Eddie Hearn has admitted that Anthony Joshua’s fight with Jermaine Franklin hasn’t sold as fast as he thought it would, but is adamant it will be at capacity on the night.
‘AJ’ faces America’s Franklin on April 1 at London’s O2 Arena, his first fight back there since a knockout of Dominic Breazeale in 2016. It also marks the former unified champion’s first scrap exclusively broadcast by DAZN.
Much has been made in the media about ticket sales for the event, with the previous selling power of Joshua not taking effect as quickly this time around.
Asked by Boxing Social about a report that ‘ticket prices had been slashed’, Hearn said it was par for the course for the cost to change.
“No. When you have dynamic ticket pricing, prices do change for tickets. Nothing’s been ‘slashed.'”
The promoter went on to clear up rumours about the amount of tickets sold, and the capacity he’s working with.
“One particular journalist wrote that we’d sold 20% of the tickets. I mean, f**k me. Yes I did expect it to sell out by now, and it will sell out by fight night.
We’ve sold I think it’s 14,000 tickets and we’ve got less than a thousand to go. ‘He’s lying! It holds 20,000!’ – it doesn’t. It holds, I think, 16,000 in total, that includes boxes, and I think 15,000 available for sale from us.”
Finally, Hearn promised that the event would be sold out come fight night, but that he too had been slightly surprised at the pace of sales.
“So we will be sold out. I hold my hands up. It hasn’t sold as quick as I thought it would. But I also understand at the moment it’s difficult to sell tickets. And there’s a lot of promoters who are just giving tickets away.”
Joshua ring return marks the first time he’s been outside of the heavyweight title picture for some years now, but will give him the chance to prove to fans and pundits that he’ll be making his way there once more.