Friday, February 22, 2008

Crooks or Cretins?

Back in the summer of 2006, I wrote a series of articles explaining the importance of utilizing MySpace to market boxing. One was called The Dinosaurs Come Home to Roost, which appeared on Bragging Rights Corner and in other places in various forms, including TapouT Magazine.

Little came of that effort, except for the establishment of a MySpace page for DiBella Entertainment (which has not received enough support from DBE), and a positive review of my piece by staff writer David Utter in Web Pro News.

Even today, virtually the entire boxing establishment continues to ignore the MySpace Boxing Forum, despite the fact that this group, which is free to join, has, as of this writing, 7184 members, a number which is continually rising. How much do you think it would cost these Einsteins to put together a mailing list of over 7000 boxing fans who are online and volunteered to join a boxing forum?

Each successive boxing show at Madison Square Garden this year has elicited a louder chorus of protest from established journalists who have either been given auxiliary media credentials, often meaning they are relegated to sitting in unsold nosebleed seats, or just denied media credentials altogether. At the same time, the media section is filled with fans, guests of the promoters, people drinking and even making out, children up past their bedtimes, and the like.

Already I am hearing complaints about the credentialing process for Saturday’s Klitschko-Ibragimov card – except, of course, from Boxing Writers Association of America. Perhaps when they learn what computers, the Internet, blogs, and e-mail are, and how to use them, we shall hear something.

Now yet another marketing disaster has been reported, this time involving amateur boxing. Thursday’s Washington Post ran a piece entitled American Heavyweights Search for a Ring Master, by John Scheinman. Despite some factual errors (Klitschko-Ibragimov is not on pay-per-view but regular HBO, and Emanuel Steward’s first name is misspelled, for starters), the article details how the American amateur boxing program has failed to produce world-class heavyweights.

In analyzing why this program is so bad, the article notes the experience in attempting to assist amateur boxing in the U.S. of Michael King, the former president of the television syndication giant King World Productions. King raised $60 million for this program.

The article states, “In 2003, he [King] signed a 21-year contract with USA Boxing, the national governing body of amateur boxing in the country, and gave the organization more than a million dollars a year. In December 2006, he canceled the contract.”

It goes on, “‘I gave these people $4 million and I never got one thing except yelled at,’ King said.”

Robert Voy, the president of USA Boxing from 2000 to 2004, was quoted as saying, “He had no desire to run USA Boxing, but some board members were suspicious they would lose control of the organization.” Voy also said, “They gave him a very difficult time trying to start a marketing program, and there's probably not a better marketing person in the country. It was very short-sighted on the part of the organization.”

So it’s simply not a lack of money hampering amateur boxing. They pissed away $60 million and ruined a gift contract from a wealthy and influential supporter of boxing.

The question then is, for both professional and amateur boxing: Are the people running it crooks or cretins? Do they fear wider coverage by the media and marketing of the sport because of their corrupt practices so much that they will damn near destroy their own enterprises first? Or are they just that blockheaded, stupid, backwards, closed-minded, technophobic, incapable of learning, and incompetent that they have no idea what they are doing? Or, worse still, is it a little of both?

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3 Comments:

At 10:01 AM, Blogger Frank Lotierzo said...

Eddie, your article harps on what I consider the major problem Boxing has long been confronted by.

Those who care to see it changed for the better, don't have the power. And those who've acquire the power to make the changes for the better, don't want to and prevent such progress.

And the reason for that is, they could no longer continue to get richer and maintain such power.

 
At 11:52 AM, Blogger Charles Farrell said...

I agree that there are a lot of hidebound people in the boxing community. A dumb motherfucker (just an opinion that doesn't necessarily reflect the views of others on this blog) named Ed Keenan not only didn't issue me a credential to tonight's Klitschko-Ibragimov fight, he didn't even let me know that I wouldn't be getting a credential. I barely made the cut at the Cotto-Judah fight on a night when, ironically, I went to Madison Square Garden directly from having picked up a Barney Award at the BWAA annual dinner.

But, you know, business is business. And credentials go to those who might help a promoter's business. Fair enough.

Still, part of boxing promoters' problems stem from not always having a clear sense of what's good for business. Good commentary (and by "good" I mean serious writing which may or may not espouse a favorable opinion of the subject in question) helps promoters. To get your feelings hurt by journalistic criticism and then respond by "punishing" a writer ( I'm not an important enough writer for that to have happened to me, although it does often happen to others) is decidedly short-sighted.

The judicious use of the Internet is too big a subject for take on this early on a Saturday morning. I agree that it can be a powerful tool in marketing, promotion, and maybe even in getting to the heart of certain issues. But I wonder if there’s a generational disconnect that keeps boxing people from utilizing much of what sources like My Space provide.

I’m also not motivated enough to go into a side issue, although I’d like to comment on it briefly. I don’t think that you can throw any amount of money into amateur boxing (here in the US anyway) and expect those fighters to reward your investment with championships. Increasingly, a superstar amateur turns out to be a pampered, soft pro. Give me a hungry kid from Central America, Eastern Europe, or the Caribbean anytime. I realize that’s not the central point you were trying to make here, Eddie.

In answer to your question as to whether the guys running boxing are crooks or cretins, I'm not sure they're either. The guys who actually "run" the business--HBO, Don King, Oscar De La Hoya, Wilfred Sauerland, Frank Warren, Bob Arum, and a number of others--seem to do alright. They make some mistakes, but usually their trajectory keeps the money rolling in. It's once you descend to the lower levels that the question becomes really interesting. In those spaces, I'd say that we're dealing with smalltime crooks who are also major league cretins.

 
At 3:44 PM, Blogger Eddie Goldman said...

In 2005, when Rupert Murdoch was 74 years old, his News Corp. bought Intermix, the parent company of MySpace, for $580 million. Now almost 77, do you think he sits there reordering his top friends or posting bulletins? But he was smart enough about the media to know that tens of millions of people were doing just that, and that those people could provide eyeballs to advertisers hungry to reach, and influence, a primarily young demographic.

In boxing, there is little vision beyond what the gate and pay-per-view receipts will be for the next fight. It is the responsibility of those in charge of boxing to have competent, media-savvy people handling those areas, just as they must have competent people in the ring.

The fish stinks at the head, ye fisherman.

 

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