THE UK television broadcaster for Floyd Mayweather vs Conor McGregor has finally been revealed, just weeks before the fight itself.
Sky Sports have won the rights to what could become the highest-grossing boxing match in history, and it will air on their Sky Sports Box Office pay-per-view platform. The price is set at £19.95.
The news was announced today amid heightened speculation over who would air the fight in the UK. BT Sport – who broadcast UFC cards in the UK- were in the running due to their relationship with the company and ITV were also allegedly interested.
However Sky prevailed, with promoter Eddie Hearn previously discussing how Mayweather-McGregor is all but certain to secure more PPV buys than the outstanding middleweight clash between Gennady Golovkin and Canelo Alvarez on September 16.
“You look at Canelo against Golovkin, whether you wrap that into a night [with a UK card]. If it’s not pay-per-view [on Sky], we won’t get it because someone else will put it on pay-per-view,” he told Boxing News back in June.
“Then you have Mayweather against McGregor, which I don’t like, but does a stack load of pay-per-views,” he continued.
“With that one, as long as you’re honest in your selling; ‘we don’t know what will happen, it could be a mismatch, but here it is.’ What you can’t do is call it a great 50-50 fight, but if we [Sky] don’t do it, someone else will.”
Golovkin-Canelo has been picked up by BoxNation, who will launch their own PPV platform with the fight.
Mayweather-McGregor will be shown on Showtime PPV in America, with a price reportedly set at $89.95 ($99.95 in HD).
Though the fight pits a boxing debutant against a future Hall of Famer and one of the best defensive fighters of all time, Mayweather-McGregor has garnered enormous attention and could break the revenue records set by Mayweather’s 2015 meeting with Manny Pacquiao.
