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Seats Plentiful For Mayweather-McGregor
The most hyped fight of the year, Conor McGregor vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr., is also set to be the one of 2017’s priciest tickets: At press time the lowest full price tickets were going for $3,500 through Ticketmaster.
Image Courtesy of mcgregor-vs-mayweather.com – McGregor vs. Mayweather
A poster of McGregor vs. Mayweather
TM’s verified resales were offering $1,800 for seats in the back of Las Vegas’
Quantity was also reportedly not an issue as the 20,000-capacity venue still reportedly had thousands of seats available, basically everywhere in the arena, at press time.
Boxing promotion has traditionally been an arena of hyperbole and the McGregor-Mayweather promoter Leonard Ellerbe has said organizers are “well on our way to smashing our own record which transcended the sport.”
Ellerbe is referencing the record-setting $72,198,500 gate from the 2015 contest between Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao.
Some analysts are looking at the availability of tickets, which were publicly available July 24, and postulating that promoters may have misread the market.
“This is the challenge when pricing a one-of-a-kind type of event. No one knows what the demand will be,” professor of sports business at Temple Joris Drayer told the Associated Press. “In this case, it seems the promoters overestimated what people would be willing to pay – and how many of those people willing (to) pay thousands would actually attend the event.”
MMA fans, who are driving much of the interest in the fight, tend to be in their 20s and may not be able to afford the thousands of dollars tickets, travel and accommodations would require.
The fight will be available via pay-per-view for $89.95 in standard definition and $99.95 for HD, and many think this will be the preferred viewing method.
Plenty of people were betting on the fight, 76 percent of which were putting their money on the McGregor, according to ESPN. Odds reportedly started at 11-to-1 for Mayweather but those odds have improved to approximately 4-1 now that most of the money is on the former +1100 underdog.
Meanwhile, the AP noted that nosebleed seats were available for $15,000 a pair, plus $1,292.81 in service fees, and that there were, as of July 29, 162 different spots throughout the arena where six adjacent seats were available.