Image: Esther Lin/Showtime
Going into the August 26th Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor boxing match, we knew it would generate a significant amount of business but just how much was the big question given the lopsided odds and the somewhat fun/somewhat cringy four city press tour.
On Thursday and nearly four months after the megafight, we got our answer as Showtime officially announced the pay-per-view extravaganza generated 4.3 million buys, falling 300,000 short of the 4.6 million record Mayweather set with Manny Pacquiao.
At a price of $99.95, that’s a lot of money the two men divvied up, not to mention the take from outside North America where the show broke records for PPV buys. The total includes traditional purchasing methods (cable/satellite providers) in addition to various online options, most of which famously crashed due to an influx of traffic before the fight, causing a delay.
The total revenue for the show (tickets, PPV, sponsorship, international TV distribution, etc) was in excess of $600 million, among the highest single-day grosses of all time.
This week, Mayweather said UFC has been in touch with him about coming to fight in the UFC. He said if he was to do so, he’d make $1 billion in just three or four fights.
McGregor, the UFC lightweight champion, hasn’t defended the title he won in November 2016 and it’s unclear whether he’ll ever return to the UFC again. The aforementioned Pacquaio said he was in negotiations with McGregor to box, which Dana White shot down quickly with the threat of a lawsuit.