Lots of tickets remain for Mayweather vs McGregor fight
IT’S SUPPOSED to be the hottest ticket in sports. So far, though, fans aren’t exactly storming the box office to buy tickets for Floyd Mayweather Jr’s fight next month with Conor McGregor.
A check online yesterday revealed hundreds — even thousands — of seats still available from Ticketmaster at the T-Mobile arena for the August 26 fight. There are so many open seats that fans with enough room left on their credit cards can buy six tickets together in 162 different spots throughout the arena
That might be because of the astronomical prices set by promoters — the cheapest original tickets on Ticketmaster have a face value of US$3,500. Or maybe fans are just waiting for the right time to buy, hoping the price will go down.
Either way, promoter Leonard Ellerbe isn’t terribly concerned. He says the fight will not only sell out, but break records for the richest gate.
“We’re very excited and very happy with ticket sales so far,” Ellerbe told The Associated Press “We’re well on our way to smashing our own record, which transcended the sport.”
That record was a $72,198,500 gate set by Mayweather in his 2015 fight with Manny Pacquiao. That live gate was more than three times bigger than any previous boxing gate.
Still, five days after tickets first went on sale, seats throughout the arena are widely available. They are not, however, for anyone a little light in the wallet. Prices start at $3,500 — plus another $300, or so, for buyer fees — and climb to $10,000 near the ring. There are “platinum” seats that go for as much as $14,995.
RESALE MARKET
The resale market is nearly as pricey. At Seatgeek.com, the get-in price is around $2,000 — for one of the few seats that originally sold at $500 — and the median listing price is about $7,000.
There seems to be sticker shock in the marketplace.
“There’s fairly little sales going on in general,” said Chris Leyden, a content analyst for SeatGeek.com. “I think a lot of it has to do with where prices are now. I think people are a little uncomfortable paying this much or maybe even more.”
The situation is much the same at StubHub, where demand for tickets is lower than it was at the same time before Mayweather’s fight with Manny Pacquiao two years ago.
“We’re not necessarily seeing demand levels for the fight yet,” said Johnna Hoff, a StubHub spokeswoman. “The encouraging part is people are buying some tickets.”
A UFC spokeswoman did not return calls for comment. Ticketmaster replied to an email by saying it will “decline to comment at this time.”