By George Mills, courtesy of The Daily Star
UFC BOSS Dana White inadvertently revealed the final pay-per-view sales for Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor – and the figure is truly astonishing.
Speaking candidly in a short Instagram video uploaded by UFC Hall of Fame star Urijah Faber, White could be heard in the background discussing how many buys the eagerly-anticipated showdown had managed to draw from the US public.
“Six point five million pay-per-view buys,” he says, as the room gasps in astonishment.
Priced at $99.95 (￡77) in the US – ￡19.95 in the UK – if White is to be believed, the fight will have generated $650m in pay-per-view sales alone.
The figure would smash the previous record of 4.6m PPV buys set in 2015 for Mayweather’s showdown with Manny Pacquiao.
Mayweather already confirmed that the McGregor fight had broken the record for gate receipts generated by a boxing match, surpassing the Pacquiao fight once again despite failing to sell out the T-Mobile Arena.
“We did break the record tonight for the biggest gate. Me and [Manny] Pacquiao done $72m (￡55m), I think we’d done something over $80m (￡61m) for the live gate,” Mayweather said.
Details about the two fighters’ split of the revenue are kept confidential, although the New York Post suggested it to be around 70-30 in favour of Mayweather.
Prior to the fight, an ecstatic McGregor repeatedly mentioned that the showdown would instantly “quadruple” his net worth – before last weekend rumoured to be around $35m (￡27m).
If White’s figures are correct, he will have cleared that benchmark with ease.
2023-10-19 09:57:11
