Pacquiao-Rios could surpass Mayweather’s Fights Combined

By Neil Jason Blake - 06/06/2013 - Comments

pac33By Miguel Alejandro Lopez: Floyd Mayweather is the pay-per-view king of boxing. Recently he signed up a deal with Showtime to fight six more times for a period of 30 months. Each fight is expected to stack each other in terms of revenue, causing a snowballing of income for the undefeated Mayweather. It seems as though the great Floyd Mayweather (who has won five titles in different weight classes) has no rival out there when it comes to cashing out the big bucks.

Not quite.

The recently fallen hero, Manny Pacquiao (who has won 11 titles in 8 divisions), is currently spending a long layoff from boxing after being embarrassed by a 40 year old muscular, athletic, powerful welterweight puncher from Mexico (who has a walking body weight of a lightweight). Anyway, even though Pacquiao is nowhere to be found in the boxing scene during the past six months, his name still apparently draws a lot of boxing fans to the sport.

The dethroned Filipino boxing hero, after receiving a brutal right hand and landing face first on the canvass after tripping on the left foot of his 40 year old muscular and agile challenger, is set to make a comeback on November 23 against Brandon Rios. The fight will be in Macau China (Cotai Arena). Many boxing analysts and charlatans (who post insightful comments and replies in online boxing articles) expect very little from the fight. Experts and online blog commentators believe that Pacquiao will get knocked out by Rios in the ring, while being knocked out by Mayweather when it comes to PPV sales.

But the actual figures and projections say otherwise.

The Pacquiao-Rios fight, according to a recent announcement from Top Rank, will be made available to around 80 Million Chinese people. At the rate of $5 per PPV buy, those 80 million people could possibly generate $400 million dollars in Chinese revenue alone. That is over 10 to 20 times bigger than Mayweather-Dela Hoya (which currently holds the top spot in pay per view sales, having a total of 2.74 million PPV buys).

Aside from the $400 Million that Pacquiao-Rios will generate from the Chinese, American PPV revenue is expected to be around $60 Million to $80 million (because Pacquaio usually generates 1 million PPV buys each fight in the US). Add the total live gate revenue and the gambling sales, and you have total potential revenue of $500 million dollars and above for the Pac-Rios bout. At that rate, the fight will be the biggest earner in boxing history since the ancient times to the present.

But let’s say for example that instead of generating 80 million Chinese pay per view sales ($400 million dollars revenue), Pacquiao-Rios only tapped into 10% of the targeted Chinese market. This is a conservative presumption, but at that rate, the fight will still generate 8,000,000 Chinese PPV buys which will result in $40 Million dollars of Chinese PPV revenue. Add the American PPV revenue, live gate revenue, sponsorship revenue, and gambling revenue — and you will come up with a certain estimated figure that is about 3 to 100 times bigger than any money ever made by Floyd Mayweather (undefeated boxer, 42-0, if you discard the Ortiz and Castillo bouts).

Majority of mainstream boxing fans and experts who flood online channels get lost with the money calculations and business aspect of boxing. It’s because this is for thinking fight fans, and that’s why Arum chose to reach the Chinese because they have very good business sense.

Furthermore, the fight will draw more revenue because Pacquiao is seen as the underdog against Rios. Rios is a young lion who is currently being trained by an outstanding strength coach. Plus he is a strong slugger who doesn’t mind getting hit once in a while. And because some boxing fans think that Pacquiao is weak like glass, how in the world can he win against Rios? That storyline alone is set to break PPV sales records. If by some chance, Pacquiao manages to sneak in a win against Rios, the post-fight income generating ability of the fight will increase even more.

Other smash hit pay-per-view events that are about to happen this year are Mayweather-Alvarez (estimated to draw around 1.2 Million PPV sales), and Marquez-Bradley, a much awaited fight which could generate an unprecedented 150,000 PPV buys plus a no holds barred live gate revenue of about $500,000. Fight fans can’t wait for these main events.



Comments are closed.