While the Nate Diaz vs. Jorge Masvidal boxing match was surprisingly entertaining, the event appears to have been a financial failure: Diaz is currently suing promoter Juan Mio for $9 million in unpaid bills, and his lawsuit claims that Juan Mio owner Solomon Engel “may have to declare bankruptcy to avoid paying the debt to Diaz.”
Well, Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer reported on the pay-per-view sales for this event, and they were bad. TNA Wrestling was bad.
“It went horribly on pay-per-view, but it did in TNA,” Meltzer said. “I'm not exaggerating. I knew it wasn't going to work, but I was really surprised at how bad it went. Nobody bought the fight. People are tired of watching MMA fighters boxing.”
TNA Wrestling sometimes has PPVs that exceed 60,000, but sometimes they fail; a recent event only sold 5,000. The math for a combat sports event is that a promotion usually needs more than 100,000 buys to be financially viable. At $49.99 per buy, that works out to roughly $5 million in sales. In this case, that's less than half of Nate Diaz's agreed-upon purse.
But it wasn't all bad business news. Diaz vs. Masvidal was a remarkable success in terms of attendance: The event sold out Honda Center in Anaheim, with 13,767 tickets sold and grossing $1.25 million in ticket sales, according to the California State Athletic Commission.
That's a respectable attendance, but it still pales in comparison to the $3.7 million that Nate Diaz took in against Jake Paul last August. And as it quickly becomes clear, when it comes to these random boxing matches, no one is as quick to open their purse strings as they are for UFC bouts.
Maybe they're tired of watching UFC fighters box, or maybe they just don't have $50 to spend on an entertaining match, but it's also hard to ignore how heavily pirated the event was, judging by the number of links promoted on social media on the day of the fight.
