Boxing is popular with young people in countries like the United Kingdom and Mexico. But it doesn\u2019t resonate with young sports fans in the United States the way it once did.<\/p>\n
Fans of a sport \u2013 particularly, team sports – develop lifelong allegiances at an early age and often pass it on to their children. There was a time when fathers and sons in America sat down in front of a television set together and watched Gillette Friday Night Fights or boxing on weekend afternoons. Now, if they sit down together at all, they watch football.<\/p>\n
Boxing\u2019s proponents point to statistics that show the average boxing fan in the United States is younger<\/a> than the average fan of many other sports (including football and baseball). But they\u2019re talking about fish in a much smaller pond. There are far fewer young boxing fans in America than there are young fans of any major sport. That means there are fewer young boxing fans who will grow up to be old ones, and pass down their passion to the next generation.<\/p>\n Boxing, perhaps more than any other sport, cherishes and relies on its history to build a following. Young people today care less about the history of sports than earlier generations did. Boxing fans in America talk more about fights from years ago than about fights today. The sport\u2019s most recognizable figures are old \u2013 Mike Tyson, Don King, Michael Buffer and, until recently, George Foreman<\/a>.<\/p>\n The nature of boxing also makes it difficult to build a young following. Children often become fans of a sport because they play it from an early age. They play baseball in the park, football in the street, and basketball in the schoolyard. Tennis and golf are more exclusive, but many children find a way to play them. Kids might get into an occasional fight. But virtually none of them box.<\/p>\n Added to this, boxing is largely inaccessible to young fans as an in-person spectator sport. Adolescents root for their school teams. Going to a high school football or basketball game accentuates the feeling that they\u2019re part of a group. There are no high school boxing teams. Very few young people have the opportunity to actually go to a fight.<\/p>\n The powers that be in boxing have exacerbated these conditions by adopting an economic model that cuts off the sport\u2019s flagship events and most popular fighters from potential fans. The NFL, NBA, and Major League Baseball prioritize reaching a large audience in their television and streaming deals. But there\u2019s no easy access to big-time boxing in the United States today without paying for it. And young people don\u2019t expect to pay \u2013 let alone, pay a lot – for online content.<\/p>\n Equally troubling, the multitude of world sanctioning bodies and \u201cchampionship\u201d belts of dubious provenance means that young people (and older fans too) don\u2019t know who the real champions are.<\/p>\n And championships are important. Other sports culminate in the Super Bowl, World Series, NBA finals, Stanley Cup, Olympics, World Cup, US Open, NCAA tournaments, and other events that fire the imagination and produce legitimate champions.<\/p>\n Too many of today\u2019s boxing \u201cchampions\u201d have been maneuvered to their titles by the payment of sanctioning fees and mismatches against weak opponents. The Los Angeles Lakers couldn\u2019t go to NBA commissioner Adam Silver this year and say, \u201cWe just lost to the Minnesota Timberwolves in the first round of the play-offs. But LeBron James is a big name and we\u2019ll pay you X amount of money if you sanction us to play against the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA finals.\u201d<\/p>\n Young people are particularly susceptible to suggestion. They can be coaxed into buying a lot of things through clever marketing. But they don\u2019t buy sports that bore them. And too many of today\u2019s fights \u2013 let\u2019s be honest \u2013 are boring mismatches. College football fans tolerate Alabama v Louisiana-Monroe as the second game of the season because they know that, later in the year, the Crimson Tide will play Georgia, LSU, and Oklahoma. If 90% of college football games were on a par with Alabama v Louisiana-Monroe, college football would be far less popular than it is today.<\/p>\n An unfair decision at the end of a fight sours viewers and makes watching the event a less satisfactory experience than would otherwise be the case. Incompetent and, in some instances, corrupt judging alienates boxing fans of all ages.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the difficulty of actually watching the fights. Today\u2019s flagship bouts generally aren\u2019t contested until close to midnight on the East Coast. Can you imagine an NFL game starting at midnight eastern time and costing $89.99 to watch? I didn\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n The facts speak for themselves. HBO, Showtime, and the four major broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX) all played a significant role in boxing. Now they\u2019ve all walked away from the sport.