Gate numbers are reportedly in for Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor, and while the final total is enormous, it’s not a record-breaker.
Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Conor McGregor was billed as having the potential to break both the gate and pay-per-view revenue records previously set by Mayweather’s May 2015 win over Manny Pacquiao. While pay-per-view buys are trending in the general direction of the 4.6 million buys (North America only) for Mayweather vs. Pacquiao, the live gate apparently wasn’t close.
Jed I. Goodman received the gross gate and ticket sales information from the Nevada Athletic Commission on Tuesday.
#MayweatherVsMcGregor
Gross Gate $55,414,865.79
Number of sold tickets 13,094
Number of complimentary tickets 137— Jed I. Goodman (@jedigoodman) September 6, 2017
$55.4 million is well off from the $72,198,500 for Mayweather vs. Pacquiao, and definitely nowhere near the claims made by Dana White that the gate was at $70 million just a couple of days prior to the mega-fight. Post-fight, Mayweather was quoted as saying it’d eclipsed $80 million. In the lead-up to the bout, one of the storylines was the slow-moving ticket sales, unsurprisingly caused by the outrageously expensive pricing of the seats at the T-Mobile Arena — mind you, Mayweather vs. Pacquiao wasn’t priced for the general public either. There were plenty of empty seats even for the main event.
Make no mistake about it though, this is a phenomenal number and still the second-largest gate of all-time by a considerable distance. It’s more than triple the best live gate in UFC history, UFC 205: Alvarez vs. McGregor, and $35 million higher than Mayweather vs. Canelo Alvarez in 2013. When all is said and done, Mayweather will hold the top four gates in the history of Nevada boxing events, although that may by short-lived if Gennady Golovkin vs. Canelo Alvarez manages to break $30 million.
As for McGregor, he has the distinct honor of headlining the biggest-selling UFC pay-per-view of all-time (the UFC 202 rematch with Nate Diaz), four of the five top gates in Nevada, the number one gate in UFC history, and now the number two gate in boxing history. Not too shabby, if you ask me.