Boxing - Mayweather Jr-Alvarez smashes PPV records

Floyd Mayweather's light-middleweight unification fight with Saul "Canelo" Alvarez in Las Vegas smashed existing revenue records.

The bout, won in dominating fashion by Mayweather at the weekend, shattered the previous record held for the highest grossing PPV fight of all time, according to Showtime.

The broadcasters, along with promoters Golden Boy Promotions and Mayweather Promotions, announced that 2.2 million PPV units were bought, generating $150 million in revenue.
"This is what we anticipated when we formed our partnership with CBS/Showtime - record-breaking results," Mayweather Promotions chief executive Leonard Ellerbe told ESPN.

"We're just ecstatic and we want to thank the fans for supporting this promotion. It was a lot of hard work.
"Everybody busted their behinds but Floyd has tremendous star power and the ability to attract new fans with the support of Showtime and CBS with their plethora of platforms that we were able to utilise. It's just been remarkable. It's the best working with the best."
Mayweather himself had held the previous record, after his fight with Oscar De La Hoya in 2007 generated $136m from 2.48 million pay-per-view buys.
ESPN reported that the Mayweather-De La Hoya fight would be worth $153m today, after adjustments for inflation.
With not all the buys yet accounted for, the ESPN report claimed it is likely that Saturday's fight will also break that PPV buys record.
"I'm very happy for the fighters. They will make substantial amounts of money from the upside, a lot more than their guarantees," Golden Boy Promotions chief executive Richard Schaefer told ESPN. "But I am happy as well for the sport of boxing.
"This is a vote of confidence for the sport and one would have to be an idiot to keep saying this is a dying sport like some people have said. This shows you the strength of the sport of boxing and that boxing today continues to deliver huge numbers that very few other sports can deliver in one night.
"This fight will gross over $200m when you take into account all of the revenues. Besides pay-per-view, there's the gate, the foreign television, the sponsors, the closed circuit, the merchandise. Many of those (revenue streams) also broke records. In this fight records were broken."
The numbers mean that Mayweather could stand to make over $100m from the fight, having already been guaranteed $41.5m. Alvarez's basic take-home was in the region of $12m.
Ellerbe added: "Floyd Mayweather Jr been saying it over and over for years - he's most dominant athlete in all of sports and he's getting paid accordingly."
Another record to fall on Saturday was the gate receipts at the MGM Grand - a sell-out crowd of 16,146 generated $20,003,150 to top the $18,419,200 from the Mayweather-De La Hoya fight.
"Records are here to be broken," Schaefer said. "People told me in 2007 with Mayweather Jr-De La Hoya that it was impossible to break the Mike Tyson-Evander Holyfield pay-per-view record, that we were living in a different time. Well, you know what? We broke the record.
"This is not the end. Records will continue to be broken and as I am standing here we will break the records again. That's what motivates me - to get more and more people interested in boxing and if the best fight the best, you will see more records fall."