19.04.08 Calzaghe v Hopkins... a box office flop ?

Despite the fight being billed as a war between two future hall of famer's, the ticket sales have been decidedly poor.

Mulitple leading US news sites are reporting that there are several thousands seats available in the venue and that the British turn out, expected to be around 15,000 is only around half of that.

Bernard Hopkins, despite being a great fighter, has never really been a huge ticket seller despite his great record.

As a result of this, there are seats available in all price brackets.

Kevin Iole at Yahoo Sports wrote:

"Ticket sales at Planet Hollywood are abysmal for his bout on Saturday at the Thomas & Mack Center on the UNLV campus with light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins, a rare match between a pair of future Hall of Famers.

On Wednesday morning, one could purchase eight prime seats, in Row J in the ritzy $1,500 section, simply by clicking a few buttons on the Planet Hollywood website.

When guys such as Oscar De La Hoya, Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao fight, tickets aren’t available in Row J 10 minutes after they go on sale. For Calzaghe, months after the fight was announced and only a little more than 72 hours before a fight that matches perhaps the best super middleweight ever against the reigning light heavyweight king, great seats, as the saying goes, were still available.

It should be a match of epic proportions, but instead it’s dying an agonizingly slow and painful death. Promoters already returned $2 million of the $11 million site fee that Planet Hollywood owner Robert Earl had paid. Earl’s looking at a loss of an easy $5 million, perhaps more."

Tim Smith of the NYC Times wrote:

"It could be a sparse crowd, and they may well be rooting for Calzaghe, because ticket sales have been slow. Part of that is because floor-level seats are going for $1,500. With Calzaghe being a relative unknown on the American sports scene and Hopkins (48-4-1, 32 KOs) always being a poor ticket seller, it's understandable that the box office hasn't been boffo so far. "

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