I've been watching Boxing since the early 90's when I was in school right up until today. I do remember boxers such as Chris Eubank doing well out of the sport considering he didn't fight many (if any) of the greats around at that time. I remember him being on ITV every couple of months or so. From what I've been told, no other boxer at the lighter weights earned the money he did up until that point. Do you reckon this is because Boxing was on terrestrial TV back then compared to today? And are the sums lower for a British/Commonwealth/Euro fight today than they were in the 90s? I know you hear of world champs nowadays earning crumbs! Nowadays, it seems everything is based around the % of the gate, % of PPV buys etc. If I'm honest, I don't know if these aspects around arranging a fight came up much back in the 90's (probably did). As a kid, I thought Boxing was a rich man's sport (like Football), but growing up I've come to realise this is so far from the truth. IMO, boxers should be getting a lot more money for what they do considering the risks involved. Just wanted to see what everyone elses views are regarding this. D.
As far as I know Sky pay the promoter around £24k for a British title fight and £36k for a European. Most fighters these days get 50% of the tickets they sell directly. Edit: Some young guys, like Frankie Gavin for example, get paid a monthly salary by their promoter/manager in return for their promoter getting a slightly bigger piece of the pie when they are further down the line topping the bill at their own shows. This gives them the space to focus only on their training and not worrying about money.
this is a thread for Rob Palmer and untapped knowledge of money in boxing. when he talks about money we all sit up and take notice.
Eubank took the **** on ITV for a few years fighting some pretty poor opponents. He'd get slated to hell and back on here if if he did it now.
I'm not sure being paid a salary is the right way to go as far as the fighter is concerned. I'd have thought if they were on a few grand a fight for their prelim fights they'd want to be out as often as possible. Plus, I wouldn't want to give a larger share to a promoter down the line, **** that. Unless they are insuring themselves against not making it......
Lol, for sure. I remember when I was 11-12, he fought a dude called Dan Sherry (I think). And at the time I was thinking that Sherry must be great to be fighting Eubank :yep...
The biggest difference between now and then is that the general public were actually interested in boxing.
I hear you. I remember the chatter about Tyson/Bruno 2 where I used to work p/t. No one there knew a great deal about Boxing, but the general interest in Boxing at the time far outweighs what it is today.
Eubank made a lot because Hearn priced the tickets at £100 and sold 12,000. Plus ITV and Daily Mirror paid some. Eubank got about half a million a fight and his opponent would get £15,000. And Eubank fought about 15 world title fights on ITV. So it added up in a few years to extortionate wealth. Then he had SKY promise him 10MILL for eight fights in ONE YEAR. He was getting £1.25M a fight on SKY until he lost the title. Against Ray Close in Belfast on ITV and Showtime he also made about £1.25M because King and W arren bid high to win it, and against Benn on ITV and Showtime (and 42,000 tickets sold) he made around 850k NET (Benn got a million gross). Other world champions like Chris Pyatt, Colin McMillan, Paul Hodkinson and Steve Robinson made buttons by comparison, because they didn't attract interest from the general public. [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2l5zppPYpA&feature=fvst[/ame]
Well, my earnings in the 90's were significantly smaller than they are today. In the 90's my annual net income consisted of £104, made up of weekly amounts of £2 from my Gran. Today, she has increased this to £5 per week, showing a substantial year on year rise.
Interesting stuff and tells another tale of why Eubank was generally disliked. Not sure about the £100 tickets though. Never remember shelling that out the times i saw him. Was Ray Leonard the first boxer to negotiate a share of tv revenue? V's Duran ?
I think Leonard was definitely a forerunner to the self-promoted fighter. But where he and his backers had success is that they worked with promoters to deliver a product that people wanted to see. It's probably fair to say he had ''dual'' status, in that other people promoted him but he still owned all of himself. It's a bit different to Khan picking McCloskey and then bolting to Primetime when Sky say that it's not good enough...... or at the other end of the spectrum doing what Allegedly tells you, or get told off in the paper at the weekend.