THE VICTOR of the “Fight of the Century” between Manny Pacquiao and unbeaten Floyd Mayweather Jr. at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on May 2 (May 3 in Manila) will have a hundred fathers.
The vanquished will be an orphan.
But what a filthy rich orphan he would be.
As the fight draws near, projections of its earning potential remain fluid and point to an unassailable fact: The bout on the first Saturday of May would be the biggest payday in sports.
Come the first bell, the purse from the match could be in the neighborhood of $430 million (about P18.9 billion) split by the fighters 60-40 in favor of Mayweather.
Depending on how the bout shapes up, the winner will earn laurels as the best fighter of his generation.
The loser will lick his wounds but won’t likely weep all the way to the bank.
Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum did the math early this month and came up with these income guestimates published by the Los Angeles Times:
Live gate-$73 million; pay per view in 3 million homes-$300 million; foreign TV rights-$35 million; national closed-circuit TV-$7 million; Las Vegas closed-circuit restricted to MGM-owned or controlled casinos-$3 million, and general fight sponsorship-$12 million.
The revenue from the live gate will definitely increase in the next few days.
According to the Las Vegas Review Journal, the sale of available tickets to the public was delayed because MGM officials reconfigured seating at the fight venue to add at least 1,000 more seats, “from normally around 16,000 to be just a shy of 17,000.”
While the final numbers remain to be crunched and the first punches still to be thrown, Las Vegas is a winner already.
The potential economic impact of the world unification bout to the city will be humongous.
The Motley Fool, a leading investment company, says “a normal Mayweather fight might have a $100 million impact on the Las Vegas economy, but this event is expected to shatter all records.”
Through its well-respected website, the Motley Fool said the nongaming earnings of $11 million from Mayweather’s fight against Robert Guerrero in 2013 could be easily eclipsed by his much anticipated fight with Pacquiao.
The Review Journal said despite overtures from other world cities, the fight was destined to be held Las Vegas since it was first talked about almost six years ago.
Glitter Gulch’s newspaper of record says Mayweather won his last 10 fights at the Grand Garden, and 23 of his 47 professional fights have been in Las Vegas.
Out of Pacquiao’s 16 title fights in Vegas, 11 were at the Grand Garden.
It also helped the city that Mayweather (47-0, 26 knockouts) lives there and that Pacquiao (57-5-2, 38 K0s), “who is treated like royalty when he stays at Mandalay Bay for his fights, had no intention of going anywhere else.”
And of course home to Arum is also Vegas, the headquarters of his Top Rank Promotions.
“The truth is no other place in the world can host an event like Las Vegas can,” Arum told the Journal. “It has the hotels, the casinos, the restaurants and the nightclubs to host a big event.”