A boxing game changer?
They say progress is impossible without change - British boxing is about to find out
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The landscape is changing
THE LONG READ
The last few weeks have been perhaps the most tumultuous ever behind the scenes of boxing broadcasting in the UK. Such a huge amount has been going on that it’s been somewhat difficult to keep up. Einstein said that the measure of intelligence is the ability to change, and we are certainly living through that change in British boxing, with ramifications for the worldwide scene. So let’s try to break down exactly what has happened already, what might still be to come and what it all may mean for the business and fans alike.
The first major announcement was of course Matchroom’s new 5-year, nine-figure agreement with heavyweight sports streaming disrupter platform DAZN in Britain. This deal sees them double down on their worldwide partnership, whilst also taking the UK and Ireland rights for Matchroom Boxing shows away from Sky for the first time in more than 25 years. This completes the circle of the previous $1 billion deal the companies agreed on in 2018.
Make no mistake, this has the potential to be a big moment for not just Matchroom but the business more generally, shifting the focus of the sport in the UK. Eddie Hearn called the deal “seismic” when it was announced, stating that we can now “expect the best fighting the best more often”, with their collective aim being to “create the biggest and best live fight nights and deliver a viewing experience that is truly game-changing”. DAZN had already declared war on the traditional pay-per-view model which has underpinned boxing for decades, and Hearn openly states on the regular that Matchroom aims to dominate the promotional arm of the sport.
So the deal is massive, unquestionably, and more news has been layered on over the top as well. Here’s exactly what we know about it so far (with more still pending)…
DAZN will broadcast a minimum of 16 UK-based events each year, which will be in addition to the increasing number of Matchroom live events in the US and regional markets (including Italy and Spain)
The deal kicks off in July, with the first shows of the new era being Matchroom’s Fight Camp series live from the garden of their HQ
Matchroom Media, the in-house company launched last year, will be responsible for the production of all live events and supporting content, which has not previously been the case
A new UK event presentation and commentary team will be announced imminently, one which we have been told featured a mix of industry legends, future Hall of Famers and fresh faces
DAZN will retain sign off for cards and employ an element of quality control and “push Eddie Hearn to deliver” - make of that what you will
DAZN will remain at the £1.99 UK price point for the time being but will, of course, be increasing in the not too distant future
The deal does not currently include Anthony Joshua in the UK, as he has a separate deal with Sky which lasts for one more bout, and Dillian Whyte is apparently slightly TBC, but all other Matchroom fighters are now on DAZN
In a separate move, Matchroom and Canelo have announced a collaboration to deliver a series of live fight night events in Mexico, also to be screened on DAZN, opening up another new market and solidifying their working relationship
Matchroom should have absolutely no room for manoeuvre if they don’t achieve in line with DAZN’s metrics given the scale of this deal. We have been told that they will deliver better cards on a more regular basis, and there are no current plans for DAZN to offer any events behind an additional pay-per-view paywall. They now simply have to deliver, on a worldwide stage.
Given the enormous amount of hype pre-empting the confirmation of the first DAZN UK shows, the reaction to the three Fight Camp shows announced this week has been decidedly lukewarm. They feature some good matchmaking and potentially excellent fights, but taking into account the hyperbolic talk from Hearn and others on how great the cards would be, they are perhaps not the sport-shaking statement events some were anticipating. The headliners across the three weeks - Kid Galahad vs Jazza Dickens for the IBF featherweight title and Conor Benn and Joshua Buatsi stepping up their competition - should make for good viewing, but there’s nothing there that could be called ‘game-changing’. This doesn’t feel too dissimilar in quality to the cards Matchroom were putting out on Sky.
It’s early days for the deal, of course, it might be that the full impact of the new deal is visible more from late Summer onwards - and DAZN is in it for the long-term.
