Six steps to a boxing utopia (Part IV)

Boxing is the only ‘major’ sport in the world that puts its biggest events behind paywalls, thus alienating vast numbers. Also, though we all know the strict starting times of other sporting events, with boxing you can sit down at 10pm ready for the main event and discover you’re at least two hours away from the opening bell.

If the mission here is to increase boxing’s audience and turn it into a sport to rival those that can boast viewing figures of millions every single week, it’s natural to compare boxing to those sports and identify where it’s falling down. If those wishing to watch the biggest games in football, basketball or baseball paid a premium to do so, and then once they’d paid discovered that what they were paying for wasn’t going to start until midnight – rather than the advertised 10pm – it would come as no surprise if audience figures dwindled. 

A football match in the UK, for example, is known to begin at exactly 3pm. Ticketholders know when to arrive at the ground, when to finish their drink in time for kick off, and exactly which train they’ll be getting for the journey home. For televised games on a Saturday, all fans know they can switch on at 12.30pm or 5.30pm and the game will begin; likewise at 2pm and 4.05pm on a Sunday. Without question, that routine breeds both familiarity and consumer loyalty.

The scheduling – or apparent lack of – in boxing is a common grumble on social media among followers of boxing, pretty much every single weekend. Though the seasoned hardcore stick around and post their fury about another late night on socials, numerous wannabe fans – whether young or old – may start out with the best intentions of watching the boxing but, by 11pm, have had enough and gone to bed. 

The obvious issue is that it’s much easier to plan one match than the nine or 10 fights that typically make up a big-fight card. 

BoxingScene spoke to a leading UK-based powerbroker, who explained the difficulty in getting a main event to start at a specific time.

“Number one, you know there is going to be a Premier League game starting at 5.30pm, and boxing is traditionally a Saturday night sport,” he explained. “If you go on a Friday, your ticket sales are down, and Sunday has been trialled but hasn’t really worked. So it has to be a Saturday.

“You want eyeballs on the younger fighters because they’re the stars of tomorrow; the public need that familiarity with them and the only way to get that is to see them fight. So, they might not be on until after the football has finished but it’s very difficult to get it all right.

“I often say those early fights [involving emerging stars] are a bit like an under-18s game between Manchester United and Arsenal. Even the most ardent football fan isn’t going to watch that, but we have no choice but to include them as part of our product to ensure the audience becomes familiar with them.”

The balancing act between appealing to both ticket-buyers and those watching at home is understandably tricky.

“The cost of tickets isn’t cheap,” he continued. “They go from £40 and can be more than a thousand for the best seats. You must provide value for money. It would be far more cost effective to not have as many fights, particularly the supporting 12-round fights, but if the main event is over in two minutes, where is the value for those who have paid to be there? And if you don’t put those 12-rounders on when will the fighters involved in them get the exposure required to progress?”

It’s a good point. However, it is also a modern trend. Before there were dedicated rolling sports channels, and boxing was shown on standard terrestrial television, the main event would be the priority and always begin when it was scheduled to do so, give or take a few minutes, due to the strict scheduling pattern.

These are different times and the need for, and benefits of, exposure is certainly understood. Yet one wonders if the solution would be to ensure that the main event always begins at 10pm after the best of the undercard – to ensure the widest possible reach across different demographics for the star attractions – with the rest of the bill occurring afterwards.

Though I can already hear the collective groan of those hard-working souls at the coalface who do their best to ensure bills run quickly and smoothly, it’s worth noting that when promoters are given curfews by certain stadiums they always manage to stick to them.

The PPV pandemic is harder to cure. 

Those responsible can boast about frequent financial triumphs but they should also shoulder the blame – alongside the embracement of multiple sanctioning bodies – for turning boxing into a niche and marginalized sport. Furthermore, the existing illegal streaming trend may not be such a problem for boxing if fans didn’t have to pay fortunes to watch.

That’s not to say there’s not a place for PPV. There might be for the crème de la crème of contests – and it’s true that attaching a price to an event creates a sense of excitement if the product is genuinely top drawer. However, the key to building boxing’s profile is to invite as many people as possible to watch in the first place. Otherwise, it’s something of a closed shop. 

For further context, Channel 5 in the UK regularly boast more than one million viewers for domestic-level contests. Sky Sports have had similar success when they place fights on their non-subscription channels. However, the current cost involved in staging the big fights – more specifically, the purse expectations of the leading boxers – means simply chucking everything on free-to-air is not feasible.

But surely there is a way to ensure that not every vaguely decent fight ends up behind a paywall. Furthermore, the cost – particularly in the US – is wildly expensive and not conducive with audience growth.

If only there was a highly influential organization, for whom money is no object, looking to stage the biggest fights with which to snare the biggest of audiences.

Though it’s a myth that those in Saudi Arabia are mainlining cash into the boxing industry without a care in the world for what’s coming back, it’s certainly true that making a profit – at least in the short-term – is secondary to making a good impression.

The oft-rumoured Saudi takeover was the inspiration behind this study and therefore within every section is a nod to things that such a takeover, if real or even feasible, should focus upon.  

Turki Alalshikh is all about the numbers. He wants to reach as many people as possible and, in the process, to present his vision of boxing – the General Entertainment Authority way – to the world.

There are certainly more effective ways than PPV platforms and subscription channels with which to do that.