The Mayweather-Pacquiao Ticket Debacle Is Unprecedented

Since Brad Schy quit his job as an attorney and opened a ticket brokerage company in 1990, no boxing event has spurred more interest than the Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight scheduled for May 2 in Las Vegas. But no fight has had more odd pre-bout circumstances, either.

After haggling from both fighters’ sides, tickets for the matchup at the MGM Garden Grand Arena were finally scheduled to go on sale on Thursday afternoon, ending a saga that had brokers scrambling, wondering about the delay and even if the fight would get canceled.

“It’s very strange,” Schy said in a telephone interview on Wednesday night. “I’ve never seen a stranger situation in my whole life.”

Schy runs Musical Chairs Tickets, a brokerage based in Brentwood, California. Several times in the past couple of months he was told tickets would be available, only to be disappointed when the promises were not kept.

On Wednesday, visitors to the Musical Chairs website could purchase tickets ranging from $5,495 in the upper levels to $89,500 on the floor. Schy said he had orders from customers in several countries. At that time, though, no tickets had been printed or delivered because the Mayweather and Pacquiao camps hadn’t officially signed a contract, even though the fight was 10 days away. Tickets are typically printed and sold several weeks or months in advance.

“This is very uncommon,” Schy said. “Not only is it uncommon, it’s never happened.”

For the fight, only an estimated 500-700 seats in the 16,800-seat stadium were expected to be available for purchase to the public at face values ranging from $1,500 to $7,500. People were limited to buying four tickets apiece. More than 90 percent of the tickets were allotted to MGM Resorts International, sponsors and the Mayweather and Pacquiao camps. Those parties could then decide how to distribute the tickets and how much to charge.

Schy said it was nearly impossible for him or anyone to purchase any of the 500-700 publicly available tickets because they would sell out in minutes. Still, he said he could get tickets from his contacts within the industry. He knew he would pay much higher than face value, but he planned on reselling them for a small profit.

“We’re confident in our ability to get the tickets that we’ve promised people and get them their seats,” Schy said.

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Even before the tickets were available, Schy said he had already sold orders for the second-highest price in the company’s history, trailing only the Academy Awards from a few years ago. He wouldn’t divulge the exact price, although he said he had not sold any of the $89,500 tickets.

“Let’s just say it’s a good deal over $25,000 per ticket,” he said.

StubHub, the dominant player in the online secondary ticket market, instituted a policy in which it did not list any tickets available for the fight until they went on sale to the public. However, StubHub communications manager Cameron Papp said Mayweather-Pacquiao would be the most popular fight in StubHub’s history, which dates back to 2000.

Although StubHub wasn’t selling tickets before Thursday, other secondary sellers such as Musical Chairs, All Access Tickets and Tickets of America had listings available online. None of those websites had received tickets, but they had been promised them. If an event is canceled, brokers typically refund people who have ordered tickets.

Before this fight, the most expensive boxing tickets Schy sold were for the Mayweather-Oscar De La Hoya bout on May 5, 2007.

Jae C. Hong/Associated Press/Associated Press

“It was humungous,” Schy said. “But nothing like this.”

The average listing price on Wednesday was more than $11,000 per ticket on TiqIQ, an online aggregator of event tickets. Since the company was founded in 2010, the highest average ticket price for a boxing event was $3,237 for the Mayweather-Saul Alvarez middleweight title fight on Sept. 14, 2013. Chris Matcovich, TiqIQ’s director of data and operations, said Mayweather-Pacquiao would rival February’s Super Bowl in terms of prices.

“It’s going to be one of the most expensive [events],” Matcovich said. “We definitely will see something similar to that here.”

And yet, the circumstances left ticket brokers puzzled and frustrated. Oren Schneider, who runs New York-based Precision Concierge, LLC, said he was promised he could buy tickets from one of the fighters’ camps. He already received an order for $40,000-$50,000 per ticket, although he said several of his corporate clients and some wealthy individuals were waiting before the fight’s contract was signed and details were finalized.

“It’s very, very hard to make a market and set the prices,” Schneider said. “Nothing’s ever been done like this before, the way they’re handling the tickets. I find it very annoying, actually.”

For most boxing fights, big-name actors, athletes and musicians are usually able to get tickets at face value or even free. However, Schy and Schneider said they expected fewer celebrities than usual to attend the fight because the Mayweather and Pacquiao camps are unwilling to give many tickets away for free or sell them at face value.

“They want to make as much money as possible,” Schneider said. “In the first, second row, you usually see a bunch of people you know. That won’t be the case.”

Schy said, “I don’t see any reason why they would comp any tickets." 

During the past 25 years, Schy has attended most of the top sporting events in the world, including championship boxing fights, Super Bowls, World Series, NBA Finals, Stanley Cup Finals and golf’s major tournaments. Still, he won’t be in the MGM Grand Garden Arena for the Mayweather-Pacquiao matchup.

“I’ve got to be frank with you,” Schy said. “The prices of this have priced me out. I’m gonna watch it on closed circuit.”