Pacquaio vs. Mayweather: Tickets Are Most Expensive Ever On Secondary Market

With two weeks to go before Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao’s May 2 superfight at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand Garden Arena, not a single ticket had been printed. That changed Wednesday, when MGM Grand officials, Mayweather promoter Leonard Ellerbe and Pacquiao promoter Bob Arum finally reached an agreement on ticket allocation.

The ticket snafu delayed the inevitable scrum to score seats to Mayweather-Pacquiao, but it hasn't stopped the fight from becoming the most expensive ticket in sports history. The average price of a Mayweather-Pacquiao ticket on the secondary market was $10,973.14 as of Thursday afternoon, with ringside seats selling for approximately $77,500, according to data compiled by TiqIQ. Those numbers obliterated secondary ticket prices for Mayweather’s 2013 match against Canelo Alvarez, which sold at a then-boxing record average of $3,237.70.

“A lot of it is nostalgia, people wanting to go there, knowing that this may be the last time there’s a major boxing event in the United States,” said Chris Matcovich, director of data and operations at TiqIQ, which aggregates resale ticket prices on the secondary market.

As of now, secondary market tickets to Mayweather-Pacquiao are the most expensive of any sporting event since TiqIQ began tracking prices in 2010, surpassing a previous mark set in February at Super Bowl XLIX in Arizona. Arum estimated this week that the sale of roughly 15,000 tickets would produce a $74 million gate based on face value, more than triple that of the Mayweather-Alvarez fight, according to ESPN. Total proceeds, including pay-per-view sales, could exceed an unprecedented $400 million.

Just 500 tickets will be made available for public purchase at face value, with available seat prices ranging from $1,500 to $7,500, according to Yahoo Sports. Arena officials and the promoters will sell the rest to preferred guests or release them to the secondary market, where prices have already reached unprecedented heights.

Face value tickets to Mayweather-Pacquiao go on sale Thursday at 3 p.m. ET and can be bought at Ticketmaster.com, mgmgrand.com or by calling 800-745-3000. But don’t expect those 500 tickets to be available for long. Tickets could sell out in 30 seconds.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s even less than that. My guess is that there’s tens of thousands of people looking to buy tickets,” Matcovich said.