<\/p>\n Former Showtime Sports president Stephen Espinoza says that boxing has traditional strength in Black and Latino households (which skew younger than the overall sports audience) and that, in recent years, boxing has seen a rise in the young white demographic. But these inroads with a new generation, Espinoza notes, \u201cseem to be a function of influencer boxing with Jake Paul leading the charge.\u201d<\/p>\n An influencer like Paul standing out is unsurprising, and says a lot about boxing\u2019s limited appeal. Young people understand who the great athletes are in other sports. Ask kids to name an active professional boxer today and they\u2019re more likely to name Jake Paul than Terence Crawford<\/a>.<\/p>\n That said; traditional promoters have reservations about fights involving Paul and his influencer brethren. Eddie Hearn jumpstarted social-media-influencer boxing in the United States in 2019 when he promoted Logan Paul v KSI on Dazn.<\/p>\n \u201cI made money but I hated it,\u201d Hearn says, looking back on that venture. \u201cThe build-up was great. The numbers were great. But the product wasn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n Hearn also notes that college sports have a tiny audience in the UK but siphon off a huge amount of fan allegiance among young people in the United States, some of which would otherwise be devoted to boxing.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Frank Warren points a finger at American promoters and maintains, \u201cWe have a great young audience for boxing in the UK. That\u2019s because we promote fighters in their home areas. We build their fan base among their contemporaries in pubs and wherever else they might be, and it spreads from there. It\u2019s called promotion. When you do four-wall deals [events where the promoter moves into a venue but leaves the promoting largely to others] the way they\u2019re done in America, people stop promoting.\u201d<\/p>\n Australian heavyweight prospect Teremoana Samson Junior Leon Teremoana has a star quality that will never go out of style. Photograph: Adam Hunger\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Most pre-fight promotion for big fights in the United States is cookie-cutter and boring. There\u2019s a formulaic kick-off press conference. Then the fighters disappear except for (maybe) a media workout and some tepid media releases from training camp. Fight week arrives. A \u201cgrand arrival\u201d (which isn\u2019t very grand) is followed by a formulaic final pre-press conference and phony weigh-in (the real weigh-in having been conducted hours earlier behind closed doors).<\/p>\n The best way to reach young people is through the internet. A handful of individual fighters have capitalized on social media. And promoters like Matchroom, Queensberry, and Top Rank maintain an active social media presence. But there have been no effective social media campaigns on behalf of boxing as a whole because no one is looking out for the overall good of the sport in the way that the central governing authorities in other sports do.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no cohesive strategy, no central organization coordinating the demographic information and outreach,\u201d Espinoza says. \u201cTo do that, you\u2019d need the major promoters to turn over their information to one entity, and that\u2019s unlikely to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n And just because boxing is moving to streaming doesn\u2019t mean that it will reach the youth market. When PBC signed its deal with Amazon in late-2023, the reaction was, \u201cThis will be big!\u201d But there hasn\u2019t been much of a marketing push from Amazon, and PBC\u2019s fights have attracted a disappointingly small audience.<\/p>\n But for all the sport\u2019s flaws, walking into an arena on fight night and seeing a boxing ring illuminated beneath bright shining lights is akin to entering a magical kingdom. That\u2019s what Reece Chapman, a 16-year-old from Helena, Montana, saw when he entered the Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night for Matchroom\u2019s fight card headlined by Richardson Hitchens v George Kambosos<\/a>.<\/p>\n Montana isn\u2019t known for boxing. The only fight of note to occur there took place more than a century ago (on 4 July 1923) when Jack Dempsey decisioned Tommy Gibbons in Shelby. The event was a financial disaster. Four local banks that backed the venture were forced into bankruptcy.<\/p>\n Only two professional fight cards were contested in Montana in 2024, two in 2023, one in 2022, and none so far this year. Fights in Montana are regulated by the neighboring Wyoming Combat Sports Commission.<\/p>\n Reece, then 13 years old, went to his first fight when Top Rank promoted an eight-bout card at the Hulu Theater on 30 October 2022. A word of disclosure here. I\u2019m his great-uncle. I brought him. He was into the scene. (\u201cIt\u2019s really cool; how fast the fighters\u2019 hands are; how focused they are; the way they move around the ring\u201d). And enthralled as the night wore on (\u201cI\u2019ve never seen anything like this \u2026 This is really really cool \u2026 Wow! Wow! Wow!\u201d).<\/p>\n This past week, Reece was in New York and had a more immersive boxing experience. With the help of Anthony Leaver (Matchroom\u2019s head of US media), he was credentialed to attend fight week activities for the Hitchens-Kambosos card and the fights themselves.<\/p>\n