The Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao welterweight championship fight on Saturday in Las Vegas was expected to generate 3 to 4 million pay-per-view buys at nearly $100 each, but thousands also watched the boxing match for free thanks to Twitter’s video-streaming app, Periscope. Lawyers for Las Vegas-based Top Rank, the fight’s co-promoter, were looking into the alleged piracy Monday.
Saturday is Grandpa’s day. If Gramps is a sports fan, he’ll be smiling Saturday because two glamour sports of his youth — boxing and horse racing, former kings of the sporting world in the 1950s — will have awakened to assume their regal status in the American consciousness.
For a boxing match hyped as the “fight of the century,” there sure are a lot of available tickets out there. Here’s where you can find over 1,000 tickets as of Thursday night for Saturday’s showdown between Mayweather and Pacquiao.
Rates for the cheapest rooms at MGM Grand, the host hotel for Saturday’s so-called fight of the century boxing match between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquaio, plummeted Thursday when the room cost fell to $499 a night from more than $1,500 for Friday and Saturday nights, according to Vegas.com.
Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao stared at each other, face-to-face at an MGM Grand press conference, each flanked on Wednesday by two scantily clad young women with the Tecate beer brand prominently displayed on their outfits.
When it comes to hotel room rates in Las Vegas for the fight of the century on May 2, it’s the Wild, Wild West out there. “It’s kind of a free-for-all,” said Vanessa Doleshal, Vegas.com business development manager.
MGM Grand, the host hotel-casino for the megaboxing match between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquaio on May 2, expects a 35 percent revenue windfall from the fight weekend compared to the room, food and beverage revenues on a typical weekend. Some 98 percent of the hotel’s 6,800 rooms are booked, with room rates, as of Friday, starting at $1,600 a night for May 1 and 2.
