A record 4.4 million people bought (suffered through) the Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao fight, which led to $440 million in pay-per view buys (another record) and the designation of most boring blockbuster since whatever Transformers movie Michael Bay most recently spewed. In all (with the gate, international distribution and other factors) the fight netted a half-billion dollars.
You know how they say little kids always end up liking the box containing their present more than the present itself? I was just thinking that playing with a box for 60 minutes would have been a far better use of time (and way cheaper) than watching Floyd and Manny dance around stage like they were at an Arthur Murray.
Said HBO/Showtime in a press release — because I don’t want to rewrite these words, thus making me work harder than Pacquiao did in the fight:
You know how they say little kids always end up liking the box containing their present more than the present itself? I was just thinking that playing with a box for 60 minutes would have been a far better use of time (and way cheaper) than watching Floyd and Manny dance around stage like they were at an Arthur Murray.
Said HBO/Showtime in a press release — because I don’t want to rewrite these words, thus making me work harder than Pacquiao did in the fight:
The [insatiably unwatchable bout] nearly doubled the previous record of 2.48 million buys generated by the Oscar De La Hoya vs. Floyd Mayweather boxing event in 2007 and nearly tripled the record $150 million in U.S. pay-per-view revenue generated by Mayweather vs. Canelo Alvarez in 2013.
The gate ($71 million) tripled the previous record ($20 million for Mayweather-Alvarez) and kept Justin Bieber off the streets for another night, so I guess there’s a win there.
Mayweather vs. Pacquiao drew enormous numbers on social media. For example, Facebook reported that 37 million unique people contributed more than 115 million interactions from the start of the event to 30 minutes following its completion, a new record for a boxing event.
Yeah, I don’t think I’d go reading those tweets and Facebook messages if I were you. Then again, if I’m rolling in a half-billion, I probably wouldn’t care, especially knowing all of those rubes are going to buy the next big fight, believing that this time — THIS TIME — it’ll be the bout that’s worth it.
