HBO announced that Manny Pacquiao’s dominant victory over Antonio Margarito generated 1.15 million pay-per-view buys and $64 million in pay-per-view revenue.
Pacquiao joins Mike Tyson as the only fighter in the pay-per-view era to generate at least 1 million buys for a fight in three consecutive years.
“We’re thrilled with the PPV performance,” said HBO senior vice president Mark Taffet. “With the breadth of interest from sports, entertainment and news media following Manny and the fight, boxing has tremendous momentum as we finish 2010 and head into a very exciting 2011.”
In 2008, Pacquiao-De La Hoya scored 1.25 million buys and in 2009, Pacquiao-Cotto generated 1.2 million buys.
“I think the fight with Margarito did very, very well and we are constantly trying to figure out how to better our performances,” Top Rank promoter Bob Arum said. “Considering where we were when we announced the fight, nobody would have believed we would have done this. They said Margarito was disgraced and people talked about boycotting it.