Ticket impasse puzzles brokers

Associated Press

LAS VEGAS

Don’t expect to snag a $1,500 nosebleed ticket — or any other ticket — at the box office for the fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao.

Just two weeks before the bout, tickets for the most anticipated fight in recent times have yet to go on public sale, with the two camps and the MGM Grand locked in a standoff over allotments. When they are finally put on sale, only a few will be sold at the listed price.

The impasse has left fans in the dark, and ticket brokers perplexed.

“It’s bizarre, normally there’s a public sale 10 weeks before the fight,” said Connor Gregoire, an analyst for Seatgeek.com. “To our knowledge no one has a printed ticket in their hands right now.”

Mayweather’s promoter, Leonard Ellerbe, said Tuesday that tickets would go on sale this week for the May 2 fight, but MGM officials have been tight-lipped about their availability. The hotel issued a statement Friday saying there would be a “limited number of tickets available for sale” and that it is working with promoters to finalize a date for their release.

The fight was always going to be a tough ticket, with announced prices of $1,500 to $7,500 in the 16,500-seat Grand Garden arena. But those prices have already tripled in the resale market even before tickets are available, and the two camps and the MGM have been dickering over how many seats — and at what price level — each party gets.

Pacquiao’s manager, Michael Koncz, blamed the Mayweather camp for holding up the ticket sales, saying they have refused to sign a term sheet negotiated months earlier that specified the allotments.

“It’s a real mess right now,” Koncz said. “I can only surmise the motivation is greed and an attempt to manipulate the tickets, otherwise why the holdup? I’m more than a little upset they’re not for sale to the public.”

Millions of dollars are at stake in the dispute, because after the MGM takes its share each camp gets a certain percentage of tickets and is able to resell them with ticket brokers for higher prices. The estimated gate for the tickets if they are sold at retail prices is already a staggering $72 million, far surpassing the previous gate record of $20 million for Mayweather’s 2013 fight with Canelo Alvarez.