Have you ever wondered how a spectacle like Anthony Joshua v Jake Paul actually prints money?

Dec 20, 2025
5 min read

Not in the vague “it’ll be huge” way. I mean, where does the money physically come from, who writes the cheques, and how big are those cheques likely to be.

Finn’s done a wee bit of digging, and the punchline is this: this fight is not built like old school pay per view. It is built like a modern streaming blockbuster. And once you understand that, the whole money machine clicks into place.

The twist that changes everything

In the classic model, a big fight is a pay per view funnel:

People buy the event.The buys create the pot.The pot pays everyone.

But this one ran through Netflix, which means there is no traditional “pay per view buy counter” driving the economics. Instead, the whole event behaves like a global streaming tentpole.

That shifts the centre of gravity from “how many bought it” to:

How big was Netflix’s rights cheque.
How much brand money could be stacked around it.
How much the live gate added on top.

If you remember nothing else, remember this:

On Netflix, the event’s biggest single revenue stream is usually the rights fee.That is the anchor. Everything else is meaningful, but secondary.

The money map in one glance

There are only a few places money can come from:

Netflix pays the rights holder to stream the fight globally.
Fans pay for tickets to sit in the arena.
Brands pay to be seen, associated, and mentioned.
Fans pay for merchandise, online and in the venue.
Smaller add ons, like hospitality packages, betting tie ins, and shoulder content.

Now let’s turn that into numbers.

1) The big cheque: Netflix rights fee

How it works

Netflix negotiates a fee with the rights holder, typically the promoter. That fee can include:

A guaranteed payment, paid regardless of viewership.
Performance escalators, triggered by outcomes such as total viewing minutes, peak live concurrency, and in some cases subscriber impact.
Extra payments for shoulder programming, like countdown shows, embedded docs, and fight week content.

How much is it

Netflix rarely discloses the number, so any figure here is a model, not a leaked contract.

But you can reverse engineer the logic.

If public reporting is even vaguely correct that the overall purse discussions were in the very high nine figures territory, then a 19,600 seat arena gate cannot carry it alone. The rights cheque has to be the engine.

A practical range looks like this:

Low case: $80m to $120m
Base case: $120m to $170m
High case: $170m plus, if escalators kicked in and Netflix treated it as a flagship live moment

If you are looking for the “why”, it is simple. Netflix is not buying a fight. It is buying:

A global appointment viewing moment.
Subscriber sign ups.
Subscriber retention.
And, on ad tiers, premium advertising inventory.

Netflix can justify big cheques because it monetises the audience in ways a pay per view platform cannot.

2) The live gate: tickets, VIP, and hospitality

The factual constraint

The arena seats roughly 19,600. That caps the total ticket inventory. You cannot sell a million seats. You can only make the seats more expensive.

How the gate really works

The gate is not one price. It is a ladder:

A large volume of “normal” seats.
A smaller block of premium seats.
A tiny number of extremely expensive floor, VIP, and hospitality packages.

Influencer era fights often sell a “barbell” like this. Plenty of accessible seats, and a handful of eye watering experiences.

What the gate might be

Without audited gate disclosure, we model:

Low case: $5m to $10m
Base case: $10m to $20m
High case: $20m to $35m

A useful anchor is that other crossover boxing events have posted disclosed gates in the high teens in bigger venues. In a 19,600 seat arena, the middle of the range is usually where reality lands.

Important detail people miss: the promoter does not keep every dollar. The venue takes its slice, there are comps, there are holds, there are settlement terms, and there is always leakage. The “gross gate” is not the same as the “net to promoter”.

3) Sponsorship: brands buying attention and association

If Netflix is the anchor, sponsorship is the accelerator.

What sponsors buy

Sponsors pay for:

Ring canvas placement.
Corner and robe branding.
On screen graphics and mentions.
Product integration and activations.
Social packages via the fighters’ channels.
In some cases, direct fighter endorsement deals separate from the event.

Who gets paid

There are two overlapping pools:

Event sponsorship, paid to the promoter and rights holders.
Fighter sponsorship, paid directly to Joshua’s team and Paul’s team, often tied to social distribution.

How much is sponsorship likely to be

A global Netflix event has a lot of commercial surface area, and brands love “shared moments”.

A plausible model:

Title partner: $5m to $20m
Major partners: $1m to $7m each
Suppliers and official partners: $100k to $750k each

Total pot estimate:

Low case: $10m to $20m
Base case: $20m to $45m
High case: $45m to $80m

Again, you cannot claim precision without contracts, but you can see the logic: global distribution pushes sponsorship value up, and the fighters’ combined reach makes the social component unusually valuable.

4) Merchandise: the quiet money

Merch looks small next to a nine figure rights cheque, but it is high intent revenue. People buying merch are not casually watching. They are declaring allegiance.

Two channels

In venue merch, split between promoter, venue partners, and merch operators.
Online merch, typically higher margin and often controlled by fighter operations.

What it might generate

Gross merch:

Low case: $1m to $3m
Base case: $3m to $8m
High case: $8m to $15m

But net profit is much lower once you subtract cost of goods, fulfilment, returns, and revenue splits.

5) Concessions and arena spend

Food, drink, parking. Everyone spends, but it is mainly the venue’s world.

Promoters sometimes negotiate participation, but it is rarely the core upside unless the promoter controls the building or has unusually favourable terms.

Promoter attributable share estimate:

Low case: $0
Base case: $0.2m to $1m
High case: $1m to $2m

6) Betting, data, and shoulder content

These are the smaller streams that still add up:

Odds partner sponsorship.
Affiliate commissions for driving betting traffic.
Data rights deals in some cases.
Prelims and shoulder content monetisation, including ads and sponsor integrations.

Combined estimate:

Low case: $1m
Base case: $3m to $7m
High case: $10m plus

So what does the whole thing generate

Here is a clean base case pro forma that matches how these events are usually built.

Base case gross revenue

Netflix rights fee, including some escalators: $140m
Gate and ticketing: $15m
Sponsorship and integrations: $30m
Merchandise: $5m
Other: hospitality, betting tie ins, shoulder content: $5m

Total base case gross revenue: about $195m

That number is not a claim of fact. It is a structured estimate based on how streaming tentpole events are funded.

The part nobody wants to talk about: costs

This is why the negotiations are so aggressive. The costs are brutally heavy:

Headline purses and escalators.
Undercard purses.
Production at live broadcast standard.
Marketing, global and social.
Venue rental, insurance, security.
Athletic commission, medical, compliance.

When headline purse expectations drift into the nine figure range, the event only works if the rights cheque is enormous, the sponsorship stack is strong, and the gate is clean.

The real story in one sentence

A Netflix fight is not a pay per view product it is a global marketing asset wrapped around a live moment, funded by a massive rights cheque, topped up by brands, and polished with gate and merch.

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