LONDON, ENGLAND - MARCH 16: A No entry sign is seen outside the venue as the event is placed behind ... [+]
While boxing might be on hold for now, the sport has a history of resiliency. As the longest-standing professional sport in modern history—among the major sports such as baseball, football, basketball, hockey and soccer—boxing, like its fighters, knows how to deal with adversity, picking itself up when it’s knocked down and pushing forward.
Boxing is more than just a sport; it’s a culture, more so than any other sport on the planet. It’s this very culture that will see the sport through this time of uncertainty.
Recently, the sport has felt the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. On March 12, Top Rank Boxing CEO Bob Arum announced the events to be headlined by Shakur Stevenson and Michael Conlan would be canceled in New York, creating a domino effect in the sport, with daily announcements of cancellations across the world following Top Rank’s lead. While promoters flirted with the idea of staging events without an audience, the inability to adequately test all parties involved led to cancellations.
One promotion did remain active on March 13: The Salita Promotions Showtime series ShoBox card in Hinckley, Minn., went on as scheduled, but with no fans in the venue at the Grand Casino.
Boxing is unique relative to most other professional sports because fighters don’t get paid unless they fight. A small number of the overall pool of professional fighters are signed exclusively to promoters. These fighters aren’t employees; they’re subcontractors. Furthermore, as any subcontractor, they’re responsible for their own expenses. The expenses incurred by fighters in the six to eight weeks of a training camp leading up to a fight can’t be recovered when a fight is canceled. For most fighters who have boxing as their only source of income, this can be devastating; keep in mind that less than 1% of the active participants in the sport are earning million-dollar paydays. Then again, they’re fighters. It’s in their nature to roll with the punches.
Once a new fight date is rescheduled, the training camp process and expenses start all over again. If a fight is canceled prior to the weigh-in, promoters aren’t obligated to pay fighters for a fight that didn’t take place. While promoters have insurance to account for such instances—even if this particular one is unprecedented—fighters do not. Nonetheless, fighters remain positive. While it’s a major inconvenience and a hit to their income, many fighters understand the bigger picture and the danger to society. With the prominent venues such as Madison Square Garden and MGM Grand closed until further notice, every aspect of the sport is taking a standing eight count.
In the current day and age, to find the impact that an event such as this is having on an industry—in this case, the boxing world—all one needs to do is turn to the social media data.
Boxing Coronavirus-Related Social Media Data
There were 478 tweets mentioning Shakur Stevenson on March 12, the day Arum announced that the Miguel Marriaga fight was going to be held without a crowd, while there were 220 tweets mentioning Stevenson on March 13, when Arum postponed the fight indefinitely over a lack of coronavirus tests.
Likewise, there were 355 tweets mentioning Michael Conlan on March 12, around the announcement that his fight with Belmar Preciado would be fought sans audience, while there were 194 tweets mentioning him on March 13 when the fight was being postponed indefinitely.
It’s only in the last week when the coronavirus reached pandemic level that social media interest in boxing started to cease being business as usual. For instance, there were 149,072 tweets mentioning boxing between March 2 and 8, which was an 18% increase from the volume of tweets mentioning boxing during the same window in 2019. However, by March 9-14, there were only 97,534 tweets mentioning boxing, a decrease of 6% from the volume between those dates in 2019.
In part because boxing doesn't have a centralized professional league in the same way other sports do, cancellations haven’t generated the same level of conversation on social media. Between March 9 and 14, there were 4,030,305 tweets mentioning the NBA, an increase of 441% compared with the volume during the same window in 2019. During the same time period this year, there was a 178% increase in the volume of tweets around the NHL and a 142% increase in the number of tweets around MLB.
Overall, there were 1,606 tweets mentioning boxing being either postponed or canceled from March 1 to 14.
Tracy David, chief marketing pfficer at ListenFirst, a digital media and marketing agency, said: “While the social media conversation around team sports has increased dramatically in the last week with nearly every sports event being either postponed or canceled, there's no centralized narrative around boxing, and the sport has become slightly less talked about on social media as a result. Additionally, based on the social media reaction to UFC staging Fight Night 170 without a live audience, which generated far less social media responses to UFC content than is the norm, it's not clear if fights without an audience is a path forward for boxing. In theory boxing without audiences could help fill the massive sports programing void if the coronavirus outbreak continues indefinitely, but at this point at least there's no evidence that the audience is interested in fights without spectators.”
UFC Fight Night 170 was the first major fight staged without an audience around the coronavirus being a pandemic, and the social media results are mixed. On March 14, 2020 the day of UFC Fight Night 170, the conversation volume around UFC, meaning earned Twitter mentions was 29,603 while there were 793,121 content responses to UFC social media posts. In comparison, on February 29, 2020 around Fight Night 169, there was a conversation volume of 16,851 around UFC and 1,447,787 content responses to UFC posts on social media. Meanwhile on February 22, 2020 around Fight Night 168 there was a conversation volume of 18,903 around UFC and 3,159,328 content responses to UFC's social media posts. Essentially, people were talking slightly more about UFC Fight Night on Twitter when it occurred without an audience, but content responses to UFC content on social media, which better reflects engagement among UFC's core fans, was way down Saturday night.
Even the sportsbooks have felt the impact as sports bettors have nothing to bet on. Popular sportsbook BetOnline still has the odds up for fights that have been canceled with the optimism that although canceled for now, these bouts will ultimately take place.
With the future being uncertain and more and more cancelations upon us, it could be June before boxing returns to business as usual. In the meantime, fighters, trainers, promoters, networks and fans are eagerly waiting for life to return to normal.
