Floyd Mayweather?s win in the richest fight in history is leaving boxing authorities feeling shortchanged.
Not enough money is flowing back into the sport, even after last weekend?s fight against Manny Pacquiao generated what promoters estimated to be a record $300 million in revenue, said Karim Bouzidi, deputy executive director of the International Boxing Association, or AIBA. The organization is trying to change a business model dominated by a few elite boxers and promoters like Paradise, Nevada-based Top Rank Inc.
?It?s not sustainable to base the sport? on a few super fights, Bouzidi said.
Lausanne, Switzerland-based AIBA, a not-for-profit organization which regulated amateurs for most of its 69-year history, is moving into pro boxing with a league it says will give more financial stability to other boxers. It?s stepping onto the turf of the likes of Bob Arum?s Top Rank, a co-promoter of Mayweather?s latest fight, and Oscar De La Hoya?s Golden Boy Promotions Inc in Los Angeles.
As well as a signing-on fee and up to $60,000 for four fights a year, the so-called AIBA Pro Boxing league?s athletes will get the chance to qualify for the 2016 Olympics. They can?t take part in other events.
After a golden era when the fights of Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard were on free-to-air television, boxing has mostly fallen out of the limelight since the 1980s. In the U.S., a small group of promoters with links to pay-television companies such as HBO dominate the market, while other organizers are exposed to ?very high levels? of financial risk in matching lesser-known fighters, according to a 2014 report by market researcher IBISWorld.
In Europe, promoters focus on their home markets and so it?s difficult for boxers to become known abroad, according to Khedafi Djelkhir, a French bantamweight who?s on course to reach the Olympics via the AIBA league. U.S. Revenue
Boxing promoters, who split income with fighters, earned an estimated $221 million in revenue last year in the U.S., with most of the big fights in Las Vegas, according to IBISWorld. While the AIBA?s league has yet to affect top promoters, ?a lot of people in the industry are not too happy? about the AIBA?s strategy, according to De La Hoya. Mauricio Sulaiman, president of the Mexico City-based World Boxing Council which sanctioned the Mayweather-Pacquiao match, said AIBA officials should stick to amateur boxing, calling them ?rookies? in the professional game. Lee Samuels, a Top Rank spokesman, didn?t return an e-mail seeking comment.
Ching-Kuo Wu, an Olympics executive from Taiwan, led AIBA since 2006, dropping the word ?amateur? from its name in 2012 to move into pro boxing. He is tapping support from the International Olympic Committee to bankroll the new league. AIBA gets 43 percent of its income from the IOC, which is also based in the Swiss city of Lausanne. ?Noble Art?
?I am totally committed to bringing the noble art back to its golden age,? Wu said in an e-mail.
Djelkhir, the French boxer, is among 15 professionals who have signed contracts that bind them to the league. The competition, which started on Oct. 24, has had about 150 fights in a dozen weightclasses in countries including Italy, France, Argentina, Kazakhstan and Turkey.
AIBA?s model is doomed to failure, said U.K. promoter Frank Warren. The league will struggle to capture a global audience unless it can unearth a star, and even if it does, such a boxer will break ranks to join a bigger promoter, Warren wrote in a boxnation.com column. One-Way
The championship could also face anticompetitive challenges in the U.S. or Europe because it?s the only way pro boxers can enter the Olympics, according to Simon Block, former general secretary of the U.K. ruling body, the British Boxing Board of Control.
?It smacks of a monopoly,? Block said by telephone. While professional boxing has its failings, at least promoters and sanctioning bodies operate in a competitive market place, according to Block.
Djelkhir said the new league has revived his career. Even with an undefeated 16-0 record and holding a world bantamweight title, offers to fight had dried up before he joined.
?I have more stability now,? the 31-year-old said. ?I am in a league and a boxer like me can move up on merit, instead of relying on promoters to get us a fight.?