DAZN’s entry into the streaming wars has generally been pretty impressive since it first launched in 2016. While UK viewers might see it as a boxing outlet since its launch on these shores in December, across the world DAZN is available in over 200 territories and owns rights to numerous other major sports. This includes prestige contracts such as Serie A in Italy, the Bundesliga in Germany, and the Champions League, Premier League and Formula One in a number of countries.
Their strategy is to launch in individual nations at a low price point whilst gauging the rights opportunities in those markets, observing “what opportunities come out of the platform launch in terms of supersizing”. They are majority-owned by the 36th richest person in the world, Leonard Blavatnik - current real-time net worth as of this writing: $31.7 billion - so it’s fair to say that they have the necessary financial backing.
Matchroom and boxing in general (DAZN also have rights to Golden Boy events, though according to Oscar De La Hoya they might be moving to Triller as early as next year) is just one element of a considerable patchwork of sports rights for the organisation. It is an intrinsic element, however, and the only one present across all markets.
DAZN are using Matchroom as a base on which to build in each country it enters. They had a bit of a hiccup when Canelo exited his astronomical contract with the broadcaster, however, given that he is working with DAZN again this move was perhaps more to get away from his previous promoter Golden Boy. Canelo’s long-term rights remain unclear, he may remain a free agent for the rest of his career, but if he wants to stay working with Matchroom consistently he will invariably be streamed on DAZN.
Matchroom have been given carte blanche on production, talent, content and storytelling as part of this new deal - DAZN’s Executive Vice President Joe Markowski has explained that Matchroom made it clear this was a non-negotiable element going forward. Eddie Hearn has discussed in detail how he has longed for the opportunity to build “the UFC of boxing”, and has detailed how he has been envious of WWE controlling every element of their presentation as well, something which they clearly have not had with Sky.
They have that ownership now, with plans for a considerable amount of additional content both on DAZN and Matchroom’s own social media channels to help drive the narrative around their events. They are being handed an enormous budget and creative control, it’s a dream scenario really.
Although this deal changes Matchroom’s position most in the UK, their agreement is a global one. They are now delivering shows in more countries than any other outfit, but let’s be honest - Matchroom still has a long way to go in the US market. Yes, they have been promoting Canelo, the number one draw, but in many ways, he promotes himself these days. There is Gennady Golovkin as well but how many more times we will see him is certainly in question.
Laying on fantastic fights such as Chocolotito-Estrada II is great for the hardcore fans, but it doesn’t really move the needle for anyone outside of the boxing cognoscenti. The American boxing TV market is a mess of pay-per-views and multiple broadcasters, and Matchroom and DAZN might be able to offer a singular, clear alternative to that in the future, but their competitors in the US market are institutions in the industry and will be hard to dislodge.
In the UK market, Matchroom has a large percentage of the most high-profile fighters in the country but not too many genuine stars on their books. Apart from AJ, and possibly Dillian Whyte, how many of their British fighters could be considered standalone pay-per-view draws over the last few years? Matchroom will need to find a way to turn fighters like Conor Benn into household names in a brand new distribution format to ensure that the next generation of headliners is coming through effectively and they can fill these UK cards as they have promised they will.
The Anthony Joshua situation is an interesting one. His separate broadcast deal speaks to the size of his stardom and the astuteness of his business dealings, and he is the sport’s biggest draw in the UK market. Given DAZN’s spending power, the fact that they have an agreement to screen his fights outside of the UK already, and his intrinsic links to Eddie Hearn’s outfit throughout his pro career, I would say it is more than likely that AJ will be following Matchroom to the land of milk and honey after his next fight. All indications are that his final bout with Sky will be his fascinating mandatory defence against Oleksandr Usyk in London in September.
