his head between bouts.
Until recently McGregor had a lucrative, but limiting, sponsorship deal with Reebok. For this fight he is a free agent and, given the hype for this fight, sponsors are clamoring for a piece of the action.
The Irishman also recently signed a deal with Beats By Dre, Monster Energy and Rolls-Royce, which gave him a custom-made car last year.
On the eve of the fight, official sponsorship deals were still in the works, which left little time for activations. But ESPN reckons the pair could walk away with $22 million in sponsorship. Enough to keep both of them in diamond-encrusted Hublots.
