Floyd Mayweather faces Manny Pacquiao on Saturday night at the MGM Grand, and the highly anticipated bout is expected to shatter numerous records.
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While both fighters are expected to earn the biggest paydays of their respective careers, the bout will also have a significant impact on business in Vegas as a whole – from the hotels, to the casinos to all the independent ventures up and down the strip.
Mayweather already holds many of the records in the sport in terms of finances, but, as detailed by ESPN, his encounter with Pacquiao will see those numbers dwarfed by the ones that May 2 will create.
Taking that into consideration, here are some of the key numbers ahead of Mayweather vs Pacquiao:
$10: That is the price of a ticket to attend the weigh-in on Friday, with Nevada making an exception to the usual law that the event should always be free for the general public to attend.
$99: How much the pay-per-view event will cost in the USA in high definition. The previous record was held by Mayweather vs Alvarez in 2013 which was set at $74.95. The box office event will cost £19.95 in the UK, and it is expected that the total revenue from pay-per-view sales will be around $300,000,000. An additional $15,000,000 will come from closed circuit fight sales at MGM properties in Vegas.
500 seats went on sale to the general public for the 16,800-seat MGM Grand Garden Arena, and it took just 60 seconds for all those seats to sell out. Demand was always going to be high for the event, but, considering the ticket prices as detailed below, it is a staggering amount in gate receipts that this fight will generate.
$13.5m will come from sponsors who are paying to be involved in the fight by having their name on the ring apron and ring floor not to mention the money that the fighters will make from sponsors appearing on their shorts. The previous record was around $3.5-4m, and it will come as no shock that Mayweather is responsible for that too.
$10,000 for the most expensive ticket to the fight, with the cheapest being $1,500. The total expected gate will be $72,000,000 which will undoubtedly break yet another record.
With the 60-40 purse split for the fight, it is expected that Mayweather will make roughly $180,000,000 from the fight, which results in $120,000,000 for Pacquiao. That is a new career-high for both men, and so really it is hard to see there being a loser on Saturday night.
48. The magic number that Mayweather hopes to get to come Sunday morning in terms of his unbeaten record. Long-time friend and rapper 50 Cent has previously suggested that he will bet $1.6m on the fight in favour of Mayweather winning, and the bookmakers certainly make the American the strong favourite.
There is no doubt that this fight is going to make history, both in and out of the ring. It is likely to have a lasting effect on Vegas and its failing economy, and so it will be a huge boost for the entire State to have the income that this fight will bring.
While many have argued that this fight is happening five years too late since negotiations started back in 2010, looking at the anticipation surrounding it and the numbers involved, it looks as though Mayweather has played it perfectly.
Would this fight have made as much money and built up as much interest five years ago? Talks have dragged on so much that casual fans from all around the world are heavily invested in it, and so in many ways it has run its natural course and is happening at exactly the right time between two fighters that still have plenty left in the tank.
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