THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF Katie Taylor’s Croke Park farewell fight has turbo-charged a curious debate.
The cliché that ‘professional boxing is a business, not a sport’ usually refers to all the negotiations and dubious dealings behind the scenes. However, the Irish people have taken this old adage to heart.
The main discussion point isn’t French opponent Flora Pili; it isn’t how Bray’s Taylor, 40 next month, will perform; it’s simply whether or not the event will sell out.
There’s definitely a dollop of Irish begrudgery amongst the talk, not to mention a lot of experts stating certainties one way or another. Tickets for 5 September will apparently either immediately sell out on Friday, when they go on general sale, or there is absolutely, positively, unquestionably, no chance that the card will sell out.
In fairness, we are in uncharted territory. We genuinely don’t know. A boxing card of this scale in Ireland has never taken place and the historical precedent does not scream ‘sell out!’
Officially, just under 19,000 paid into Croker to see Muhammad Ali defeat Al ‘Blue’ Lewis in 1972 – although thousands more snuck into the venue for a fight which was a financial disaster for Kerry circus strongman-turned-publican-turned-promoter Michael ‘Butty’ Sugrue.
Muhammad Ali slams a left hook into Al 'Blue' Lewis during a heavyweight fight at Croke Park in Dublin, 19 July, 1972. Ali won in the 11th round when the referee stopped the fight. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
In terms of modern major outdoor boxing events in Ireland, one must look north to Belfast. 16,000 attended Carl Frampton’s world title triumph over Kiko Martinez in 2014 at a purpose-built outdoor arena on the Titanic Slipway, while 24,000 packed Windsor Park for his win over Luke Jackson in 2018. More recently, last September, there were around 20,000 at Windsor for Lewis Crocker’s world title rematch victory over Paddy Donovan.
South of the border, the last outdoor event took place in 1995, with approximately 10,000 at Páirc Uí Chaoimh to witness Steve Collins do the double over Chris Eubank. Andy Lee had been due to defend his middleweight title against Billy Joe Saunders at Thomond Park in 2015, but that card was cancelled five weeks beforehand – officially due to Lee being struck down by a virus, though reports circulated that just 7,000 tickets had been sold.
With these numbers in mind, were Taylor to, say, sell 30,000 tickets, it would be both an incredible, record-breaking number as well as being a financial and optical disaster.
Cynics will point to the recent past. Taylor has fought twice in Ireland in her professional career, trading wins with Northampton’s Chantelle Cameron at the 3Arena in Dublin in 2023. The first of these cards sold out quickly, while the final tickets for the rematch were not fully snapped up until the days before the fight.
Tickets for both Cameron fights were priced largely the same, starting at €80 and rising to €1,500 (€1,000 for the rematch) for VIPs and with no bundling or ‘family’ deals.
So how do Taylor and Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom – along with Aiken Promotions – go from selling 9,000 tickets in one Dublin venue to selling almost ten times this amount for another?
Katie Taylor is declared the winner over Chantelle Cameron at the 3Arena in November 2023.
Firstly, there are the ticket prices, which start at less than half (€38.70) of the price of the Cameron fights. It seems that doing anything these days is expensive but, in terms of Irish boxing, these are the cheapest tickets available for any show, big or small, this decade, and cheaper than any major recording artist coming to these shores.
There are also family tickets available and an alcohol-free section of the stadium along with plans for music and entertainment throughout the night. As manager Brian Peters was at pains to stress, “it will be an event, more than a boxing card.”
Then there is the Croke Park factor. It has been suggested multiple times that it would be apt for Taylor, a former tough-tackling and screamer-scoring international footballer, to fight at the Aviva Stadium – disregarding the fact that she never played at Lansdowne and hung up the boots in 2009, before the building of the current iteration was complete.
It was always going to be Croke Park. While some may scoff, there is an aura around GAA HQ and, for many, it is part of the national psyche – a psyche that will need to be harnessed to grease the wheels of the bandwagon.