In Double Dutch round 8, which looked at boxing’s distribution problems, I decided to edit out some thoughts from the final piece on how utilising partnerships with widely available TV channels could help bolster the presence of boxing’s most talented fighters…
Josh Taylor’s undisputed title fight against Jose Ramirez ended up on a pretty niche pay-per-view platform in the UK, but would it have been impossible for Top Rank (or MTK, his management company, who have a far greater understanding of the British market) to have attempted to do more? Perhaps they could have agreed a separate deal for post-fight highlights with a major broadcaster in Taylor’s homeland? The scale of the occasion would surely be an easy story to tell on a terrestrial platform, and would give a mainstream presence whilst not syphoning off the live event income opportunity. In the UK, the BBC or ITV would seem like the obvious partners in this venture - both have a considerable boxing lineage.
It would also allow the potential for Taylor to be an even bigger star, and increase the feasible audience for future pay events involving ‘The Tartan Tornado’. Roll out similar strategy across other major fights, we might be onto something. Without something like this being implemented, how are casual fans going to be converted into longer-term evangelists of the sport?
The perils of being a self-editing writer with a penchant for flowery language, I guess. In hindsight, this should have been kept in, as it feels like exposing the sport’s great moments to a mainstream audience is intrinsically vital to its long-term success, and to mitigating as much as possible against events like Logan Paul vs Floyd Mayweather being non-hardcore boxing fans’ main point of reference with the fight game.
Eddie Hearn has alluded to almost exactly this concept in interviews around his new deal, which would be an extremely astute move. DAZN and Matchroom agreeing on content deals at reduced rates with other broadcasters with significantly larger reach would be a vital cog in building their fighters as stars amongst the non-hardcore audience. My assumption is that, in the UK, this could be with the BBC. We saw the Canelo documentary The Greatest Athlete You’ve Never Seen on BBC One and iPlayer prior to the Billy Joe Saunders fight, and Hearn himself hosts the No Passion, No Point podcast for the broadcaster - whilst BBC Sport has a long and storied boxing history. The BBC reaches 90% of the UK population each week but doesn’t have the financial muscle to compete for major boxing rights, so this seems like an ideal solution for all parties and offers a huge platform for event highlights, standalone documentaries or both.
This deal obviously ends Matchroom Boxing’s incredibly successful time with Sky Sports, which has lasted for more than 25 years and been exclusive for their UK shows for more than a decade. This is a relationship that has offered the platform for Eddie Hearn’s outfit’s huge growth.
Over the course of the 2010s, Matchroom and Sky together instigated a resurgence in British TV boxing - taking it from largely dimly lit small halls to being able to regularly fill stadiums and the 02 Arena, and making its events the envy of the world for the atmosphere alone. This eventually led to DAZN offering crazy money to become worldwide broadcast partners, with Matchroom USA launched in 2018. Once that deal was made, the elephant in the room was Sky still holding rights in the UK, and it did feel like only a matter of time before the Matchroom-DAZN agreement became unique across the world.
Although their boxing shows have not been without fault, the Sky promotional juggernaut has offered Matchroom numerous valuable touchpoints amongst both hardcore and (especially) casual fans. Their presentation, commentary and card quality have on occasion received deserved criticism, something which has increased in volume in recent years, but overall Sky are a hugely positive force for British boxing. Their UK-centric approach also helps to safeguard the sport’s mainstream presence here.
For Sky Sports, this will be a humbling experience. They are the broadcaster that has dominated UK sports rights for the last 30 years, ever since their landmark launch of the Premier League in 1992 (DAZN might be looking to hijack those rights in the UK as well, in time, or they may just buy BT Sport).
Encouragingly, Sky is intent on maintaining their boxing output after the Matchroom horse has bolted. It will take time to rebuild, but they have been quick to spell out their own plans. Rather than going for another exclusive contract with a single promoter, they will be working with different companies on both sides of the Atlantic to fulfil their annual fight dates, closer to the template Sky used prior to Matchroom taking up their boxing dates.
