China vs. Japan Boxing Match in Shenzhen
Organizing a Professional Boxing Match in China
A new friend of mine (wiser by far in years and business) invited me to a presentation about the CBIG (China Boxing Industry Group) today, which will be the first professional boxing organization in China. The meeting was very interesting for a number of reasons. The first is that the initial match is going to be China vs. Japan. Anyone who knows anything about Sino-Japanese relations knows that this is likely to draw a large crowd. And it is right in the place I live, Shenzhen, on October 20th of this year.
A man who had fought against Mike Tyson, Li Houqiang, was there and spoke, and seemed to be a very friendly guy from the few moments I had to speak with him. At the end of the speeches by various government officials and people responsible for getting the China Boxing Industry Group off the ground, several rather pointed questions where asked by the media (such as “Why would you chose Japan as a boxing rival instead of another country with better fighters & more boxing experience, say Thailand?” This question was mostly deflected and the true answer, that such a fight would undoubtedly draw a huge crowd, was all but ignored. However, anyone in the room could guess such an answer on their own). None of the questions were answered very directly, but I was surprised by the pointed nature of the questions more than anything.
So who is going to go out to see the first officially sponsored professional boxing match in China? The date is October 20th, in the Shenzhen Stadium. Tell your friends.
Update: The fight wasn’t nearly as good as I thought it would be, and the seats were pretty far away, but I did manage to get a bit of video from the fights:
To whom it may concern,
Interesting post indeed! Just a few general questions . In your post you mentioned “first officially sponsored Professional boxing match in China” Sponsored refers to sponsorship as of the commercial kind from companies as the promoters attempts to recover the costs of staging the event to will seek out various companies to sell advertising space ringside usually in conjunction with TV coverage to maximise the value of the sponsorship for the sponosor by accessing the largest possible viewer market etc.
In fact Yang Ze Ming and his promotions company have had previous promotions in Shanghai as had other Mainland promotional companies so in fact it’s hardly the first one of it’s kind as claimed.
I would recommend you access the following site at http://www.boxrec.com where you could check the schedule of fights for China , I suggest the following dates 15-04-06, 29-04-06, 08-06-06 and 21-01-06 . the site itself is a database of all boxers records, a listing of promoters and managers on a global scale and if the Oct 20 fight is not listed ( it isn’t) then the various organizations around the world will not recognize the results of the fight which is important for ranking purposes and getting bigger purse fights overseas for rising boxers which is a must in China in order to raise the medau profile.
In fact I believe that you were referring to first officially sanctioned fight in China but in fact any promoter can get a fight sanctioned if they pay the relevant promoters fee and the sanctioning fee to the sanctioning body such as the WBA or WBC.
A quick check of the above mentioned web site will reveal that there have been a number of officially sanctioned events in China over the years including a few this year eg ABCO (WBC) and PABA (WBA) both active organizations on the Mainland.
Now for the crowd size tbc, any promoter knows that the costs of staging a top class event in China which would include the following Purses, insurance, accomodation , sanctioning fees, ring officials, airfares, hotel, the venue, buying TV time, TV crews , venue security and the like will usually run the cost of such an event into the range of 500,000 RMB to 1,000,000 RMB excluding any pay offs to local officials and under the table pay offs to the sponsors who generally speaking are using shareholder funds anyway so 500,000 RMB would be a reasonable sort of budget for a decent size promotion.
As the major broadcasters in China such as CCTV 5 already have existing boxing content from HBO, Showtime on a 52 week schedule each year via a agent in Shanghai then they are loathe to shelve high quality , high profile shows which cost up to $10,000 a week to purcahse to show locally based , small time promotions so they would insist that the promoter purchase the air time or they would show the whole card so hardly attractive to potential sponsors seeking nationwide audiences.
As for pay per view the problem is the payment mechanism as most overseas providers want a share/view arrangement but due to the absence of an effective and realiable Electronics payments system in place most net casters offer the service free to users and simply sell advertising slots to companies to generate revenue but the promoters are expected to provide the content for broad frre of charge something frustrating overseas promoters so unless you can seel ringmat advertising space there is little financial return in such a proposition at this stage.
You mentioned huge gate well that;s interesting because most high cost promotions don’t recover the cost of hosting the event at the gate so to speak.
Generally speaking in return for sizeable sponsorship, companies are entitled to free ticket allocations which could number hundreds depending on the seating allocation including ringside seating which sell at the highest rates.
Now what do they do with all these free tickets well they can give them away, throw then away or sell them to scalpers who buy them at a cheap rate and then stand outside the venue on fight night and sell them at a discount while still recovering their investment. Somnetimes they are selling at 50% of the face value of the ticket. That affects the live gate takings so even if you have 10,000 tickets with 8,000 for general sale and you sell them all at face value, lets say 50 RMB you have in theory 400,000 RMB , the problem with this is that there has never been such a large live gate at a boxing event , and that’s assuming that you sell all those tickets and there is not scalping. Even then you are still in the red and you still need company sponsorship in make up the difference and assuming the sponosr pays in full as most sponsorship agreements state payment is made in installments eg 20% on confirmation of the card . 20% on arrival of all participants and 20% after the weight etc.
So in fact most of the initial cost and risk of staging the event falls on the promoter, little wonder there are few major events in China
There are few people in China with the professional knowhow, management expertise, relationships with the CCP and it’s various organs such as SOEs which provide sponsorship , Broadcasters such as CCTV etc and media such as sina.co and sohu,com and the PSB who also have the creditablity to organize fully professional world class boxing events on the Mainland for all the reasons listed above.
I’ve been involved in Professional boxing in China and overseas for many years in the promotional side and organizational side and I can state that’s it’s a hard and sometimes thankless task.
For information Zhang Xi Yan will fight for the WBC Female world on NOV 4 in front of a couple hundred rich punters in the Monte Carlo casino but it goes acrros Europe on Eurosport and will be re-broadcast of CCTV 5 on the mainland on Nov 12, they will be present ringside and we are still negotiating to have sohu.com netcast the event live here subject to the broadcast agreement being signed with the European agent, now that’s a big fight in terms of interest (global) , in terms of money, big card pay for by the casino there, betting ringside etc but there will only be 200 to 300 people in attendence and there is the Video on demand revenue at a later date.
People have pointed questions because they are very skeptical about the state of the business in general and the ability and/or claims of some involved in this business and with very good reason.
To those who are interested I hope that we are successful in establishing Pro boxing in what wil be one of the most important markets of the 21st century in order to safeguard a legacy which i9s centuries old.
TIger - thanks for the extremely helpful post. I guess I didn’t mean professionally sponsored but sanctioned!