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This afternoon, Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquaio finally take to the ring for their long-awaited welterweight boxing world title fight. Could it be the most lucrative sporting event in the world?

DAVID HIGGINS is full of admiration. As a boxing promoter himself, and a keen student of capitalism, he can peer into the machinery of this afternoon’s Floyd MayweatherManny Pacquaio boxing match in Las Vegas and marvel at the efficient way it will spit out money.

Higgins is exaggerating when he suggests it might be the world’s first one billion dollar sporting event. But most estimates suggest the revenues will be worth up to half a billion US.

Higgins will be one of a handful of Kiwis inside the 16,800-capacity MGM Garden Arena, a winner in the worldwide scramble for tickets. He won’t say how much he paid for his place (few of those attending have actually paid as little as the face value), but it’s likely to be as much as US$15,000. He’s taking his partner Lisa, his business partner Dean Lonergan and Lonergan’s son Liam. He has no doubt it will be worth it.

‘‘We are boxing promoters, so it is the equivalent of a tech entrepreneur going to a TED conference . . . but it’s also a bucket list thing. There’s more to life than work and money, and I’ve been working hard for a very long time. This is a once-in-ageneration event.’’

For Higgins, this will be a fight, in boxing terms, to rank alongside the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frasier ‘‘Rumble in the Jungle’’.

But in economic terms, there is no comparison: not in boxing, not in any sport. MayweatherPacquaio is the sporting equivalent of the moment Scrooge McDuck dived headlong into a bottomless pit of hundred-dollar bills. This is a contest where even one of the protagonist’s shorts are worth US$2m.

‘‘It’s fascinating to see the economics of it,’’ says Higgins, who promotes Kiwi boxing hopeful Joseph Parker (who lives in Vegas, but by Thursday, was still uncertain of securing a muchcoveted ticket). ‘‘You get certain people saying boxing is on the way out then it puts on an event like that that absolutely dwarfs everything.’’

What boxing does that other sporting events do not do is payper-view television. That generates big dollars, particularly for the fighters. In this case, huge dollars. Fight promoters traditionally keep half of pay-per-view sales; that chunk will be split again 60-40 in Mayweather’s favour for this bout. The US record for sales is 2.48m paying viewers for Mayweather against Oscar de le Hoya in 2007, but that should be comfortably outstripped this time around. US domestic viewers are being charged $100 to view the fight: so if three million Americans buy it, that’s already $300m of revenue (without contemplating sales to bars and pubs, who pay more).

If you consider that local hero Ricky Hatton’s fight with Pacquaio sold to 1m households in the UK, there’s the potential for a similar sale again in Britain (at £20 apiece) and there might be another 20 countries capable of doing payper-views. Traditional broadcast sales in countries where there’s no pay TV could also be substantive: some Middle Eastern broadcasters have a record of paying $60m for single fights.

To watch the fight on Sky here in New Zealand this afternoon will cost you $50. Sky say the price matches the size of the event and the prices being charged by networks around the world. ‘‘We don’t and can’t give numbers, but there is no denying this is going to be big,’’ says Sky’s Kirsty Way. ‘‘Tua-Cameron was very big, and time will tell if this is bigger. There’s not that local component but there is the worldwide component.’’ The Star-Times understands that the David Tua- Shane Cameron fight in 2008 sold a New Zealand record of 91,000 buys, so a similar figure would mean $4m sales.

Next comes fight tickets. They could have filled the arena solely with journalists: 18,000 applied; 1500 were accredited. Pacquaio alone is bringing an entourage of 900. Only 500 tickets, in the end, went on general sale; all went within 60 seconds. What was left was a chimeric price set by the ticket brokerage firms. ‘‘What they’ve got is massive global demand exceeding supply, so that creates a global auction price,’’ says Higgins. ‘‘You’ve got to compete against everyone else in the world who wants a ticket. And a lot of billionaires and millionaires from the far corners of Russia to South America to the US will want a ticket and can afford to pay a lot of money.’’

That means it’s been a busy week for ticket brokers like Justin Banks. Banks, who works for lasvegastickets.com, tells the Star

Times: ‘‘This is as busy as it gets. This is probably the biggest ever event in the world for fight fans – it’s what everyone’s been clamouring for the last five years. We’re getting phone calls morning through night: I was taking calls at 9.30pm last night. You make yourself available because this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience and people want their tickets, they know inventory is moving fast so they want to act.

‘‘In 20 years, you can look back and say I was there . . . you don’t want to be left out, because everyone is talking about it, they don’t want to be the one person going ‘huh, I was looking at updates on my phone’.’’

On Thursday, Banks could get you a fourth-row ticket for US$95,000, and predicted prices should hold steady, but could see an on-the-day surge. Like everything in Vegas, choosing the right moment to buy is a gamble: some ringside seats have been offered for as much as US$350,000.

And if you can’t get into the fight, the next best thing: well, it’s forking out to watch it on closedcircuit television in an MGM casino in Vegas (the others are barred from screening it). Tickets for a closed-circuit viewing at the Luxor were selling for up to $1100 earlier this week and there were closed-circuit views on offer at hotels in six other states.

