Floyd Mayweather may well retain his professional record but many other records will be broken in Las Vegas this week.
Income from tickets sales for the fight between the undefeated Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao will shatter one of them.
The live gate receipts are expected to reach $70 million. The present record for a tournament in Nevada stands at $20 million and was set when Mayweather fought Saul Alvarez in 2013.
Regardless of the result of the welterweight title fight on Saturday night, the boxers are certain to earn more than $100 million each. Mayweather, who has not been beaten in 47 professional fights and is favoured to take his record to 48-0, said this week he expected to pocket $200 million.
The revenue from pay-per-view television sales remains impossible to predict. Stephen Espinoza, vice-president and general manager of Showtime Sports, says the interest in the fight is so huge that the usual markers for predicting the number of purchases and revenue do not apply.
“Usually we get day-by-day updates of where the cable operators are in terms of their buys,” Espinoza said the week. But sales for this week were ?so massive that you really can’t extrapolate anything from them.”
GOING BACK TO TYSON?S DAYS
The records for pay-per-view purchases will certainly go, and so will the record for PPV revenue.
The record of 2.48 million purchases was set when Mayweather fought Oscar De La Hoya in 2007 and the pay-per-view revenue record of $150 million stands since ?Money? Mayweather?s fight against Alvarez.
If PPV buys reach 3 million the main-bout boxers will be looking at income of nearly $200 million.
The pay-per-view revenue is also coming from a wider range of countries ? 13 international territories.
“You’d have to go back to the Mike Tyson days to get near that figure,” Espinoza said, adding that those days fewer countries had the technology to broadcast fights on pay-per-view.
Not surprisingly, Showtime and HBO are doing everything they can to protect their asset.
Showtime this week filed a federal lawsuit in California, claiming two internet sites were advertising free streaming of the bout.
Espinoza said the aims of the lawsuit were twofold. “It’s eliminating these very active piracy sites and it sends a message that we’re very serious about it. We’re going to continue to pursue this all the way through and after the night of the fight.”
