Revealed: New data shows how panicked promoters have slashed prices for Floyd Mayweather vs Conor McGregor
The fight was expected to sell out but there are still lots of tickets available
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There may be less than two weeks to go until Floyd Mayweather fights Conor McGregor in one of the most lucrative fights in the history of boxing, but ticket sales for the contest remain lower than expected.
The fight, which will take place at the 20,000-capacity T-Mobile Arena on the Las Vegas Strip, is yet to sell out despite predictions that tickets would be snapped up immediately.
Although the fight is still expected to smash all existing pay-per-view records – according to UFC president Dana White, at least – few foresaw such slow ticket sales.
Just don’t remind the promoters of the fight of that fact.
“I'm actually tired of hearing that question,” the CEO of Mayweather Promotions, Leonard Ellerbe, snapped at Mayweather’s open workout last week. “Right now, we have over 60 million dollars in the box office. What part of that remotely looks like ticket sales are slow?
“This isn't a damn Rolling Stones concert. That's the only thing that sells out in seconds. We're talking about tickets that go from $500 to $10,000. That's an expensive ticket.”
The numbers suggest otherwise. Not only has Mayweather even resorted to trying to flog a few tickets through his personal Twitter account, but new data from the ticket aggregator TicketIQ has shown that remaining tickets for the fight have dropped to their lowest price since a handful of budget seats were first snapped up.
The cheapest ticket from the TicketIQ app is now available at $1,500 – down from 35% over the last week – with the biggest price drop coming on Thursday, shortly after the announcement that the fight would be taking place with both men wearing 8oz gloves.
In fact, prices have dropped steadily over the past week, with the promoters of the fight eager to ensure that there are no empty seats come August 26.
But that doesn’t mean the fight is cheap, with further data from TicketIQ showing that Mayweather vs McGregor is the second most expensive combat sports event, behind only the lucrative Mayweather vs Manny Pacquiao in May 2015.
Completing the list is Mayweather’s 2013 fight with Saul Canelo Álvarez, as well as McGregor’s contests against Eddie Alvarez and Jose Aldo, at UFC 205 and 194 respectively.
But just because people aren’t buying the tickets doesn’t mean that they’re not heading to Vegas.
In 2015, less than 20,000 people watched Mayweather take on Pacquiao at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, but 200,000 travelled to Vegas to soak up the atmosphere that weekend.
And, considering that searches for trips to Vegas jumped 700% on Priceline.com the day the Mayweather vs McGregor fight was announced, it’s likely that there will still be an exceptionally strong contingent of Irish fans in the city for the event.
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