How popular is Boxing in the UK?

Frank Warren was talking on the radio about how angry he was that some guy described boxing as a minimal sport in Britain now and he pointed to how successful Floyd Mayweather`s fights were on UK PPV`s and Amir Khan, but AJ missed out on personality of the year after beating Wlad when he was favourite to win the coveted BBC TV award, but he didn`t even get third place runner up, so people wee saying it was because most Brits never got to see him beat Wlad because the fight was on PPV, the last boxer to win this award was Calzaghe the year he beat Lacy, before that in 1995 Bruno came second at the ceremony after winning his title beating McCall, long jump world champion Johnothan Edwards beat Bruno that year to win this award despite Frank being the favourite to puick up 1st prize, Henry Coopeer won the award in the 60`s proving boxing was far more popular back then than it is now, it`s gradually been getting less popular as time went on, PPV really hurt the sport, Eubank v Benn the rematch attracted 15 million viewers back in 1993 when they fought, those kinds of viewing figures are unheard of for a boxing match being watched in te UK since PPV took over.

 

Football first, but boxing is very popular here.

In the UK boxing is top 3, in the USA not even top 5.

 

Boxing isn't particularly popular. What tends to happen, is that individual boxers can become popular enough to skew peoples opinion around the popularity of the sport in general.

As for popularity in comparison to other sports. Football is by far the most popular sport in the UK. Cricket, Rugby, Golf, Formula 1, Horse Racing are probably all more popular than boxing as well. They get a lot more coverage in our media at least anyway.

 

Here's the BBC's sports homepage, a good guide:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport

No boxing above the fold. Doesn't appear on the menu which has the biggest sports. One boxing story, on the homepage tonight the Kubrat Pulev kissgate.

The LIverpool card does at least make it to Sky who are of course covering it...
https://www.skysports.com/

Boxing does better on a tabloid newspaper sports page:

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/

Conclusion? It's so far below football that its not in the same, er ballpark. It's less popular than Rugby or F1, which until this season featured regularly on free to air tv but it's stronger than it has been for many years and the biggest block is that it doesn't appear on terrestrial tv any more. When it did in the 90s it drew big numbers. It remains a working class sport, but market forces have made it expensive to access and again that's hurt its popularity.

 

And I truly believe that the Mayweather-Pacquiao “Fight of the Century” for 100 dollar killed the boxing in the States.

As Teddy Atlas said, it was a scam

 

Boxing is growing year by year. Especially since Joshua has become Heavyweight champion.

I'd say it's Football (by a million miles), Rugby (Union + League) second then the 3rd is up for debate. You can have conversations with a lot of people about boxing nowadays, or that may just be my circle, in my general location. I might be ignorant to the UK as a whole. Check this site out .https://www.skysports.com/ Skysports has all Eddie Hearn's fighters and is spearheaded by Anthony Joshua (probably biggest sports star in UK today). Click on their sports tab or view the general news, gives you some insight on where boxing is viewed. It's the 7th sport down on their tab which has football as first and esports as last, so probably has some kind of pattern.

 

Despite Joshua's popularity it's really still a niche sport in the UK, I don't think it's a top 3 sport. Football dominates, it might not even be top 10 looking at attendance numbers for events.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/686971/highest-attended-types-of-sport-in-the-uk/

But having said that, there is clearly money in the sport. But this is due to people in general attending more sporting events than before. One of the legacies of the 2012 games was it left the nation hungry for live sports events beyond football and many sports along with boxing have benefited from that.

I've been an avid athletics fan for years and I've definitely noticed bigger attendances. Same with tennis, Wimbledon is always popular but smaller events like Eastbourne have now also grown massively and begun attracting big crowds and big names. The ATP finals where held in London for quite a few years because the ATP always knew it's would draw big crowds which wasn't always the case in other venues around the world.

 

What @Holler and @Brighton bomber said really.

 

Nah it’s never recovered since the Eubank Watson or the benn gman days, the bbc is the British broadcasting company and like everything else in England/ uk first of all it serves the rich/ posh, and it couldn’t become linked to the sport, they alowed itv to take the live boxing to the masses out of fear that one day there could be a death live on air, it almost sided with the ban boxing movement, that was close to becoming the popular opinion in late 80s early nineties, bbc still has the fear, that’s my opinion.

 

Is Joshua more popular in the Uk than Lewis Hamilton, Ronnie O’Sullivan, Andy Murray or Mo Farah?

 

It's nothing like it was in the '90s. You'd be surprised how many people who don't know who Pacquiao or Mayweather are. Even Anthony Joshua isn't as big as you'd think because you have to pay for sky.

 

He`s not as famous but I think people like him more than Hamilton because he has more charm and Murray`s more famous but known for being too dour also.

 

I agree there's something of a bias, that's why I featured the Mirror's homepage, because it has a working class audience and you can see they give it more prominence.

I think however that the BBC was simply outbid for boxing rights. They also got a lot of flack for their deal with Audley Harrison which made it subsequently very difficult for them to justify spending license fee money on it. The website does reflect to an extent the sports which the BBC still covers, but it also reflects the relative strength of the different sports.

 

No I think Mo farah, Hamilton, Joshua, o’sullivan, Andy Murray is hated in England he wore a Paraguay shirt the day before England played them in the World Cup, one minute he’s Scottish the next he’s British, I actually can’t fault the Scottish who hate the English, history says we deserve it.
But when it’s brought into sport, football especially it’s embarrassing for them, but for someone like him to pull that can’t forgive it.
The scotts are decent people who hold valid grudges against the English, it’s just a shame they can’t qualify for a major championship, or beat Kazakhstan.