• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, May 5, 2015

Have you forgotten what revenue the seemingly nostalgic pay-per-view platform can provide? In fact, some $400 was expected from Saturday night’s Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao fight.

By way of comparison, the Super Bowl pulled in $376 million in ad revenue for this year’s telecast on NBC, according to the network. The Academy Awards can grab about half that amount -- $95.0 million for 2014, according to Kantar Media. Next in line is the Grammy Awards, which Kantar said took in $76.2 million last year.

Big stuff for an individual night of TV.

CBS’s Showtime and Time Warner’s HBO are sharing in the big pay-per-view take of Mayweather-Pacquiao. Consumers paid $99.95 for a HD showing of the fight; $89.95 for SD Verizon, standard definition TV.

And yes, though technically the evening was TV ad-free, a bunch of fight sponsors had event signage and other marketing exposures. Five sponsors paid a combined $13.5 million, with title sponsor Tecate beer shelling out $5.6 million. Among many promotions, Tecate also had the ubiquitous fight girls dressed in skimpy red outfits for a branded entertainment execution.

Considering the big push for consumers to hunt down all things advertising-free -- and the growth of subscription services like Netflix, marketers might need to find other ad opportunities in future big TV events. Surely, the majority of deals will still be advertising supported.

But with consumers tip-toeing around paying fees for TV-movie-sports programming, don't be surprised if a new fee-based TV model looks to land a new big punch.