Pacquiao-Clottey Could Exceed Buyrate Expectations
Kevin Iole of Yahoo! Sports talks about the possibility of Manny Pacquiao vs. Joshua Clottey exceeding initial buyrate expectations of 500,000 to 700,000 for the fight held at Cowboys Stadium.
The closed-circuit locations and presales in the East are at record levels, surpassing where they were in 2007 for the Oscar De La Hoya-Floyd Mayweather Jr. fight. Indications are that the pay-per-view is tracking better than expected, and Arum said he won’t be shocked if it touches 900,000 buyers.
That’s an astonishing number for just about any fight but even more so for a bout against a largely unknown opponent like Clottey, who doesn’t bring with him a large fan base.
Had Pacquiao-Clottey fought two years ago, Arum would have been lucky to have sold a quarter of the tickets he has sold for Saturday’s card.
Payout Perspective:
There were two possibilities coming out of the Mayweather-Pacquiao negotiation debacle:
1.) The fans would throw up their hands and say “we’re done!”
2.) All that arguing back and forth would generate so much press over a two month period to raise the profile and interest levels of both fighters.
It would seem the latter has taken place. The fans won’t be happy until they see Mayweather-Pacquiao, but in the mean time the interest level in these two fighters has never been higher. I, too, would be surprised if this fight didn’t hit 700,000 buys; and Mayweather-Mosley will like exceed 1 million buys.
Pretty good numbers for the sport. These two fighters could do a lot to revive interest in the sport across the globe.