Arum pleased with PPV numbers he’s seen for Mayweather-Pacquiao fight

By Boxing News - 05/07/2015 - Comments

1-MAYPAC-FIGHTNIGHT-TRAPPFOTOS-5304By Chris Williams: The final pay-per-view numbers for the Floyd Mayweather Jr. – Manny Pacquiao fight are expected to be released next week, but thus far Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum is happy with the numbers, calling them “breathtaking” according to ESPN.com.

For Arum, it’s pretty big because his fighter Pacquiao has seen his pay-per-view numbers drop steadily since his knockout loss to Juan Manuel Marquez in 2012. Having Pacquiao’s numbers suddenly soar to an unimaginable height for the Mayweather fight is a real shot of adrenalin for Pacquiao and Arum.

The only question is will Pacquiao’s PPV numbers stay high once he goes back to fighting Arum’s Top Rank stable fighters like Brandon Rios and Tim Bradley.

Arum expects the pay-per-view numbers to shatter the all-time record for PPV buys set by Mayweather vs. Oscar De La Hoya back in 2007, which was 2.4 million buys. Arum thinks the PPV numbers for the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight could hit 4 million. What we don’t know is if the wide-spread cable outages on the night of the fight will have an impact on the overall PPV numbers for the fight.

Arum also sees the PPV revenue for the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight to break the record of $150 million set by Mayweather – Saul “Canelo” Alvarez in 2013. That would be a big deal if that happens. They’re expecting that the fight could bring in over $400 million in revenue.

“We’ve never seen anything like what we are seeing with the numbers so far,” Arum said.

It’s no wonder that Arum is so eager to put together a rematch between Mayweather and Pacquiao next year. I don’t think the rematch will be any different from the first fight we saw, but the money will obviously be good again. You can’t expect nearly the same amount of fans to purchase a second fight between Mayweather and Pacquiao, not after the way Pacquiao performed in the first fight.

Pacquiao’s performance coupled with his injury excuse that he revealed after the fight will likely have a fairly significant impact on the PPV sales for the rematch in my view. Pacquiao didn’t help himself by bringing up his shoulder problem after the fight. A lot of people paid a lot of money to see the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight, and in many cases they went out of their way to travel far to see it. It doesn’t make them happy to find out that Pacquiao came into the fight with a bad shoulder injury that impacted his performance.



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