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LAS VEGAS. — Interested in coming to Vegas to be part of the match-up to end all match-ups that Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao are selling? It’s gonna cost you.

One night this coming weekend at the MGM Grand, the fight venue, is running $1 600 on Friday or Saturday night.

That’s more than 13 times the going rate on Sunday.

Or there’s a $180 room on the California-Nevada state line at Whiskey Pete’s hotel and casino just a 40-minute drive from the action.

Las Vegas is filling up fast ahead of the much-anticipated May 2 megafight and the city is headed for a big payday from what might be the most lucrative boxing match ever held.

Airlines are swapping smaller planes for larger ones, readying for a busy weekend and altogether busier May at McCarran International Airport.

Cabbies are asking regulators for permission to dispatch more taxis to roam the roads.

VIP nightclub tables are going fast. Strip clubs are adding security. Ticket brokers expect to make a windfall.

“It’s the dream card fight we haven’t seen in years,” said Don Vaccaro, CEO of Connecticut-based ticket selling site TicketNetwork, the biggest since at least Holyfield and Tyson took to the ring in 1997.

There may just be 16 800 or so seats inside the arena, but there’s been a frenzy to book all of Las Vegas’ 150 544 rooms.

A week before the fight, only 20 hotels had rooms still available, according to booking engine Vegas.com and they aren’t coming cheap.

Even at the aging Riviera Casino and Hotel, the weekend before it closes for good, rates were $758 for this Friday and $798 for this Saturday for a standard room before it stopped offering rooms on the site, said Vanessa Doleshal, Vegas.com’s development manager.

“Pricing has been a free for all,” she said.

What would have been a busy May weekend anyway, especially with the Cinco de Mayo weekend coinciding with the Kentucky Derby and NBA and NHL playoffs, is reaching a boiling point. — AFP.