The Golden Monopoly – Oscar’s quest to rule boxing

By Al Francis: Golden Boy promotions was established in 2001, since then they have strived, and to some degree succeeded in becoming the world’s leading boxing promoter, but the way they have achieved this makes us wonder how can this be good for boxing long term.

A good example of the way Golden Boy conducts its business practice came in June 2009 when the firm was on the hunt to get the WBA 140 lb title around the waist of their man Victor Ortiz. The title was to be contested in July between then champion Andreas Kotelnik and challenger Amir Khan, Golden boy wanted the winner to face the winner of their fight between Ortiz and Argentina’s Marcos Maidana. However they forgot, or at least ignored one thing, Dimitry Salita had been the WBA’s mandatory contender for almost two years and was rightfully the next in line. When Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer announced he expected the WBA mandate that the Kotelnik-Khan winner face the Ortiz-Maidana winner, claiming to have this in writing, one Dimitry Salita hit back. He said:

“they’re a big company, They’re trying to bend the rules. They’re trying to kick everyone to the side and get their way, rules or no rules. When Oscar De La Hoya formed Golden Boy, he said he wanted to change boxing, to bring honor to the sport. This isn’t the honorable thing to do. This isn’t good for boxing. This isn’t justice. This goes against the right to pursue happiness, which is why my family immigrated to this country (from Ukraine) and why I’ve worked so hard. We’ll see what happens.”

In the end justice was served, Salita got the nod from the WBA and will now fight for the title against new champion Khan, and the winner of that one will face Marcos Maidana, who stopped Ortiz to pick up the WBA’s intirim title. Even though Salita rightfully got his title shot, his comments at that time highlighted the aggressive manner in which Golden Boy conducts it’s business dealings, pushing others to the side.

The promotional firm have various financial interests, they have a diverse portfolio of investments including ownership in several Spanish-language newspapers in major markets throughout the U.S and in 2007 they bought majority ownership of the Kappa publishing group who are the leading publishers in the boxing and wrestling industry. Under Kappa’s belt are ring magazine, world boxing, KO and wrestling illustrated. Although Golden Boy have no editorial influence whatsoever over these publications, their mere presence in an unbiased market has caused concern by some. To be fair, GBP’s claim that their investment in this market was merely to safeguard the struggling publications for future generations is probably quite accurate as they paid a price far exceeding the market value of the Kappa publishing group.

GBP it must be said have done a lot for boxing and have shown great innovation in bringing more money into the sport. They have brought in a fleet of new sponsors over the last few years after the beer companies lost interest in the sport, no more budweiser, lots more affliction! Their marketing campaign for the recent Mayweather-Marquez pay per view card has been exceptionally innovative and certainly paid off after HBO announced that the card had generated over a million buys. Add another 200,000 on to that if they weren’t in direct competition with the UFC. The upcoming Cotto-Pacquiao fight which promises to be far more entertaining will be very lucky indeed to exceed 800,000 buys. GBP stacked the undercard for Mayweather-Marquez with quality fights, not their normal practice it must be said. Mayweather-Marquez aside, their undercards for big fights in the past have been of a very low standard. Something HBO has been letting them get away with, in fact that’s another major concern in the GBP monopoly, their healthy (or perhaps unhealthy) relationship with the world’s leading broadcaster of boxing.

It seems the majority of dates available with HBO are offered to GBP while other promoter’s are left scrambling to get good deals for their fighters. Golden Boy have put together some great fights over the last few years on HBO but they have also been bringing along some of their prospects exclusively on the network. I’m not sure this method of matchmaking will work in the long run, as HBO is subscription based the consumer has to have a good idea of what they are buying into to understand it’s value. Golden Boy have many elite fighters and champions under their banner but they haven’t really brought along many prospects from amateur stardom to professional stardom. Bob Arum’s Top Rank promotions have excelled in this field and he seems to have the right method for bringing along prospects in the pro game. Channel’s like ESPN and various others are available in more homes across the US than HBO, these platforms are often the best way for young prospects to get noticed, it gives them the opportunity to be the main event of a small scale show and develop home town following. Is it better to box in front of a sold out crowd of 1000 in a small arena that paid to see you or to box in front of a scattered 1000 in a 20,000 seat arena that paid to see another fight several hours away? Arum does feature his prospects on HBO undercards from time to time but his main method is to build them up on other networks until they’re of championship quality and developed a decent following and then put them on the big platform. I think Golden Boy could learn a lot from Top Rank.

In general Golden Boy have done an outstanding job so far, they have put on excellent fights and have an incredibly diverse depth of talent under their banner. They have seeked out new ways to market their product and continue to bring more money and in turn more fans into the sport. I hope they continue doing what they are doing, but by the same token they shouldn’t have everything their own way, this lies with HBO. HBO would do well to reduce the amount of dates offered to Golden Boy, not by much, in order to create a more level playing field for other promoters and fighters struggling to find an opening on the network. This would result in slightly less money for the fighters (and with HBO’s cut in its sports budget this will happen anyway), but for the fans, it would result in an increased quality of programming, with stacked fight cards offering more entertainment for the viewer. In the next two years it will be very interesting to see what direction the sport has taken, lets just hope it’s the right direction for the fans, the paying public, as a monopoly in any market just can’t guarantee long term success.

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