The much ballyhooed bout between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Canelo Alvarez has yet another accolade to add to its already gaudy reputation: The highest-grossing pay-per-view event of all-time.
CBS/Showtime on Thursday announced that the Sept. 14 fight generated at least 2.2 million U.S. buys, with nearly $150 million in revenues to date. It’s quite the coup for CBS/Showtime and Mayweather; critics seemed certain that the boxer’s age didn’t warrant the six-fight, two-and-a-half year deal CBS/Showtime granted him, ending his career with HBO/Time Warner with whom he had been his entire career.
In Mexico, where the fight was broadcast for free, a reported number of eight out of every 10 households watched the fight, according to Golden Boy Promotions. It did a national rating of 41.5 — or 22 million viewers.
The record for the most pay-per-view buys is the 2007 fight between Floyd Mayweather and Oscar de la Hoya, which generated 2.5 million buys. Network officials said the numbers are still being compiled, but Mayweather-Canelo generated more revenue than the 2007 fight in part because of differing price-points for standard-definition and high-definition.
The fight at the very least generated the second-most pay-per-views of all-time.
“This is what we anticipated when we formed our partnership with CBS/Showtime, record breaking results,” Mayweather Promotions chief executive Leonard Ellerbe told ESPN.com Dan Rafael. “We’re just ecstatic and we want to thank the fans for supporting this promotion. It was a lot of hard work.