This weekend’s pound-for-pound super fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao in Las Vegas is poised to bring in more than three times the sponsorship revenue generated by any other boxing event in history, according to ESPN.com.
Mayweather puts his WBC and WBA versions of the world welterweight title on the line against WBO champion Pacquiao at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on Saturday in a bout that is expected to generate more than $400m (€371.7m) in total, thanks largely to global pay-per-view television sales.
According to ESPN, this is set to be topped up by $13.2m from contracts with five title sponsors, led by $5.6m from Mexican beer brand Tecate – a long-time sponsor of Pacquiao fights.
The amount contributed by Tecate alone surpasses the previous high, estimated to be in the region of $3.5m-$4m for previous Mayweather bouts. Paramount Pictures/Skydance Productions will promote its Terminator Genisys and Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation films in association with the fight, while the Weinstein Company will promote its Southpaw feature. The three films will run trailers on the pay-per-view broadcast.
The sponsorship roster is completed by the Mexican Tourism Board and Smart Communications, a telecommunications company from Pacquiao’s homeland of the Philippines and another established backer of the fighter. Event promoters Mayweather Promotions and Top Rank set the minimum sponsorship bid at $1m, according to ESPN.
Tecate beat rival brand, and previous Mayweather sponsor Corona, for category exclusivity to the event. Its brand director Gustavo Guerra told ESPN.com: “We have been sponsoring boxing since 2007 so we have been associating ourselves with boxing and been waiting for so many years for a fight like this. We know in the past we have had great fights but nothing is going to be compared to what is already called the fight of the century. We wanted to increase our brand awareness and we will achieve it with this fight.