Tickets were so hard to come by during Oscar De la Hoya?s fight with Floyd Mayweather last year that a ringside seat that had a face value of $ 2,000 sold for as high as $ 15,000 in the black market.
If somebody like Mayweather can add up to the excitement and hype to a De La Hoya headliner, what more with a guy like Manny Pacquiao, who meets the Golden Boy on Dec. 6 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas?
“Pacquiao is a more proven commodity than Mayweather was at the time that fight (with De La Hoya) was made,” Top Rank big boss Bob Arum told fight scribe Robert Morales yesterday.
Arum revealed over the weekend that the most expensive tickets will be priced at $ 1,500-$ 500 less compared with the high-end seats that were sold in the De La Hoya-Mayweather scuffle ? because of the (bad) US economy.
Aside from the premium ringside seats, others will be sold at $ 1,000, $ 750, $ 500 and $ 250 although it?s not yet on the market but should be within the next 10 days.
Despite the high amount, boxing fans will come in droves to Sin City to become a part of history.
“I expect a sellout, for sure,” said Mike Koncz, who is Pacquiao?s Los Angeles-based adviser.
So when Koncz was told that an Internet ticket seller was dangling as much as $ 38,000 for a choice seat and a low of $ 975 in the nosebleed section, he was not surprised.
Koncz said that there was so much interest in the De La Hoya-Mayweather bout that a ringside seat was selling for $ 30,000 on Ebay.
Cebu promoter Wakee Salud, one of Pacquiao?s most trusted allies, said he has received quite a number of requests for tickets from friends since Top Rank and Golden Boy Promotions (GBP) officially announced the fight last week.
“I have received 45 requests so far and with three months left, I expect it to go higher,” said Salud.
The MGM Grand Garden Arena can accommodate 17,157 fans.
Arum believes Pacquiao is more marketable than Mayweather and while it is a given that every seat will be occupied by the time De La Hoya and Pacquiao answer the bell, the New York native is training his sights on another plateau.
“I think people are fascinated with Pacquiao. I think we have a real shot to beat that number. It?s a humongous number, but we have a shot to beat it,” added Arum.
That “humongous number” is 2.4 million pay-per-view buys that translated to over $ 120 million in revenue as well as $ 19.2 million in ticket sales.
Richard Schaefer, who is De La Hoya?s right-hand man at GBP, is more than upbeat.
“You throw into the mix the popularity of Oscar with the Latinos and the US market in general and you throw in Manny Pacquiao with his legion of Filipino fans; Filipinos are the second-largest immigrant group in the US. There are millions and millions of Filipinos in the US. I have to tell you, I like our chances of beating the record,” Schaefer told Morales.