Team Taylor are banking on building this wagon. It’s not a dirty word, they must build it. Hearn has stated that Croke Park “has never seen interest in an event like this”, but the Teflon fight-maker always says some variation of this. The media-reluctant Wicklow woman is currently embarking on a four-day tour around Ireland to hype the fight, an endeavour she would have previously been allergic to, but this is what needs to be done.
The aim to sell out massive stadiums is a relatively new one for promoters like Hearn and his British compatriots. Starting with Carl Froch’s rematch win over George Groves in Wembley in 2014, there have been 13 massive stadium cards across that venue, the Principality in Cardiff, and the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. All of these were packed to the rafters, although the most recent, Tyson Fury’s comeback win over Arslanbek Makhmudov in April, had slow ticket sales and reports of thousands of freebies given out in the final days.
There is sometimes a need to remember that Ireland has roughly a tenth of the population of Britain. There is also a need to remember, and it pains this writer who has covered the sport for over a decade, that professional boxing has a minuscule following in Ireland, especially outside of Belfast.
It’s why the established ‘wisdom’ that is being parroted in comment sections of ‘it will need to have a big undercard to sell out’ falls flat.
— Matchroom Boxing (@MatchroomBoxing) June 5, 2026
The excellent ‘small hall’ JB Promotions cards are thrilling affairs pitting domestic talent against each other and regularly pack out the 2,000-seater National Stadium in Dublin, but there remain few ‘general’ boxing fans. Most in attendance are simply followers of ‘their’ fighter, friends, and family who have one reason to be there.
Zooming out, Pierce O’Leary, the Sheriff Street starlet and managerial stablemate of Taylor, is the biggest seller in Dublin boxing. ‘Big Bang’ personally shifted almost 5,000 tickets to his homecoming at the 3Arena in March, the sort of numbers not seen since Bernard Dunne, but the above point still stands – 5,000 (minus the many who would be going regardless) is a drop in the Croke Park ocean.
In terms of the undercard, Hearn is promising “three-to-four fantastic Irish ding-dongs”, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that it will not be a card commensurate with other major bills in terms of objective quality. This is the Katie Taylor show.
A look through the major names in Ireland shows that most are unavailable for 5 September. The 3Arena plays host to shows packed full of talent on 1 August, headlined by the aforementioned O’Leary, and 8 August, while Crocker defends his world title in Australia later this month. The other Irish world champion, Belfast super-featherweight Anthony Cacace, is also understood to not be under consideration for Croke Park, with a major fight for him elsewhere on the agenda.
Regardless, the notion that there is a critical mass of fans out there who would be swayed by the undercard – “I wasn’t going to go, but now that [Fighter X] is on the bill, I am” – just isn’t reality. With Taylor being the draw, and with the collective purse strings being tightened, an expensive undercard was never likely.
Similarly, budgetary awareness has seen Pili, mandatory challenger for two of the belts on the line, chosen as the farewell foe. The Serrano trilogy being done and dusted, along with other notable potential opposition apparently seeking too much money, has led to this decision. The promotion is banking that there are not a lot of fans who are of the opinion, “I would have gone to the fight if she was fighting Chantelle Cameron or Ronda Rousey, but I am not going to go to watch her fight Flora Pili”. It’s hard to argue against this line of thinking.
Lewis Crocker and Paddy Donovan boxing at Windsor Park. Laszlo Geczo / INPHO
Laszlo Geczo / INPHO / INPHO
For the Irish hardcores, there probably will be lower-level domestics between honest scrappers that will entertain (“it only takes two donkeys to make a derby” is a favoured quote of Peters’). Donovan, fresh from his impressive IBF world title final eliminator win in Germany, will likely feature, and Hearn has confirmed that he has offered Phibsborough heavyweight Thomas Carty a fight with popular puncher Dave Allen. Sources indicate that Dubliner Emmet Brennan will take on Peters’s hot young Southampton prospect Taylor Bevan, while retired Irish former middleweight world title challengers Luke Keeler and Jason Quigley are actively campaigning for a slot on the bill.
