Business of Boxing

Local boxing was jarred by the news that Boy Cantada, the producer of the weekly boxing program "Fistorama," was quitting the pro scene for good, and was switching to amateur boxing instead. Based on the reports of Quinito Henson (Philippine Star - Oct 20) and Ronnie Nathanielsz (www.philboxing.com Oct. 19), Cantada is quitting pro boxing "because of the GAB's dictatorial and strong-arm methods." The one major incident that blew the lid was the GAB's "arbitrarily increasing the compensation of boxing officials in promotions without prior notice or consultation."

If you analyze both stories, you can't help but get the impression that the GAB is the one and only reason why Fistorama is turning its back on pro boxing. But is this possible? Is the GAB so incompetent that it can ruin a TV program? I couldn't help but try to read between the lines because one has to realize that while boxing is a sport, it also happens to be a business undertaking. It's an industry of its own under this umbrella of sports. And the GAB is only a small element of this boxing business.

Before anything else, I'm no big fan of the GAB, and there's a lot of room for improvement with the way they run the affairs of the sport. However, when a producer talks about folding shop or going somewhere else, there's a need to take a look at the bigger picture of boxing as both sport and a business. If the GAB was so incompetent and so useless that it could cause the downfall of boxing promoters, then the likes of ALA, SGG and Wakee Salud would be out of business by now.

Let's take a refresher course about pro boxing from a TV producer's standpoint. A TV producer's primary expenses consist of buying airtime in a TV station, producing the TV coverage of its fight cards, and paying the talent fees of sportscasters / TV crew.

On the other hand, the promoter has to take care of providing the purses of all boxers and trainers of a fight card, paying the rental of the venue, and taking care of the fees of the GAB officials. Other items may include shouldering the cost of food, transportation and accommodations of boxers who come in from somewhere else, whether from within the country or from abroad. And this doesn't even cover the expenses needed for a communication drive to drum up awareness for the event. If you look at a promoter's costing and budget, all these add up to a pretty big sum. If one was both a producer and promoter, you can imagine the sleepless nights he might be having. Cantada obviously had more than the GAB fees to worry about each time he staged a fight card.

The bigger headache for the TV producer/promoter is to find the funds to cover all of the above. The usual source of funds are the brands/products who have TV advertising money to spend, and whose target market is the boxing fan. And another key thing to remember is that there are other TV boxing programs also looking for the same kind of funding.

If we see it from the angle of a boxing promoter/manager, a perfect case study would be Cebu's Wakee Salud and Sammy Gello-ani (SGG). SGG had a headache of a job to take care of last night's fight card featuring Z Gorres and AJ Banal. He did all of the above tasks as a promoter (not a TV producer), and more importantly, worked with the ALA network to source the funds to cover all the expenses. SGG Promotions is targeting to earn money from gate receipts, donations from generous sponsors and from the fees paid by the TV producer for the rights to televise the fights.

It's an open secret that local boxing promoters/managers don't make much money when they stage local fights. They usually end up spending more than they earn on a night of boxing. But when do they make money? Why do they go into the sport if the ROI is nowhere in sight?

Promoter/managers who are into boxing as a business see the local fight cards as the initial investment that must be planted before they can reap the fruits of their labor. Like astute businessmen, they're thinking long term and are making sure that their short term activities get them to their goals. These local fight cards are the little but necessary steps that must be taken because these discover the world-caliber boxers who will become the big money earners of the future. This is realized when they start hitting the international scene where boxing dollars are in abundance. Ergo, it's a simple case of making a smart business move: invest in the local boxers who have the big potential to make it big in the international scene. Managers will slowly but surely hit ROI as soon as their boxers start campaigning abroad from as near as Indonesia and Japan, all the way to the lights of Vegas for the top-level fights (and money).

If Jimrex Jaca got his visa and earned the $40,000 for fighting Juan Manuel Marquez today, both Jaca and Wakee would've come back with a cool P2M, with the manager getting his usual cut! Aside from Jaca, Wakee is now working on having his other boxers campaign abroad.

With its wide base of boxers now seeing action abroad, I can't help but be happy for the people behind the initials SGG and ALA. I don't have the stats, but it sure looks like they're the "market leaders" of the boxing "export business." It's only fitting that Cebu's most dedicated boxing patron be rewarded with the sight of his boxers doing well abroad.

Did you say "Oh my GAB?" As you can see, they're small fry in this big world of boxing, the business of boxing.

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Time-out: Happy birthday to my sister Dra. Naomi Navarro-Poca who celebrates her birthday this week.

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