The showdown between the biggest stars in boxing and UFC is less than a month away and tickets are still not on sale. That changes today with tickets for Floyd Mayweather versus Conor McGregor available at 1 ET at Tickmaster.com or on site at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Tickets for the August 26 bout range from $500 to $10,000 with additional fees applied at checkout. Other tickets cost $1,500, $2,500, $3,500, $5,000 and $7,500. There is a limit of two tickets per household.
The arena, which opened last year, holds 20,000 for boxing. The get-in price is less expensive than the 2015 Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao bout where the cheapest list price was $1,500 at the 16,800-seat MGM Grand Garden Arena. Only 500 tickets were released to the public in that fight with the rest doled out to promoters and others involved with the bout.
While tickets have yet to hit the market for Mayweather-McGregor, you can already bid on them on the secondary market. Ticket reseller TicketIQ has more than 400 tickets available as of Monday morning at prices starting at $3,000 for nosebleed seats, and they range as high as $24,000 for ringside ones.
The Mayweather-McGregor fight promises to be one of the biggest financial bonanzas in the history of sports, on par with a Super Bowl or the Mayweather-Pacquiao bout, which generated $600 million in revenue. The pay-per-view audience will ultimately determine how big a cash cow the night is. The fight is priced at $100 for the high-definition PPV feed ($90 in standard def) and Las Vegas is currently taking over-under bets on 4.99 million PPV buys. Mayweather-Pacquiao had 4.6 million buys.
Both fighters will make a killing on the bout. McGregor is set to earn at least $75 million, which would be five times any payday he had at UFC. Mayweather has made a career of big paydays befitting a fighter nicknamed “Money.” He earned roughly $250 million for his unanimous decision over Pacquiao. Another payout along those lines would push his career earnings to $1 billion. Mayweather would be just the third athlete to earn $1 billion from his sporting career after Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods.
Mayweather was the highest-paid athlete three times over a four-year span before his “retirement” in 2015. The McGregor fight is sure to put him back on top again. – Written by Kurt Badenhausen, FORBES STAFF