According to Dan Rafael of espn.com, The Floyd Mayweather – Andre Berto bout from last Saturday did not break 550,000 buys.
Industry sources said it could have done as low as 400,000 buys.
“Being generous, it might hit 550,000 buys,” one source said.
“I think Floyd is a victim of his own success,” said Stephen Espinoza of Showtime. “No matter what we did following that massive May 2 event, it was almost guaranteed to be viewed as a letdown. Was Mayweather-Berto the biggest Mayweather fight ever? No. But we got four very entertaining fights on the pay-per-view card and a historic night in that Floyd announced his retirement. All in all, we’re very happy with the event as a whole.”
As for the low sales, Espinoza offered a supposed cause.
“We know that a large chunk of the audience watches Floyd to see him lose,” he said. “And for those people, the best chance of somebody beating Floyd was Manny Pacquiao. So once Floyd beat Manny, and beat him definitively, a lot of the intrigue was gone. If Manny couldn’t beat him, nobody would beat him. So they didn’t buy the fight. I also think we were suffering a little bit of a hangover over from May 2.”
Espinoza acknowledged that the selection of a better and more dangerous opponent, such as Amir Khan or Keith Thurman, might have come close to the 1 million sales mark Mayweather usually generates.
“In short, the Mayweather deal has far exceeded our expectations financially. In 2½ years, we had six pay-per-view events that generated over 10 million pay-per-view buys and $800 million in gross revenue from domestic pay-per-view. No matter how you slice it, this deal is a huge win for Showtime, CBS and Floyd.”
Espinoza said that at some point he will talk to Mayweather, a five-division champion, about the prospect of returning to the ring.
“We’ll let some time pass before we have that conversation,” Espinoza said. “He’s been absolutely consistent in saying this is his last fight. He seemed very content and at peace with that after the fight. We show some of that in the locker room after the fight on the ‘All Access’ epilogue episode on Saturday night. It was like a farewell. But there will definitely be some texts and phone conversations and attempts to take his temperature on an ongoing basis.
“Personally, I don’t see a return to boxing for him in the near future. He’s been doing it for 19 years, and this countdown to his retirement has been in his head since he signed this deal. He felt a duty to play out all six fights in the timetable he promised he would, and now, he feels he has nothing left to prove. Where he’ll be in a year, nobody knows. But he seems pretty content with his decision.”