It’s an ongoing debate – is Boxing healthy, recovering or slowly dying? Outside of this equation, there is the Floyd Mayweather bubble, which is all about setting PPV records for his fights, with his Canelo Alvarez bout, nicknamed “the one”, possibly becoming the most watched Pay-Per-View fight in history.
The current numbers from Showtime and Golden Boy Promotions point to 2.2 million buys. The record? Mayweather vs Oscar De La Hoya from 2007, which had 2.52 million buying the right to watch the fight, and generated $136 million. In today’s money it would have been $153 after the inflation adjustment.
Right now, the numbers for Mayweather vs Canelo are at $150 million, but it takes a while to get all the numbers from PPV fights, and they should rise to the 2.5 million or possibly more. In terms of actual money, no fight has ever made more, while Mayweather keeps setting records for his ability to put people in front of the screen, whether they’re rooting for him or against him.
This is what we anticipated when we formed our partnership with CBS/Showtime (in early 2013) — record-breaking results. We’re just ecstatic and we want to thank the fans for supporting this promotion. It was a lot of hard work. Everybody busted their behinds but Floyd has tremendous star power and the ability to attract new fans with the support of Showtime and CBS with their plethora of platforms that we were able to utilize. It’s just been remarkable. It’s the best working with the best.
There wasn’t this much of optimism after Mayweather fought Guerrero in May, in a fight that had less than 1 million buys, and probably lost money to Showtime, while Mayweather picked up around $40 million anyway. The addition of Alvarez to the card changed things, and its rumored that around 77% of all households with television sets in Mexico tuned in to the fight, meaning over 22 million tuned it to watch the fight.
Mayweather took the guaranteed $41.5 million from the fight, but there’s a very good chance he’ll reach an incredible $100 million when the money is all counted up. Alvarez ends up with more than $12 million guaranteed, obviously his biggest ever payday, but he’ll probably end up with a lot more depending on his deal.
Over 16,000 were in attendance for the fight, generating just over $20 million, was another record. The Las Vegas closed-circuit record, selling out 26,163 tickets for a gross of $2,615,360, was another record set by the fight. Mayweather is obviously the biggest name in boxing, but Alvarez definitely helped. The problem is moving from here and trying to make this huge financial achievement into something that helps the whole of boxing, and not just a single individual.