Dana White Says He Had to Buy Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor Fight Tickets

Steve Flynn-USA TODAY Sports

Being the president of the biggest mixed martial arts promotion in the world won't automatically get you into the Floyd Mayweather-Conor McGregor fight on Aug. 26. 

Speaking to ESPN's Brett Okamoto, UFC President Dana White said he had to purchase tickets to attend the biggest boxing match of 2017 due in part to problems that plagued the city of Las Vegas during the Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight in 2015:

"I couldn't get the tickets until the day before the fight, right. Most of the tickets, they weren't selling and all this stuff, so room rates started to tank in Vegas. People started cancelling the trip; they weren't gonna come 'cause they couldn't get their tickets, and it was a complete disaster. ...

"So I wanted everybody to buy their own tickets. I'm buying my own tickets. UFC's buying their own tickets. Floyd is buying. Conor's buying. Al Haymon's buying. Everybody's paying for their own tickets to keep that from happening."

Regular fans had a limited opportunity to purchase tickets for the Mayweather-Pacquiao bout, with that group of tickets not even going on sale as late as two weeks before the May 2 fight. 

Most fans had to go through secondary broker sites such as StubHub and SeatGeek to even have a chance at purchasing tickets. Ringside seats weren't available for purchase without a $250,000 line of credit at the MGM Grand. 

The first group of tickets for Mayweather-McGregor went on sale Monday, with fans who received a code from Ticketmaster's Fan Verified program able to purchase them during a two-hour window. Seats were then made available to the general public, per ESPN's Darren Rovell.