Honestly, this has to be considered a success, if you look at it from this perspective. Manny Pacquiao is the 2nd biggest PPV star in boxing.
His fights against opponents similar to Berto (Brandon Rios and Chris Algieri) did 450k and 375k PPV buys respectfully.
Miguel Cotto’s last PPV fight with Sergio Martinez did around 300k PPV buys.
So, Mayweather with a guy no one knew and never really had a chance, still was able to crack 500k PPV buys.
Now there is a caveat in the fact Mayweather is paid more than any other boxer in the world, so to break even or profit from a fight, certain benchmarks must be hit. Showtime/CBS probably took a loss on this fight, but when you look at the totality of their six fight contract with Mayweather they probably made a healthy profit just off the Canelo and Pacquiao’s fight.
The numbers for Berto fight are in line with what most people were thinking, this was never going to be close to a 1 million PPV buy fight, but the fact Mayweather got a half million people to buy this mismatch says a lot about his mainstream popularity.