Ticket Sales Show “Cash Cow” Floyd Is Really Just A Box Office Goat

by William Trillo If you have the patience to sit through one of Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s self serving diatribes you will undoubtedly hear him tell you that when it comes to ticket sales and PPV buys he is the “Cash Cow” in boxing. So far ticket sales for his upcoming fight with Juan Manuel Marquez tell us otherwise. Tickets for “Number One/Numero Uno” went on sale this past Friday morning and as I sit to write this article late Monday night, a quick check of Ticketmaster reveals that there are plenty of tickets left for the Las Vegas battle….PLENTY! Oh sure all the 150 dollar tickets are gone, and one could easily argue that Marquez fans are the ones who gobbled up those low priced seats. But in every other price range there a tickets-o-plenty. In fact if someone wanted to snag 10 ringside seats up (most allowed in one transaction) right now…they could. The only way all the ringside and other expensive seats sell is if Floyd buys them himself, goes to his favorite night club and throws them up in the air the way he does fake hundred dollar bills. But unlike the counterfeit hundreds (allegedly), most of these tickets will lie on the floor for the janitor to sweep up. When Super Fights and/or Mega Fights tickets go on sale we were getting used to the promoter announcing in the first 2 hours that tickets have been “SOLD OUT” but arrangements have been made for closed circuit venues to open up on the night of the fight so everyone will be able to witness the battle. No such announcement was made last Friday and it’s highly doubtful we will be receiving one anytime soon or at all for that matter. In fact, the only times in recent history that announcement was made either the names De La Hoya, Hatton or Pacquiao were attached. Not coincidentally, the only time Floyd has been involved in a box office bonanza is when he had a dance partner like Oscar and Ricky. Floyd may be a whizz on Dancing With the Stars, but he’s got two left feet when it comes to waltzing with the Benjamins. The fact is Floyd Mayweather Jr. was not a pay-per-view star before his 2007 fights with Oscar De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton, the numbers speak for themselves: Mayweather, already a two-division Champ when he took on Arturo Gatti for a super lightweight title in his first pay-per-view fight in June 2005 did 365,000 buys, and you could plausibly argue that it was the vastly more popular Gatti who pulled in the majority of the buyers. Floyd’s fight with Zab Judah for a 147 pound strap in April 2006 sold 375,000 PPV buys even though Floyd’s promoter at that time, Bob Arum, predicted it would do more than the 1.4 million buys De La Hoya-Felix Trinidad Jr. did in 1999. Mayweather’s “fight” against flavor of the moment Carlos Baldomir in November 2006 did a paltry 300,000 buys. The numbers don’t lie and the truth will be revealed when anemic PPV numbers come in after the fight. In this “mega-fight” with Juan Manuel Marquez – which HBO somehow decided was worthy of the 24/7 treatment – Floyd won’t get any help from his dance partner, because Marquez, for all his accomplishments, has never been a box office PPV star. Even when he fought Manny Pacquiao in a very highly anticipated rematch, HBO reported 400,000 buys, which was good numbers for the little guys back then, but this a new day and age. The majority of the seats at the house for the Pacquiao-Marquez fight were filled by Filipinos, not Mexicans. And it’s fair to assume Pacquiao fans generated the lion’s share of the PPV purchases as well. In their efforts to generate sales for this fight, the press tour was taken to England in a desperate venture to try and bolster PPV buys. But the Brit tabloid “The Sun” laid to rest any hopes this promotion was going to be a hit in England. The Sun said bluntly, “Floyd Mayweather was in London with Juan Manuel Marquez to promote his fight on July 18. It’s a fight Mayweather is expected to win. He will be too big for Marquez. The reason they are in Britain? The promoters believe it will generate big pay-per-view numbers here! At 4.30am in the morning! Dream on.” Given the state of the economy and the slow start to ticket sales it is very realistic to believe this fight may do only 400,000 in PPV buys and if it breaks the 500,000 mark everyone involved should consider themselves lucky at best. Everyone but HBO, the promoters and the fighters that is. :) If the PPV numbers come in far lower than expected, HBO will certainly be second-guessing its decision to pour time and considerable money into another one of their 24/7 series. Time-Warner, which owns HBO, might also get on the horn to the network president Ross Greenburg and ask him how he so misjudged the potential of this fight. Fact is, any boxing industry analyst could have told HBO that given Marquez’s anonymity beyond the Mexican community, and the over-inflated value Mayweather has given himself as a PPV draw, going for a 24/7 on what would seem to be a tune-up – albeit a difficult one – for “Money May” was a very questionable proposition. If HBO had said no to Floyd on the 24/7, what would he have done, gone to Showtime? This was probably seen as an investment by HBO in a huge Pacquiao-Mayweather showdown, but given Floyd’s aversion to be being hit, that fight may never take place. The biggest losers on this fight will be the promoters. It’s very conceivable that Golden Boy and the respective Mayweather and Marquez promotional companies, who like all promoters had to pay the purses on a PPV fight – are going to lose their proverbial butts on this one. The fighters also lose, too, because their contracts include a percentage of the PPV revenue. Sorry, but there is no way in hell anybody who speaks only Spanish gives a darn about Mayweather, and in my humble opinion we’ve seen way too much 24/7 of all the Mayweather’s, especially Floyd Jr. But Mayweather Jr. probably demanded it, and HBO invested the money just to make him happy, not to mention it’s a good way to suck up to “Pretty Boy” just in case he does grow a set of cajones and fights Pacquiao somewhere down the line. (I’ve already predicted he won’t). Bottom line here, Mayweather is throwing around HBO money like the dollar bills he tosses around at strip clubs and he is getting away with it. Nevermind what you are reading elsewhere that Mayweather is boxing’s true reality star and that we can hardly wait for HBO’s 24/7 to begin. That’s just more sucking up to HBO and Mayweather by the Fat Man. The numbers speak for themselves and right now the dismal ticket sales are pointing to Mayweather vs. Marquez being one of the biggest PPV busts of all time. http://pound4pound.com/BillysBoxingBlog/2009/05/26/ticket-sales-show-%E2%80%9Ccash-cow%E2%80%9D-floyd-is-really-just-a-box-office-goat/