This Saturday Manny Pacquiao returns to fight Timothy Bradley in Las Vegas in a rematch of their June 2012 bout which ended in controversy. Yahoo! Sports reports on Pacquiao solidifying himself among the top boxing PPV draws of all-time.
According to an article by Steve Kim on Sports on Earth, Top Rank promoter Bob Arum believes that Saturday’s rematch can do over 1 million PPV buys. However, people in the know (who we believe are impartial) think that 700,000 PPV buys is much more realistic.
The all-time revenue and PPV draws in boxing as compiled by Yahoo! Sports:
- Floyd Mayweather Revenue: $756,515,000 – PPV Buys: 12,643,000
- Oscar de la Hoya Revenue: $696,796,000 – PPV Buys: 14,081,000
- Manny Pacquiao Revenue: $661,061,000 – PPV Buys – 12,193,000
- Evander Holyfield Revenue: $548,221,000 – PPV Buys – 12,583,000
- Mike Tyson Revenue: $545,000,000 – PPV Buys – 12,400,000
“Manny Pacquiao broke the mold and blazed a very unique trail for the following reasons,” said Mark Taffet, the senior vice president of PPV at HBO Sports to Yahoo! Sports. “He’s not a heavyweight. He wasn’t an Olympian. He’s not from the very vibrant Latino or African-American demographic segments. He’s not American. He’s the only top non-American in that top five.
Payout Perspective:
Pacquiao’s success as a bona fide PPV star is an underdog story to sports execs but his ascension and subsequent global appeal can be traced back to his loyal-to a fault Filipino following and the greater Asian community as a whole that culturally sees Pacquiao as one of their own. While he may never surpass Floyd Mayweather, Jr. in terms of revenue and PPV buys, he is the much less polarizing figure of the two.
Let’s take a look at some of the UFC’s top stars. In comparing the top revenue/PPV buy producers in the UFC, Jon Jones leads the list of active UFC fighters with 7,375,000 PPV buys in 11 PPVs. Cain Velasquez has 4,540,000 in 9 fights on UFC PPVs. Anderson Silva has 8,670,000 in 16 UFC PPVs. Georges St. Pierre is at the top of the list with 11,655 PPV buys in 21 UFC PPVs. These numbers are based on their overall UFC PPV appearances.
UPDATED: I’ve now included Brock Lesnar below. Based on his average per PPV buy, the UFC probably misses him.
Jones (670,000 avg) does have a higher average per UFC PPV than GSP (550,000 avg), but GSP does have more overall buys. We note both Jones and GSP were on two of the bigger shows in UFC history as they were on the UFC 94 (920K PPV buys) and UFC 100 (1,600,000 PPV buys) cards although GSP was either the main event (BJ Penn) or in the co-main (Thiago Alves) on those shows while Jones was on the undercards.
Top UFC PPV draws
Georges St. Pierre – 11,655,000 PPV buys in 21 UFC PPVs
Anderson Silva – 8,670,000 buys in 16 UFC PPVs
Jon Jones – 7,375,000 PPV buys in 11 UFC PPVs
Brock Lesnar – 6,580,000 PPV buys in 7 UFC PPVs (940,00 PPV avg)
Cain Velasquez – 4,540,000 PPV buys in 9 UFC PPVs
wtf who wrote this?
Jones with 670 avg buys? what, did you take the ppvs of each time he fought on the card and made the caluclation? Thats insane. Jones done 670k+ buys once in his life and you’re saying its his average?
Go to blue book section of this website, wait for it to load, hit ctrl+f, type jones, and see for yourself wha this numbers are. He hasn’t done anything close to 670k avrage and realistically I would ball park his average at 500k maybe 525k.
Jason,
Are you looking at all the cards a fighter is on or only where they are headlining? It’s probably more accurate to look only at fights where the fighter is in the main event. I think that’s a more reasonable comparison to boxing.