Initial numbers from HBO and Showtime have pegged the number of buys for the May 2 Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao pay-per-view title fight at more than 4.4 million.
That means more than $400 million in TV revenue, on top of the record $72 million live gate.
“I think it was something we knew we would beat the prior record, but we didn’t have any reasonable expectation that it would exceed it by as much as it did,” said Top Rank chairman Bob Arum, Pacquiao’s promoter, told ESPN.com. “We were confident it would go over 3 million (PPV buys), maybe do 3.5 million on the outside. But it just caught fire.”
The fight itself was a fire, too – a hot dumpster fire – but you had to click purchase to find that out.
Arum told ESPN that he expects the final figures will see the number of PPV buys surpass 4.5 million.
The previous record for buys for a boxing match was the 2.48 million that purchased the Mayweather-Oscar de la Hoya fight in 2007.
The record for revenues had been the $150 million generated by the 2013 fight between Pacquiao and Canelo Alvarez.
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