Fewer than 60,000 tickets were sold for the fight between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson last month at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, according to documents obtained by USA TODAY Sports.
About 6,500 tickets were given away, according to the documents, as the heavyweight bout livestreamed Nov. 15 by Netflix fell short of hopes for ticket sales.
On multiple occasions Paul said the fight would draw 90,000 spectators to AT&T Stadium. That would have required the sale of 10,000 standing-room-only seats at the 80,000-seat venue, home of the Dallas Cowboys. But only 59,666 tickets were sold and another 6,437 were given away for a total of 66,103 tickets distributed, according to a tax report submitted by the fight promoter, Holden Boxing LLC.
Holden Boxing worked for Most Valuable Promotions (MVP), which was co-founded by Paul, and partnered with Netflix on the fight. Nexflix reported the fight was the most-streamed sporting event ever and that concurrent streams peaked at 65 million.
Mike Tyson (black gloves) fights Jake Paul (silver gloves) at AT&T Stadium. (Kevin Jairaj, Imagn Images)
The ticket sales generated $18.1 million, more than any other U.S. boxing event outside of Nevada, according to MVP.
The total proceeds subject to state taxes was $22 million − which included $3.6 million for tickets given away.
For a combative sports event, Texas taxes the amount for gross receipts on ticket sales at a 3-percent rate, which resulted in a tax bill of about $650,000, according to the tax report.
This story was originally published by USA TODAY Sports.