Banks had sold tickets to punters worldwide, including Australia and New Zealand. ‘‘I struggle to think of any type of international event to match this,’’ he reckoned.

Punters like Auckland property investor Adam Stewart, who paid NZ$5300 for his ticket in the distant upper bowl of the arena. ‘‘The Cricket World Cup final was only a few hundred bucks: this is the most expensive thing I’ve ever done but without a doubt it’s worth it,’’ he says. ‘‘You’ll never see this again, and what’s five grand if you get to be part of history and remember it. It will be priceless.’’

He’d booked flights and accommodation before he even got a ticket, relying on the concierge at the Paris hotel to help. ‘‘I told myself even if I can’t get a ticket I can still be there and part of it, and the hotels are doing big screenings in their ballrooms which will be quite glamorous.’’

Las Vegas will be teeming today. ‘‘It will be like a madhouse,’’ Banks predicts. An extra 300,000 people are expected in the city this weekend, already busy with Nascar racing.

All 150,000 of the city’s hotel rooms are officially sold out; sold out, of course, is a subjective description: there’s probably room if you really want to pay. The MGM Grand website on Friday was still offering a ‘‘Grand King’’ room for $3200 a night, complete with two CCTV tickets.

Higgins heard a rumour of the fight date well in advance and rang the MGM Grand: but they had already placed their entire 7000-room capacity on hold for deals like the one above, so he bought at the neighbouring Mandalay, where rooms have since tripled in price and the hotel have asked if he wants to give up his booking.

Ex-pat New Zealander Kevin Barry, who has made Vegas his home since he first went there to push David Tua’s career Stateside, is buzzing. ‘‘It will bring an enormous amount of money to the town,’’ he declares. ‘‘Everywhere you go, everyone is an expert on boxing, which is great being the sport that I love, everyone wants to talk about it. The people who are staunch boxing fans are in amazement and awe at the hype that this fight is generating. It’s obviously unprecedented.’’

The city, says Barry, would have liked more preparation time than the 70 days’ notice it was given. ‘‘It’s a major advert for the city, but it also poses a very big concern,’’ says Barry, who thinks officials are worried about the security implications. Surely every cop will be on duty to ensure no repeat of the crowd mayhem after Mike Tyson bit the ear of Evander Holyfield in 1997 or the drive-by shooting of rapper Tupac Shakur after Tyson against Bruce Seldon a year earlier.

The casino, expecting 100,000 people to pass through its ornate doors this weekend, is doing something unprecedented, Barry relates: instead of funnelling the punters back through the tables and bars after the fight, as usual, everyone will be pushed outside and made to re-enter because they anticipate the casino will already be teeming with the unfortunates who couldn’t get in, consoling themselves by eating the $49 black Angus steaks at Wolfgang Puck’s or dropping cash on blackjack. ‘‘Imagine the sheer flow of money through the MGM Grand this weekend from thousands of millionaires from all around the world,’’ wonders Higgins. ‘‘I’d say they would do very well.’’

Among some other intriguing financial statistics: sponsorship alone is worth $13m. Mexican beer Tecate offered $5.8m to outbid Corona’s $5.2m for title sponsorship, explaining: ‘‘We cannot have the luxury of being out of this fight. This is very important for us.’’ Pacquaio’s six shorts sponsors will contribute a total of $2m, producing the most expensive pair of pants ever. Merchandise sales are estimated at $1m. Ticket sales at $72m. Closedcircuit ticket sales at $13m. ‘‘It’s just amazing numbers,’’ says Barry.

Cynically, you could argue that this isn’t such a good fight. ‘‘Mayweather is not a great entertainer, Pacquaio is past his best, neither are stopping guys, but they are such major figures in world sport,’’ says Barry. Mayweather is an unbeaten, but deadly boring fighter, who wins because of his superlative defence, not his attacking prowess and has knocked out only two of his last 12 opponents. Pacquaio, now 36, has lost two of his last five fights and has had no knockout wins since 2009. You’ll get short odds on the fight going the distance (and yes, we haven’t even considered the many millions to be gambled away in our calculations).

So there’s some genius at work here, and most attribute that to the otherwise loathsome Mayweather, whose posturing has delayed the fight for five years.

‘‘You’ve got to sit back and look at what an expert marketing genius Floyd Mayweather is,’’ says Barry. ‘‘The fight is now worth twice as much money now as it was then [when it was first mooted in 2009], mainly due to the fact the crisis the country was in back then. The US economy is in a different place today than when they first tried to make this fight. GDP is up 12 per cent, unemployment has fallen to 5.5 per cent when it was up to 10 per cent and the growth of social media is probably the biggest catalyst to create more interest, and inevitably, more revenue.’’

After 36 minutes this afternoon, two very rich men will become very much richer.

Mayweather, who posts pictures on twitter of bales of money, was only the second sportsman in the world to earn over $100m in a financial year (after Tiger Woods) and has career earnings of $420m. Pacquaio, who has forged an alternate career in the Phillippines as a politician, has made $335m. Both will tip their career pay-payview revenues generated past the $1bn mark today and at the very least, will split $300m between them. The world will continue to turn.

You get certain people saying boxing is on the way out then it puts on an event like that that absolutely dwarfs everything.

David Higgins, Duco Events