It all comes back to Taylor, though. The perennial ‘Ireland’s Most Admired’ award winner is seeking one last breakthrough. Selling out Croke Park is a gargantuan task. While near-universally loved, getting people to actually get out and go to a boxing event has always been the challenge – but never has there been a boxing event this accessible. Momentum is key these next few weeks. Bandwagons form quickly. Following the current media blitz, Team Taylor need the conversations in WhatsApp groups, over pints, and at water coolers to be “have you gotten your Katie tickets yet?”
Numbers dictate that it’ll be a hard sell for Taylor, but, as with everything in her sporting career thus far, don’t bet against her.
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Will it sell? Navigating the tiresome Katie Taylor ticket talk
THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF Katie Taylor’s Croke Park farewell fight has turbo-charged a curious debate.
The cliché that ‘professional boxing is a business, not a sport’ usually refers to all the negotiations and dubious dealings behind the scenes. However, the Irish people have taken this old adage to heart.
The main discussion point isn’t French opponent Flora Pili; it isn’t how Bray’s Taylor, 40 next month, will perform; it’s simply whether or not the event will sell out.
There’s definitely a dollop of Irish begrudgery amongst the talk, not to mention a lot of experts stating certainties one way or another. Tickets for 5 September will apparently either immediately sell out on Friday, when they go on general sale, or there is absolutely, positively, unquestionably, no chance that the card will sell out.
In fairness, we are in uncharted territory. We genuinely don’t know. A boxing card of this scale in Ireland has never taken place and the historical precedent does not scream ‘sell out!’
Officially, just under 19,000 paid into Croker to see Muhammad Ali defeat Al ‘Blue’ Lewis in 1972 – although thousands more snuck into the venue for a fight which was a financial disaster for Kerry circus strongman-turned-publican-
In terms of modern major outdoor boxing events in Ireland, one must look north to Belfast. 16,000 attended Carl Frampton’s world title triumph over Kiko Martinez in 2014 at a purpose-built outdoor arena on the Titanic Slipway, while 24,000 packed Windsor Park for his win over Luke Jackson in 2018. More recently, last September, there were around 20,000 at Windsor for Lewis Crocker’s world title rematch victory over Paddy Donovan.
South of the border, the last outdoor event took place in 1995, with approximately 10,000 at Páirc Uí Chaoimh to witness Steve Collins do the double over Chris Eubank. Andy Lee had been due to defend his middleweight title against Billy Joe Saunders at Thomond Park in 2015, but that card was cancelled five weeks beforehand – officially due to Lee being struck down by a virus, though reports circulated that just 7,000 tickets had been sold.
Cynics will point to the recent past. Taylor has fought twice in Ireland in her professional career, trading wins with Northampton’s Chantelle Cameron at the 3Arena in Dublin in 2023. The first of these cards sold out quickly, while the final tickets for the rematch were not fully snapped up until the days before the fight.
Tickets for both Cameron fights were priced largely the same, starting at €80 and rising to €1,500 (€1,000 for the rematch) for VIPs and with no bundling or ‘family’ deals.
So how do Taylor and Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom – along with Aiken Promotions – go from selling 9,000 tickets in one Dublin venue to selling almost ten times this amount for another?
Firstly, there are the ticket prices, which start at less than half (€38.70) of the price of the Cameron fights. It seems that doing anything these days is expensive but, in terms of Irish boxing, these are the cheapest tickets available for any show, big or small, this decade, and cheaper than any major recording artist coming to these shores.
There are also family tickets available and an alcohol-free section of the stadium along with plans for music and entertainment throughout the night. As manager Brian Peters was at pains to stress, “it will be an event, more than a boxing card.”
Then there is the Croke Park factor. It has been suggested multiple times that it would be apt for Taylor, a former tough-tackling and screamer-scoring international footballer, to fight at the Aviva Stadium – disregarding the fact that she never played at Lansdowne and hung up the boots in 2009, before the building of the current iteration was complete.
Team Taylor are banking on building this wagon. It’s not a dirty word, they must build it. Hearn has stated that Croke Park “has never seen interest in an event like this”, but the Teflon fight-maker always says some variation of this. The media-reluctant Wicklow woman is currently embarking on a four-day tour around Ireland to hype the fight, an endeavour she would have previously been allergic to, but this is what needs to be done.
