Arum: Mayweather vs. Pacquiao fight likely to go for $90 on PPV

By Boxing News - 03/12/2015 - Comments

Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao(Photo credit: Esther Lin/Showtime) By Dan Ambrose: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum says the official price for the May 2nd mega-fight between his money guy Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr hasn’t been officially been set as of yet, but he sees the price going for $90 a pop.

This is just for regular pay-per-view though. It would likely be $10 more for high definition, which would make it $100. That’s a lot of money for some boxing fans, and I suspect that the price tag will cause a number of people of to opt to not purchase the card.

If the pay-per-view numbers fail to be as impressive as predicted, then you can expect that the high price for the event was the cause. The two fighters could then drop the price tag in their rematch, if there is one. But it would obviously be too late to do anything about the lack of PPV buys for their May 2nd fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The event organizers are expecting over 3 million pay-per-view buys for the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight. If comes in less than that in the 2 million range or worse, then you have to assume that they made big mistake by asking fans to pay so much to see the fight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sL7EQk6C3jA

Under normal circumstances, you would think that they would lower the price, given that so many people are interested in seeing this fight. This isn’t a situation where they’re trying to sell tickets in an arena of limited capacity.

With the Mayweather-Pacquiao pay-per-view, they can sell as many PPV buys as possible. The only thing that limits it is the fans themselves. That’s why I think they’re potentially shooting themselves in the foot by asking for more rather than less for the fight.

This is a situation where it makes more sense for them to drop the price to $50 so that a massive amount of people can watch the fight rather than increase it to $90. Greed isn’t good.

“Official PPV price not set, according to Arum. Still discussing with cable operators. But he said probably $90 SRP. #Mayweather-Pacquiao. The way tix are now priced for Mayweather-Pacquiao the gate will be over $50 million at the MGM. Old record: $20 million. #boxing,” Dan Rafael of ESPN said on his twitter. “Mayweather-Pacquiao will generate probably more than $400 million. But boxing’s dead right? FYI – the likely $90 price for Mayweather-Pacquiao PPV is the suggested retail price. Lots of operators jack it up $10 for HD. Arum said Mayweather-Pacquiao is so important to Las Vegas economy & he lives there so if he took fight away from LV he’d run out of town. At the end of the day, I couldn’t take it away from my city. It means too much to everyone, waiters, cab drivers, the whole city.’ – Arum.”

We really don’t know what the Mayweather vs. Pacquiao fight will generate. I don’t think it’s going to be $400 million. Maybe $300 million, but maybe even less than that given the price tag. I know a lot of fans are going to balk at paying $90 to see the event, which will likely be increased by the cable distributers to $100. It’s just a lot of money, and thus far there’s no word about the undercard. With one fight being done by Top Rank, and another by Mayweather Promotions, the undercard might be a weak one.



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