The Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight last weekend is on pace to not just set a record for pay-per-view buys, but also to possibly double the previous high.
Kevin Iole of Yahoo! Sports got some figures and said the satellite carriers DirecTV and Dish Network combined for 1.65 million sales, and that AT&T and Verizon Fios combined for 600,000 sales. That adds up to 2.25 million. Iole says all those companies usually comprise about 40 percent of the total pay-per-view sales and that cable companies account for the rest.
If you apply Iole’s traditional formula to this fight, that would indicate the total buys for the fight are around 5.625 million.
Even the amount of buys already known by Iole is enough to tie this fight for second all time along with Mayweather’s 2013 bout with Canelo Alvarez, which sold 2.25 million units. Mayweather’s 2007 fight with Oscar De La Hoya is the all-time leader with 2.48 million buys. This appears in line to more than double that amount.
At $90 or $100 per order, that means pay-per-view revenue likely surpassed $500 million. Mayweather gets a 60 percent share while Pacquiao signed for 40, though that is probably after all fees are dispersed.
No matter how you view it, the two are taking home massive amounts of money.
