I'm currently reading Jack Solomons book and he revealed the purse figures for one of his fight cards, which I thought made for interesting reading. These figures, for the card headlined by Bruce Woodcock vs. Jack London for London's British and Commonwealth heavyweight titles, are as followed: Jack London (£4,000) vs. Bruce Woodcock (£1,600) Eric Boon (£200) vs. Henry Hall (£65) Jock McAvoy (£400) vs. George Howard (£225) Dave Crowley (£275) vs. Tom Smith (£183) Alf Brown (£135) vs. George Davis (N/A) Jimmy Webster (N/A) vs. Tommy Plowright (N/A) Stand-bys got £10 a piece and the total purse amount was £7,436. According to a currency converter, £4,000 back then was the equivalent of £103,800 in today's money. Some other figures from the bill: Rental of White Hart Lane - £450 5,000 chairs + transport - £650 Contribution to BBBoC - £336 5s Printing - £500 Stewards - £148 The paid attendance for the bill was 26,479 and Solomons made a £400 profit overall. Not bad considering this was during the end of the second World War!
What is the Jack Solomons book you are reading Kos been dying to find a book on him as my former avatar suggested i was a (sort of) fan
that is interesting. Indicates how boxing must always have been a sport where the big men are very well paid in their particular era whereas you consider football where at that time their respective salaries in comparison to players wages in modern day football were vastly different
Jack Solomons tells all :good Has been an interesting read so far. I didn't realise he had three pro fights (under aliases; record was 2-1) and was born with 6 fingers on each hand :yep
Used the BofE inflation calculator to work out how much that would be in 2010 (they don't have data for 2011 yet) and 4k comes out at £134, 641.22!! Good stuff Kos :good
Cheers :good I think its interesting to note that the size of the show was masive by todays standards 25k attendance at a large football stadium. Solomons however was only making a medium sized profit probably about £20-£30K in modern money. Today the sport has a less general appeal across the country but the methods of revenue have been maximised TV, Sponsorship,ticket prices. To keep the money involved at similar levels.
It doesn't involve Floyd, Haye or PPV sales, or slagging off undercards. Historical data is of no use to him. Really good read :good
Im guessing that printing in 1945 post war Britian was a much more lengthy and expensive process than it is today were you can get flyers and poster done digitally for a fraction of the cost.
[ame]http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jack-Solomons-Tells-All/dp/B0000CHY1P/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1305384606&sr=8-1[/ame] :good
Nice :good Mines a paperback (2nd edition) which came with five other books. Something like £15 for all of them (ebay), but the main one I wanted was the Solomons one.