The aim to sell out massive stadiums is a relatively new one for promoters like Hearn and his British compatriots. Starting with Carl Froch’s rematch win over George Groves in Wembley in 2014, there have been 13 massive stadium cards across that venue, the Principality in Cardiff, and the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. All of these were packed to the rafters, although the most recent, Tyson Fury’s comeback win over Arslanbek Makhmudov in April, had slow ticket sales and reports of thousands of freebies given out in the final days.
There is sometimes a need to remember that Ireland has roughly a tenth of the population of Britain. There is also a need to remember, and it pains this writer who has covered the sport for over a decade, that professional boxing has a minuscule following in Ireland, especially outside of Belfast.
It’s why the established ‘wisdom’ that is being parroted in comment sections of ‘it will need to have a big undercard to sell out’ falls flat.
The excellent ‘small hall’ JB Promotions cards are thrilling affairs pitting domestic talent against each other and regularly pack out the 2,000-seater National Stadium in Dublin, but there remain few ‘general’ boxing fans. Most in attendance are simply followers of ‘their’ fighter, friends, and family who have one reason to be there.
Zooming out, Pierce O’Leary, the Sheriff Street starlet and managerial stablemate of Taylor, is the biggest seller in Dublin boxing. ‘Big Bang’ personally shifted almost 5,000 tickets to his homecoming at the 3Arena in March, the sort of numbers not seen since Bernard Dunne, but the above point still stands – 5,000 (minus the many who would be going regardless) is a drop in the Croke Park ocean.
In terms of the undercard, Hearn is promising “three-to-four fantastic Irish ding-dongs”, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that it will not be a card commensurate with other major bills in terms of objective quality. This is the Katie Taylor show.
A look through the major names in Ireland shows that most are unavailable for 5 September. The 3Arena plays host to shows packed full of talent on 1 August, headlined by the aforementioned O’Leary, and 8 August, while Crocker defends his world title in Australia later this month. The other Irish world champion, Belfast super-featherweight Anthony Cacace, is also understood to not be under consideration for Croke Park, with a major fight for him elsewhere on the agenda.
Regardless, the notion that there is a critical mass of fans out there who would be swayed by the undercard – “I wasn’t going to go, but now that [Fighter X] is on the bill, I am” – just isn’t reality. With Taylor being the draw, and with the collective purse strings being tightened, an expensive undercard was never likely.
Similarly, budgetary awareness has seen Pili, mandatory challenger for two of the belts on the line, chosen as the farewell foe. The Serrano trilogy being done and dusted, along with other notable potential opposition apparently seeking too much money, has led to this decision. The promotion is banking that there are not a lot of fans who are of the opinion, “I would have gone to the fight if she was fighting Chantelle Cameron or Ronda Rousey, but I am not going to go to watch her fight Flora Pili”. It’s hard to argue against this line of thinking.
For the Irish hardcores, there probably will be lower-level domestics between honest scrappers that will entertain (“it only takes two donkeys to make a derby” is a favoured quote of Peters’). Donovan, fresh from his impressive IBF world title final eliminator win in Germany, will likely feature, and Hearn has confirmed that he has offered Phibsborough heavyweight Thomas Carty a fight with popular puncher Dave Allen. Sources indicate that Dubliner Emmet Brennan will take on Peters’s hot young Southampton prospect Taylor Bevan, while retired Irish former middleweight world title challengers Luke Keeler and Jason Quigley are actively campaigning for a slot on the bill.
It all comes back to Taylor, though. The perennial ‘Ireland’s Most Admired’ award winner is seeking one last breakthrough. Selling out Croke Park is a gargantuan task. While near-universally loved, getting people to actually get out and go to a boxing event has always been the challenge – but never has there been a boxing event this accessible. Momentum is key these next few weeks. Bandwagons form quickly. Following the current media blitz, Team Taylor need the conversations in WhatsApp groups, over pints, and at water coolers to be “have you gotten your Katie tickets yet?”
Numbers dictate that it’ll be a hard sell for Taylor, but, as with everything in her sporting career thus far, don’t bet against her.
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Boxing Croke Park Katie Taylor Tickets