Patience "has been profitable" for Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, according to Eben Novy-Williams of BLOOMBERG. Six years after the two welterweight champions "first discussed fighting, they'll meet Saturday in Las Vegas." At least $300M in revenue, "largely from pay-per-view purchases and ticket sales, will be shared by the fighters, organizers say." That is twice as much as the $150M -- $165M in today's dollars -- a Mayweather-Pacquiao bout would have generated in '09, according to Pacquiao's promoter Bob Arum. Even though the two fighters "are now at the tail end of their careers -- Mayweather is 38; Pacquiao, 36 -- the fight benefited from social media's growth," a recovered U.S. economy and a "hype machine that has been cranking since 2009." Arum, founder and CEO of Top Rank Inc., said, "We had six years of teasing the public. You couldn't buy the publicity." For HBO Sports President Ken Hershman, once head of Showtime Sports, there was "one thing he kept coming back to -- the money." Hershman: "I would do the math and sketch out the economics on a piece of paper and say, 'There's too much money here for it not to happen.'" Conservative estimates from promoters have the fight making at least $300M, a total that will be "split 60-40 in favor of the undefeated Mayweather regardless of the outcome." Some, including World Boxing Council President Mauricio Sulaiman, have said $400M is realistic. The biggest piece of that total -- "the number of pay-per-view purchases -- is also the biggest unknown." The gate was scaled to $72M, more than triple the previous record, "with a large majority of tickets bought and distributed privately by the casino and promoters." Int'l TV rights will bring in at least $35M. Arum: "The numbers other than pay-per-view revenue are so large that we start out with maybe $120 million before a single person buys the fight" (BLOOMBERG, 4/28).
