Mayweather vs. Pacquiao Press Con Last March
IN PHOTO: Eleven-time, five-division world boxing champion Floyd "Money" Mayweather (L) and eight-division world champion Manny "Pac-Man" Pacquiao attend a news conference ahead of their upcoming bout, in Los Angeles, California March 11, 2015. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

The Floyd Mayweather, Jr and Manny Pacquiao showdown on May 2 is getting more lucrative as the fight night draws near. After setting records for ticket prices, fight purses and other financial incentives, the average Joe that would host a home viewing for the boxing match of the century will have to shell out $99 for pay-per-view of high definition quality or $89 for the standard definition.

ESPN’s Darren Rovell was the first to report the figures for the match which the previously set bar of $65 covered during the Mayweather and Canelo Alvarez fight in Sept. 2013. Conservative estimates peg the projected sales at around 3 million pay-per-view buys which could translate to roughly $270 to $300 million.

“The fight is expected to break the record for pay-per-view revenue of $152 million, which was for Mayweather's fight against Alvarez, and most buys (2.5 million), which was for Mayweather's fight against Oscar De La Hoya in 2007,” Rovell wrote in his latest piece for ESPN.

HBO and Showtime which are co-producing the telecast of the event are still in the process of finalizing the deals with the distributors and as soon as those talks are inked, the subscriptions are expected to pour in. The distributors were angling for a 55 to 70 per cent share of the pay-per-view receipts but those were quickly rejected by the television giants. As it stands, the distributors are projected to pocket around 40% of the revenue going by the trend in the sharing of pay-per-view receipts.

The event is expected to be the most lucrative in the history of the sport evidenced by its pricey tickets which will soon be available at the price range of $1,500 to $10,000 for limited numbers. Scalpers are already driving up the prices of such tickets with reports saying that some are charging close to $90,000 per ticket.

Both fighters stand to gain north of $100 million per fighter. The American fighter is the slim favourite of the two but early betting in Las Vegas has been heavy on the Filipino sensation. Mayweather is older by two years as compared to the 36-year-old Pacquiao who is fresh off three straight victories after his knock out loss in the hands of Mexican rival Juan Manuel Marquez.

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