Tyson Fury Wembley Defense Sold 85,000 tickets In Hours

We know that British Heavyweight title fights are big sellers for outdoor stadiums and WBC World champ Tyson Fury is the latest example of it. This, after tickets for his mandatory defense April 23rd went on sale Wednesday afternoon in the U.K. and sold the full allotment in just three hours.

Frank Warren and Queensberry Promotions confirmed the massive ticket sales success on social early Wednesday evening in the U.K.,

👏 85,000 Tickets Sold In 3 Hours! Application Submitted To Extend Capacity to 100,000!🔥

🎟 5,000 Coach Tickets to be released and Limited Platinum tickets remain via @TicketmasterUK

Full story here: https://t.co/rXJqLuTO3I pic.twitter.com/V9A5BueTH7

— Frank Warren (@frankwarren_tv) March 2, 2022

“I always imagined that this fight wouldn’t be a hard sell so I am happy we opted to stage it in the biggest and best venue in the UK.,” Warren said on the Queensberry website.

“This illustrates just what a big draw Tyson has become, his personality is infectious and he truly is a champion of the people.

“He is also the No.1 heavyweight in the world and one of the most recognised sportsmen on the planet. I am thrilled that we are bringing him back to Britain to perform on the biggest stage of all against (his mandatory WBC challenger) and a domestic dust-up that will be the biggest boxing event of the year.

“I would like to take this opportunity to thank the fans for their incredible support of this event and we will be in for some night on April 23 at Wembley Stadium.” 

Tuesday was the official announcement of the date and site of Fury’s first ever title defense in Britain and also his first fight of any kind there in four years.

If you couldn’t tell already, and due to him not bothering to show up at the press conference Tuesday and now, further complaining about promoters not using his likeness to promote the fight, we at BFW will leave the ungrateful, brooding challenger’s name out of our coverage for now, too.

In any event, the fans were buying tickets by the 10s of thousands to see the champ Fury defend and certainly, not for a challenger that was still granted mandatory status, even though he was knocked out cold by 40 year old Russian former champion Alexander Povetkin in August of 2020.

Back to the lightning quick ticket sales- it’s also understood that Warren, Bob Arum of Top Rank (Fury’s U.S. promoter) and Wembley Stadium likely all collaborated to sell large blocks of tickets to Ticketmaster or other third parties to reach the sellout so quickly.

This will be reflected in the secondary market prices for the Fury defense coming in the next few days/weeks, too.

Still, Warren and Queensberry are also petitioning for more seats to become available to make the event potentially the largest outdoor crowd ever in the U.K. for a title bout. And, it’s likely that they will sell those seats, too. Warren needs to get every dollar he can from the gate and from the U.K. PPV and ESPN+ purchases for it, too.

This, after his record bid of $41 million secured the Fury defense.

The good news is, so far, Fury coming to England to defend is a rousing financial success.