STORY BY ADAM ROGAN
Portuguese soccer player Christiano Ronaldo is probably the most highly paid team athlete in the world, making approximately $20 million per year, not to mention the additional endorsements he receives. Nike alone doubles that for the international superstar.
However, boxer Floyd Mayweather makes considerably more than his ‘footballer’ counterpart, and this was only aided by a certain “Fight of the Century” that took place on Saturday evening.
In the most profitable boxing match ever, Mayweather protected his World Boxing Association Welterweight title in a 12-round unanimous decision and remained undefeated in his victory over
Manny “Pac Man” Pacquiao. However, both Pacquiao and many fans of the sport questioned whether or not the match was called fairly and that Mayweather actually deserved to win the title belt (a belt made with emeralds, worth $1 million on its own).
The fight was held at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada, where Mayweather lives, and was broadcast via Pay-Per-View (PPV) from HBO and Showtime at approximately $100 per television set.
Regardless of the high price, over 2.2 million people paid to see the two men throw punches at one another for an hour.
The traffic was so high that the PPV system glitched, causing millions of people to be unable to view the event and postponing the fight by nearly an hour.
Those who were willing to pay $100 to view generated over $400 million in revenue for Showtime and HBO. That’s $185,000 per minute of fighting.
To scale, purely the PPV sales would be enough to buy half of the teams in the National Hockey League. And although it wasn’t enough to buy any of the teams in Major League Baseball, the one fight made more money than 28 of the 30 MLB teams did all of last season.
Not to mention that some tickets to see the fight live were selling for over $40,000.
However, these are the profits of major companies, which means that the athletes themselves actually must’ve made much less. Right?
Wrong.
Mayweather was guaranteed $41.5 million if he fought, which he clearly did, and earned an additional $40 million as a result of all the PPV revenue. Some believe that these predictions are too modest, and that both Mayweather and Pacquiao will each earn over $100 million for putting on the gloves on Saturday night when all is said and done.
For comparison, Pac Man the boxer made half as much in an hour than Pac-Man the video game made in its first year on the market, the best-selling game of all time at that point.
Regardless of how filthy stinking rich the two boxers are now (not that they weren’t rich before), all I can say is that I would definitely be down for getting paid $185,000 to last one minute against Pac Man’s fists of fury.
Average journalist’s starting yearly salary: About $40,000.
What am I doing with my life?
