Fury-Wallin fight was dismal box office failure

The official numbers are in and there’s only one obvious conclusion: the Tyson Fury – Otto Wallin heavyweight battle earlier this month in Las Vegas was a dismal box office failure.

Boxingscene.com had the story Tuesday night with specific figures from the Nevada State Athletic Commission about the September 14th fight held at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas:

Fury-Wallin Generates Nearly $1 Million From 3,577 Tickets Sold https://t.co/O7mRQFUanB pic.twitter.com/ZfEUDn1uoB

— BoxingScene.com (@boxingscene) September 25, 2019

As the NSAC provided on Tuesday, just a little over 3,500 tickets were actually sold to the contest generating a live gate of just under $1 million.

Those numbers are alarming, when you consider the T-Mobile Arena seats around 18,000 at capacity for boxing. And, you add to it: the fact the Top Rank Boxing is paying Fury a reported $20 million dollars per fight on a multi-fight deal. And, there’s not much way to spin it other than, a huge financial loss.

Of course none of this was unexpected, as Fury was choosing to fight in the desert again, against another European unknown in Wallin.

After suffering an awful cut (above) in the third round, Fury battled on, bleeding and won a lopsided 12 round decision over Wallin, who was clearly outclassed by the “Gypsy King.” 

At least when Fury fought against Germany’s Tom Schwarz at the MGM Grand Arena, there were nearly 5,500 tickets sold and only 1,200 or so given away.

Top Rank gave away nearly 4,000 tickets for the Fury – Wallin fight to try and make the attendance look better on ESPN+. ESPN doesn’t typically share its audience info off their streaming service. So, there’s no way to know what viewership was for the fight.

Back to the site/revenue. As a reference point, when Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin fought for the Undisputed Middleweight Title for the first time three years ago this month, they did so at the same T-Mobile Arena. And, there were 17,000 plus tickets sold generating a live gate of $27 million. That was the third largest live gate purse in Las Vegas boxing history at the time.

Again, Fury’s fight with Wallin was no comparison to the wildly popular Mexican hero Jr. Middleweight champ, Alvarez battling the Undisputed Middleweight champ, Golovkin, three years ago.

Still, it’s obvious that for Top Rank, Bob Arum and Fury that they will have to find a new venue/segment of fight fans if he they are going to put on another non-title show.

However, it’s believed that Fury will get a rematch with WBC Heavyweight Champ, Deontay Wilder, in February. That is provided that Wilder wins his fight with Luis Ortiz on November 23rd.