Sky’s new long-term agreement with Top Rank to screen their events in the UK has in fact already commenced, with their screening of Shakur Stevenson’s win over Jeremiah Nakathila last Saturday. Though it did seem to be haphazardly arranged just days prior to the weekend’s first card, the deal offers up many of the finest fighters in the sport - June alone will see Naoya Inoue and Vasyl Lomachenko appear on Sky. This is not only an opportunity for Sky to fill their schedule with quality content but for those fighters signed to US promoters to receive a bigger presence in a new market with the power of Sky’s promotional suite behind them.
It’s a shame that the Top Rank deal couldn’t have been launched with screening Josh Taylor’s undisputed title win in Vegas in May. Sky could foster positivity and subscriptions by ensuring that major stateside fights involving British fighters - those who AREN’T signed to Matchroom - are available to a wider audience going forward. Bob Arum has already stated that Josh Taylor vs Terence Crawford in the UK is an option for the future, and Sky would offer the ideal partner platform to make that a huge event. Taylor has a mandatory defence against Jack Catterall if he is staying at junior welterweight, and were that to happen it would presumably now be on Sky.
Tyson Fury is an interesting outlier for this new pact - signed to Top Rank, with his British promoter being Frank Warren, he is for all intents and purposes a ‘BT Sport’ fighter in the UK. His 2020 rematch with Deontay Wilder was a BT Box Office presentation, however, this was only following a bidding war with Sky Sports, due to the ‘first refusal’ nature of BT’s Fury deal. If Sky and Top Rank are working more closely, then you would have to expect Sky to be interested in capturing his future fights. It will be interesting to see where Fury-Wilder III lands.
Sky’s choice for their UK promotional partnership came as more of a surprise, almost out of nowhere joining up with Ben Shalom of BOXXER. BOXXER (previously known as ULTIMATE BOXXER) have run one-night tournaments, similar in style to Matchroom’s own Prizefighter series, which have been broadcast on BT Sport and ITV4, and they don’t have a stable of their own fighters to speak of. The vastly experienced former Matchroom Boxing chief John Wischhusen is also part of the team, and it’s been made clear that working with other promoters will be key to deliver what will apparently be a minimum of 14 UK-based shows per year. When discussing their new deals with Boxing News last week, Adam Smith (Sky’s oft-maligned head of boxing development) explained that “we want to work with other people, whether it’s PBC whether it’s other managers or promoters”. It seems like they might involve more promoters from both sides of the Atlantic in the future, something which we should clearer on come the full August launch.
Perhaps this wider network will include the newly-launched Wasserman Boxing, which I had previously surmised could end up a part of the new Sky boxing package. They now don’t have a clear platform through which they can “massively attack the market” in the UK, as has been the stated aim of Wasserman chief Kalle Sauerland.
It’s a bit of a leap into the unknown for Sky and it will be intriguing to see how it plays out. Sky giving the opportunity to a young British promoter who they clearly have a lot of faith in has to be commended, and we will apparently hear more when their full boxing schedule is announced in August.
Boxing is a sport that breeds cynicism, and in turn, seems to attract many of the most downtrodden sports fans of the lot - I sometimes count myself amongst them. Eddie Hearn in particular can be criticised for almost anything he does by boxing obsessives, even though Matchroom does in the round deliver a huge amount now and has promised to offer better value in the future. On this occasion, I don’t see too many negatives for fans to come out of this news. Matchroom and DAZN want to deliver big things, and Sky offers an additional opportunity for more major exposure for the rest of the boxing world. The situation had perhaps been too cosy, even a little stale, in recent times, and in fact, this major change should ensure stronger work from all parties.
An additional subscription may be required, but the reality of the streaming wars currently ongoing in the media industry is that signing up for multiple services is now the norm. In return, we should see consistently stronger cards, with fewer being staged behind pay-per-view paywalls There will also simultaneously never have been a better time for a larger number of fighters to make the money their effort and sacrifice deserves. Everyone’s a winner.
The fight game will be seeing an awful lot of change over the coming weeks and months. Watching the rest of the boxing year unfold - both in the UK and across the world - will be fascinating.
