Wrestling reporter Dave Meltzer is sharing the pay-per-view numbers for the Nate Diaz vs. Jorge Masvidal boxing event, and they are ‘TNA level’ bad.
While the Nate Diaz vs. Jorge Masvidal boxing match ended up being surprisingly entertaining, it looks like the event was a financial flop. Diaz is currently suing promoter Fanmio over $9 million in unpaid money, and his filing suggested that Fanmio owner Solomon Engel “might have to declare bankruptcy to avoid paying Diaz what he owes.”
Now we have Dave Meltzer from Wrestling Observer reporting on the pay-per-view sales of the event, and they were bad. TNA Wrestling bad.
“It did horrible on pay-per-view, it did TNA numbers,” Meltzer said. “I’m not exaggerating. I knew it would not do well, but I was absolutely stunned how poorly it did. Nobody bought the fight. People are sick of seeing MMA fighters boxing.”
TNA wrestling sometimes sells upwards of 60,000 PPVs but has also been known to bomb, with one recent event only selling 5000 buys. The math on combat sports events usually requires a promotion to crack 100,000 buys to be financially viable. At $49.99 per buy, that’d pull in roughly $5 million in sales. In this case, that doesn’t even cover half of Nate Diaz’s agreed upon purse.
The business news isn’t all terrible, though: Diaz vs. Masvidal saw impressive success at the gate. According to the California State Athletic Commission, the event filled the Honda Center in Anaheim with 13,767 tickets sold for a $1.25 million gate.
That’s a solid number of people to pull in, but the gate still pales in comparison to Nate Diaz vs. Jake Paul last August, which hit $3.7 million. And we’re quickly learning that when it comes to these random boxing matches, people aren’t quite as quick to crack open their wallets as they are for UFC events.
Maybe they’re sick of seeing UFC fighters box. Maybe they just don’t have an extra $50 they can spend on one interesting fight. And you can’t ignore how heavily pirated the event seemed to be, based on all the links being promoted across social media on fight night.