Is it better to have a few promoters competing against each other, or is it better to have one very strong promoter in a country. Do they end up competing against each other for boxing fans interest, and therefore putting on better shows? Or do they just wall off their boxers, not putting them in fights with other promoters fighters, and then denying us good match-ups at each level? How many good fights do we get between promoters in the big markets; US, UK and Germany? I was thinking about it because I saw somebody say the situation we now have in Ireland, with 3 promoters (McGuigan, Brian Peters, Dolphil), is good for Irish boxing. In a way it's definitely very good, we will get more fights overall, no question there. But I think eventually we will end up missing out on fights that logically should be made. Would you be more confident of Groves-DeGale eventually happening if they were both signed by the same promoter?
If Groves and DeGale were signed to the same promoter I'd say it was less likely to happen if anything, as long as they both stayed undefeated.
only if it makes them put on better fights and better shows. unfortunately we need a monopoly to make **** happen. i'm in favour of 2 or 3 promoters taking over.
Having just one or two promoters would be very bad for the sport, namely the boxers themselves. Take into consideration the amount of licensed boxers we have in this country, then take into account how many shows, and how many contests per show, the average promoter puts on. It will lead to an awful amount of inactive boxers, and a lot of novice up and coming boxers being unable to get the opportunites to box because there's no room for them on the cards stacked with a specific promoter's more established boxers. We need plenty of "small hall" promoters in the game to put on smaller shows as they serve as developing ground for new talent, who may not get a look in on an O2 supershow for example.
If two fighters are established and in there primes there more chance of a fight happening if they are with the same promoter. If both fighters are prospects its less likley. If Groves was with Warren he would build the fight until at least one of them is a world champion.
Ideally in a perfect world the best situation would be for there to be one promoter who had a monopoly on boxing in a particular country and he made sure that the the best possible fights were made but inevitably the promoter wont always make the best fights. Look at Jacobs and Don King in particular they made sure that they signed every championship level fighter or in Kings case every Heavyweight contender. They potentially had the power to make any fight that the fans wanted.
the more promoters the more availability for fighters, the more options fightwise and moneywise for the fighters.
Also, as an addition to the above question, if there were only a small handful of promoters, it allows them to be in a position to exploit the boxers unnecessarily for their own financial gain. For example, it's become a shitty trend in small hall boxing where some boxers simply can't get on a bill because certain promoters wants a boxer to sell enough tickets to first cover his opponent's purse, second, pay a grand's worth toward's the promoter's overheads for the show, and finally whatever's left over (if any) becomes the boxer's purse. Would you go to your job, risk working for free AND pay a colleague's wages???? So take a boxer who is starting out and isn't established, he needs to sell over two grand's worth of tickets before he even earns a penny! That's a lot of tickets, and he may not be fortunate to know a 100 people willing to come to a boxing show... This is what's preventing boxer's from actually doing their job - boxing. I'm not saying all promoters do this. Not at all. There are some great promoters out there who work very hard and actually care about the boxers and the sport, and not just lining their own pockets. However, this does happen in some instances. So the less promoters there are, the less shows there are, and less opportunies for the boxers to actually box. This also leaves room for such exploitation as the situation I've mentioned above, as the boxer will have less opportunities to go elsewhere.
