Comparing Heavyweight eras...

cross_trainer · Oct 28, 2021

Saintpat said: ↑

It’s not just a ‘trainers think they should fight less often/managers and promoters are afraid to see them lose’ thing.

It’s a few other factors:

* Since the pandemic shutdown there have been almost no fights. How do you get a guy 4-5 or more fights a year the last couple of years?

* Beyond that, there are fewer cards anyway. There are simply less available dates. Just on TV alone in the 1980s you had USA running fights every Tuesday and ESPN once a week — and both would also do ‘specials’ on occasion on other nights. That’s 100+ TV dates per year domestically in the USA.

And outside of those regular TV dates in the 1980s you still had network TV fights most weekends at least for the first half of the decade or so. Add in HBO too.

Off TV, you had the Silver Slipper in Las Vegas running weekly shows. (Not for big paydays and main event heavies, but for guys to get frequent work.) And the Olympic Auditorium in LA was also running regularly. Philadelphia was running a ton of shows. Madison Square Garden’s Felt Forum was still operating monthly through the 1980s or most of it.

Las Vegas had regular bigger shows at a number of properties. Atlantic City also became a boxing power on the East Coast. And all across America there were shows, some big and some small.

All those shows meant work for boxers. Compare that to the last 10 years.

* The economy of boxing has changed dramatically. You can read into it and find out that those ESPN and USA Network fights often paid a few thousand dollars to each fighter for main events except when they had bigger attractions (title fights or name fighters) on occasion. Heavyweights today want a heck of a lot more money to fight than they did then (other weight classes too).

I don’t know how much you know about the ‘business’ of boxing, but if you have a heavyweight you’re trying to raise through the ranks you aren’t able to sit and wait for the phone to ring and either accept or decline fights … because unless you are tied to a promoter who is guaranteeing you X fights a year at $XX per fight, it ain’t ringing.

Someone has to invest pretty much hundreds of thousands of dollars to get a heavyweight to, say, 20-0. You have to pay the prospect but you also have to pay the opponents, and after he’s gotten up beyond say 10-0 nobody is fighting him cheap. They want $10K, $20K and more to fight those guys. So just that one fight may cost you $20-30K. Plus the rest of the card. Now how many butts do you have to put in seats to break even on that? (Add in venue rental, security that the venue requires, insurance that is required, advertising your card, etc.) Mostly, they don’t. The manager and the promoter are usually partners and on those ventures and if they lose money they split the loss — the idea is that if you invest a couple hundred thousand to get your guy up there you hope to make it back when he gets a purse that pays him somewhere in the million-dollar range or more. And if he never gets there, he loses a couple when he steps up, then you aren’t likely to ever recoup your losses on that fighter.

So once your guy has 18 or 20 fights (all wins probably as you’ve matched him to win in pursuit of that big payday), how many times a year can you afford to put him in the ring?

It’s simply not the same game it was business-wise.

EDIT: Some more info:

In the 1970s and ‘80s, in general going rates on a non-TV/non-casino club show (in other words, ones where the paying crowd had to generate the gate from which fighters are paid) would be $50 per scheduled round (so $200 for a 4-rounder, $300 for a 6-rounder) on the undercard and $100 per scheduled round for a main event. Maybe a tad more for a guy who could draw (but more often, that would be a percentage of tickets he could sell). In a bigger city with bigger names (which I contend really isn’t a ‘club show’), the main event guys might get 25% of the gate each with the other 50% paying the undercard, venue rental, everything else and anything left over is what the promoter makes.

Today it’s closer to $3K for each fighter for a 6-rounder. Beginning 4-round fighters can still be found for $100-200 per scheduled round generally but guys want to move along from 4-rounders a lot quicker to make that money.
Click to expand...

Magnificent post.

To what extent are boxers able to exploit the online opportunities for "content creators" to directly connect with fans by putting their content online, getting endorsements and advertisements through that avenue, etc.? So, for example, earning revenue from YouTube channels that have your fights, including the local ones, plus training clips, and so on?

I know that some modern celebrities have expoited the internet to cut out the middlemen who once acted as intermediaries between themselves and the public (e.g., entertainment magazines), but I don't know whether the internet means much for boxing revenue streams.

Saintpat · Oct 28, 2021

cross_trainer said: ↑

Magnificent post.

To what extent are boxers able to exploit the online opportunities for "content creators" to directly connect with fans by putting their content online, getting endorsements and advertisements through that avenue, etc.? So, for example, earning revenue from YouTube channels that have your fights, including the local ones, plus training clips, and so on?

I know that some modern celebrities have expoited the internet to cut out the middlemen who once acted as intermediaries between themselves and the public (e.g., entertainment magazines), but I don't know whether the internet means much for boxing revenue streams.
Click to expand...

On the whole, not much for the real boxers AFAIK, at least not in the U.S. The ‘internet celebrity boxers’ like Jake Paul have a nice corner on that market.

The boxing revenue streams in social and digital seem to be the quasi-journalists (especially in the UK) who interview boxers/promoters/managers. And they get advertising revenue off how many people watch their videos on YouTube, which unless you’ve got a ton of subscribers adds up to pocket change. You don’t really see small promotions able to do IPPV events over the internet that I’m aware of. Maybe that market will develop but not yet as far as I know.

I mean some big names like Tyson Fury have a big twitter presence but I don’t know of any boxers who have been able to monetize that.

It’s also very niche as far as endorsements go — a Corona ad here, a deal with Everlast there (mainly to be in their catalogue since as far as I know they don’t have a lot of retail outlet presence anymore … I think they used to be in K-Marts before those shut down and you might see a boxer’s photo with their collection).

If you’re a big-name baseball/football/basketball/hockey or even some participatory sports big with young female athletes like softball or tennis, you’ve got a national or even world market where if you have a big name you can do some things with equipment companies. But boxing just doesn’t get that kind of exposure.

I mean, name the top five most high-profile boxers to 1,000 people on the street and not many will be able to tell you they’re boxers. MMA is much higher on the recognition scale and even it pales compared to mainstream sports.

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Comparing Heavyweight eras...

cross_trainer Liston was good, but no "Tire Iron" Jones Full Member

Saintpat Obsessed with Boxing Full Member

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Comparing Heavyweight eras...

cross_trainer Liston was good, but no "Tire Iron" Jones Full Member

Saintpat Obsessed with Boxing Full Member