Floyd Mayweather off on estimates of ticket sales in megafight

Floyd Mayweather Jr., left, and Conor McGregor pose for photographers during a news conference Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2017. Photo / AP.

Turns out Floyd Mayweather didn't earn as much as he thought from his victory over Conor McGregor last month.

Following his 10th round TKO of the Irish MMA star in Las Vegas, Mayweather boasted that the megafight attracted the biggest box office sales of all time. Mayweather, who took his career record to 50-0 following the win, said the fight brought in over US$80m in ticket sales.

"We did break the record tonight for the biggest gate. Me and Pacquiao done $72 million, I think we did somewhere over $80 million for the live gate," Mayweather told the press.
However a report on the tickets sold to the fight at T-Mobile Arena says Mayweather was off in his estimates by about US$24.5m.

According to website MMA Junkie, the gate was taken from an official attendance of 13,231 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

That figure included just 137 complementary tickets with the remainder bringing in an average revenue of US$4,188 per ticket issued.

That takes it to an estimated total of US$55.5m - certainly short of Mayweather's US$80m figure.

Despite the fact there was near 7000 empty seats, the fight attracted between 4 million and 5 million pay-per-view sales. An estimated 50 million people watched in the United States alone.

According to preliminary numbers compiled by Showtime PPV, the fight threatens the 4.6 million benchmark set by Mayweather's 2015 fight with Manny Pacquiao. At $99.95 a buy, the fight is tracking to generate more than $450 million in television revenue, much of which will be shared by the two fighters.

Estimates vary but if an average of 10 people watched each pay-per-view Saturday night the total audience would be in the 50 million range - or about 1 in 6 Americans.