Conor McGregor’s super fight with Floyd Mayweather was one of the most hyped events in modern sports history, and all signs indicate it actually exceeded expectations at the box office.
Tallied all up, the purse could hit $700 million, according to the Telegraph, and while the official split is confidential, many believe it to be 70-30 in Mayweather’s favor.
The most concrete proof of the fight’s huge purse came from Mayweather himself, who revealed at his post-fight press conference that they had broken the live gate record for a boxing match.
“We did break the record tonight for the biggest gate. Me and [Manny] Pacquiao done $72 million, I think we’d done something over $80 million for the live gate,” Mayweather said. This came despite the fact the 20,000-seat T-Mobile Arena was not sold out.
The 50-0 champion then claimed that they’d also broken the record for pay-per-view buys. Official numbers, though, won’t be released for at least a week.
Mayweather and Pacquiao currently hold the record for the biggest fight in history. Their 2015 snooze-fest, which was years in the making, drew 4.6 million PPV buys in the United States, according to ESPN, with the standard-definition broadcast costing $89.99 while the high-definition version was $10 more. The total revenue for the fight ended up being over $410 million in domestic TV money alone.
Vegas bookmakers expect Mayweather-McGregor to smash that number. The Bovada sportsbook in Vegas had the Mayweather-McGregor over/under bet at 4.99 million PPV buys, according to offshore sportsbooks. In comparison, the over/under bet for the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight was 3.8 million PPV buys, according to Sports Illustrated.
Online streaming is another huge source of revenue where the fight thrived. UFC president Dana White pushed the streaming option hard before the fight and bragged it would be available to more than 1 billion people in over 200 countries.
“If you are in Manhattan or you are on a desert island somewhere, if you have Wi-Fi, you can buy this fight,” White said during fight week.
In the end, UFC Fight Pass, the promotion’s online streaming service, was so popular on fight night that its servers in California and Florida crashed.
Because of the downed servers, there were reports the fight would be delayed, but in the end, it started on time.
While legal streaming was clearly very popular, illegal pirates also had a field day with Mayweather-McGregor. The match was illegally rebroadcast online by 239 different sources on platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Periscope. In total, the illegal streams reached an estimated 2.93 million viewers worldwide, according to Variety. If all those eyeballs were forced to buy the fight legally, another $200 million could have been added to the purse.
Mayweather, however, figured out all sorts of other ways to generate revenue that the pirates couldn’t touch. For example, he made $25 million in sponsorships alone, and hats emblazoned with his 50-0 record hit stores shelves minutes after his victory over McGregor.