THE NEXT ROUND
A far-from-exhaustive rundown of upcoming boxing calendar highlights…
19th June 2021
Naoya Inoue vs Michael Dasmarinas
Promoter: Top Rank / TV: Sky Sports (UK); ESPN (US)
The return of ‘The Monster’ Inoue, one of the pound-for-pound best in the sport, who takes the WBA (Super), IBF and Ring Magazine bantamweight titles into a defence against mandatory challenger Michael Dasmarinas in Vegas. Inoue has made it clear that he has his eyes set on being the undisputed bantamweight king, a move which would involve a rematch with Nonito Donaire (the newly-crowned WBC champ) in a rematch of their 2019 fight of the year. Top Rank is trying to build Inoue up as a draw in the States, so will be hopeful for a spectacular performance against Dasmarinas, and the bookies have him a 1/33 favourite. Inoue possesses that most enviable combination for a boxer - an excellent chin and power in both hands. He is dynamic and durable, with regular flashes of brilliance. Dasmarinas has been stopped just once in his career, and has the fantastic nickname ‘Hot and Spicy’, but Inoue should be on another level here. This will be the second fight of Sky Sports’ new UK deal with Top Rank and precedes Vasyl Lomachenko’s return at the same Virgin Hotels Vegas venue on 26th June.
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Jermall Charlo vs Juan Macias Montiel
Promoter: Premier Boxing Champions / TV: Showtime (US)
WBC middleweight champ Charlo (31-0) says his aim is to unify the division and fight the likes of IBF titlist Gennady Golovkin and WBO kingpin Demetrius Andrade, and even face Canelo. Boxing politics has provided stumbling blocks so far, with accusations of ‘ducking’ from divergent sides. For the time being, then, we are making do with a defence against Montiel, in a fight in which Charlo will surely be a class above. Montiel has taken all of his 22 wins by knockout, so clearly, he carries power, but his record is patchy and his four defeats include a 2017 second-round stoppage at the hands of current middleweight contender Jaime Munguia (who himself also returns this weekend on DAZN against recent GGG victim Kamil Szeremeta). If Charlo really is the elite fighter he says he is, the one we saw glimpses of in his decision victory against Sergiy Derevyanchenko last Autumn, then he should handle this fight with relative ease. PBC and Showtime clearly see Charlo as a star, and for good reason, however, his competition definitely needs to step up soon. PBC doesn't have a regular UK broadcaster partner currently, but Showtime’s excellent ALL ACCESS is on YouTube and does an excellent job of telling the stories of both fighters, including a fascinating insight into the relationship between Jermall and his twin brother (and fellow world champion) Jermell…
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26th June 2021
Gervonta Davis vs Mario Barrios
Promoter: Premier Boxing Champions / TV: Showtime pay-per-view (US)
After his recent legalised bank robbing in conjunction with Logan Paul, Floyd Mayweather gets back to his ‘day job’ in support of his protege ‘Tank’ Davis, as he leapfrogs the divisions to challenge WBA (regular) super lightweight champ Mario Barrios. Of course, this is the WBA, and therefore Barrios is ridiculously one of their three current champions at the weight - with Josh Taylor the true undisputed king of the division - but let’s not let that nonsense cloud the bout itself. Let’s also put aside the tinge of disappointment that Davis hasn’t yet faced any of the lightweight fighters who, along with ‘Tank’, were dubbed the new four kings last year. What we do have here is a pretty intriguing fight, as the fearsome Davis gives up considerable deficits in size and reach with natural 140-pounder Barrios, with both fighters carrying undefeated records into the bout. Even though Gervonta is a heavy favourite, part of me feels this fight could be a tougher task than the 1/4-on betting odds demonstrate. On the other hand, Mayweather and team ‘Tank’ are positioning Davis as the heir apparent to Floyd’s throne, so the cynic in me feels they wouldn’t be putting their man in too much unnecessary danger at this stage.
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