With the addition of 6000 more tickets, Joshua vs. Dubois is set to become the highest attended boxing event in U.K. history.
If you’re hoping to snag tickets for the Anthony Joshua vs. Daniel Dubois heavyweight championship patch on September 21st at Wembley Stadium, here’s some good news: six thousand more tickets will go on sale Friday morning, setting the event up to be the biggest live boxing event in British history.
The current record holder for biggest attendance at a U.K. boxing event is 94,000 fans for a 2021 fight between Tyson Fury and Dillian Whyte. After burning through 90,000 tickets for Joshua vs. Dubois, Saudi Arabian boxing power broker Turki Alalshikh announced that a new block of tickets would be added, bringing the likely attendance number up to 96,000.
That’s 2000 people short of the overall Wembley Stadium attendance record set by singer Adele in 2017, but it’s impressive that they’re close enough to say “Hello” to the iconic singer’s benchmark.
Our request to extend the capacity for a record boxing crowd at Wembley Stadium for the Joshua vs. Dubois fight at the #RiyadhSeasonCard Wembley Edition has been approved. Tickets will go on sale on Friday at 12pm UK time
? September 21, 2024 #BigTime #RiyadhSeason pic.twitter.com/ymTgjbgFdy
— TURKI ALALSHIKH (@Turki_alalshikh) August 29, 2024
“Our request to extend the capacity for a record boxing crowd at Wembley Stadium for the Joshua vs. Dubois fight at the Riyadh Season Card Wembley Edition has been approved,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “Tickets will go on sale on Friday at 12pm UK time.”
Joshua and Dubois will be fighting for the IBF heavyweight championship which previous belonged to momentary unified heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk. Usyk vacated the belt in order to rematch Tyson Fury on December 21st rather than face mandatory challenger Dubois.
A sellout will help the latest international Riyadh Season event escape accusations that these events are vanity projects and not solid business ventures. The first major Riyadh Season event held outside of UAE, Crawford vs. Madrimov in Los Angeles, has been dogged by reports of extensive ticket giveaways and under-performing pay-per-view sales.
While Saudi Arabia’s entertainment division clearly isn’t putting finances first when it comes to these shows, a blockbuster event won’t hurt when it comes to ensuring they keep dumping money into combat sports. On that front, UFC CEO Dana White recently discussed his partnership with Turki Alalshikh for Riyadh Season Noche UFC at the Sphere (aka UFC 306) on September 14th.
“No we wouldn’t do the Sphere [again],” White said of the extremely expensive venue after last Tuesday’s Contender Series event. “But we’ll definitely do other things with them during their [Riyadh] Season. I’ve created a great relationship with [Alalshikh] over the last few months. I like him, and yeah, we’re going to do some stuff together. Lots of things.”