There’s a lot of comparisons between the Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor superfight and the Mayweather vs. Pacquiao superfight that went down in 2015. That’s to be expected when trying to figure out things like how many PPVs it may sell, what ticket prices may be, and other metrics. But one way UFC president Dana White doesn’t want the two to be similar in is with how tickets are distributed.
Due to all the promotion companies behind Mayweather vs. Pacquiao butting heads and refusing to compromise, tickets didn’t go on sale until last second. In the end, only an estimate 2000 were made available for purchase by the general public. During a visit to Jimmy Kimmel Live, White assured everyone that’s not the way things will go for Mayweather vs. McGregor.
“The way that we’ve structured the deal, because there’s a lot of slippery things that could go on with the tickets – and that did happen with the Mayweather vs. Pacquiao fight – people couldn’t get tickets,” he said. “The worst thing about the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight is I bought 10 tickets to that fight, that’s the worst thing about it. And I’ve lived in Vegas and I’m connected to all the guys that have the tickets. I didn’t get my tickets until Friday before the fight.”
“If you were coming in from out of town or whatever, it was a complete disaster. And to make sure that doesn’t happen, we’re actually buying all our own tickets. So I’m buying 20 tickets, Mayweather’s buying his own tickets, Conor’s buying his own tickets, Showtime, the UFC, we’re all buying our own tickets.”
Hopefully there are clauses in place that keep Mayweather from buying up several thousand tickets and selling them for double their face value on secondary market sites. But it sounds like White and the gang realize there needs to be a legit way for the fans to buy tickets from the source.
They’re also doing their best to keep bots from scooping everything up. Unfortunately that means if you haven’t already started the process for buying #MayMac tickets, you’re already out of luck. People hoping to buy tickets had to sign up for the Ticketmaster Verified Fan service by Thursday July 20th to prove they’re humans. On Monday July 24th, Ticketmaster will randomly select Verified Fans and send them a code that allows them the opportunity to buy two tickets. Yep, you literally have to win a lottery for the right to spend thousands of dollars on tickets.
Its times like this I’m glad I prefer to watch my combat sports at home, in a seat that doesn’t cost $10,000 and drinking beer that isn’t $15. At this point, the $99.95 price for the pay-per-view almost sounds like a steal. It’s certainly less of a headache.
