MayMac ticket sales reportedly weaker than expected

There are certainties around the Conor McGregor vs. Floyd Mayweather boxing match on August 26 – Floyd will win and the bout will be a huge financial success. However, Tim Dahlberg for Yahoo Sports checked, and as of Saturday, there were still thousands of seats available through Ticketmaster for what was believed would be the hottest ticket of the summer. So many open tickets remain open that six tickets together are available in 162 different spots.

Dahlberg identified two causes for the lack of ticket sales, one insightful, one not so much. In the latter case, Dahlberg projected his low opinion of the fight, and of Mayweather’s and McGregor’s trash talk. The simple fact is that the event is getting more hype than anything in memory, both online and in person – four times, close to 20,000 fans showed up across continents, to watch the two call each other names. However, the writer offered another explanation that was interesting.

He believes the majority of interest in the bout is coming from the MMA side, something confirmed by the crowds at the media events, and online. Boxing has a long tradition of wealthy fans paying many thousands of dollars for tickets. MMA, not so much.

MMA fans are not going to drop $15,000 + $1,292.81 in service fees for a pair of seats in Section 4, Row S of the T-Mobile arena, so far back you will need binoculars.

So the boxing promoters miscalculated. However, while MMA fans aren’t going to drop 16k plus the cost of a pair of binoculars, millions of them will pay $100 bucks for a PPV, and invite over some friends. So expect the biggest PPV sales in history, but dropping 10 grand on tix, not so much.

If the prediction that the event ticket sales would be huge was wrong, could it also be wrong that McGregor has no chance of winning? Nah, but it’s still fun to think about.