Who Are The Real Pirates?

The core component of boxing’s business model in North America over the past two decades has been pay-per-view television. Fights which used to air for free on broadcast or cable television now cost the consumer 50 bucks or more per pop.

Not coincidentally, boxing in North America has declined and been marginalized over this same period, as the product took itself out of the public spotlight and protected it behind this pricey wall. We now have an entire generation in these parts which has never seen a major world title fight live on television.

In Europe and Asia, where most boxing is still on non-pay TV, the sport is growing, often drawing huge crowds to arenas and sports stadiums, a phenomenon not seen in North American in decades.

At the same time, HBO, the principal architect of this business model, has become an incredibly profitable business, annually bringing in about $1.2 billion in profits – that’s just profits, not revenue.

Even with competition from satellite TV and now Verizon’s FiOS, cable TV rates keep rising, and disgusted consumers are caught in this profit assault.

Working around these profiteers used to be difficult. You had to buy a pirate box and hope it worked as promised. Soon, the cable companies would find a way to disable it, often through upgrading their own technology.

Now our beloved Internet has changed all that. All you need to do is find a web site which streams whatever you want to watch. Some of them require you to download a media player, but some others do not. All you have to do is go to a web site, just like you went to this one or any other site.

This is rarely discussed by that technophobic bunch known as boxing writers, most of whom grope around for a letter-opener when told they have an e-mail. Ask them what they have downloaded recently, and they’ll say their doctors told them it wasn’t serious.

We speak the truth here. It is not our task to protect whoever’s business model is being rendered obsolete by the growth of technology and the Internet. We just tell it like it is.

One of the most popular sites streaming these shows is SopCast.

You will see all “seven dirty words” in a row on these boxing “news” sites before you see that name mentioned.

What is being streamed is openly discussed on forums like the MyP2P Forum, which has a special section for fans of various combat sports.

That’s the reality, like it or not, legal or not. They may be offering pirate streams which violate copyright laws and which offer no compensation to their owners, but they also generally do not charge or make a profit from these streams.

When faced with the growth of peer-to-peer file sharing a decade ago, instead of adapting to the new technology, the music industry decided to declare war on consumers. That is leading to the destruction of the traditional record companies, with popular artists like Madonna distributing their music directly online, or though alternate services like iTunes and others.

The boxing business first has to get a clue that this is happening, which is not even likely until it is too late for them. The only major promoter taking seriously using the Internet to stream fights, and possibly for free, is Don King. Thus far, however, his DonKingTV.com seems more experimental than anything.

True, it will take some time before these p2p and other services can handle mass traffic. But storage and bandwidth are becoming cheaper and more plentiful all the time, and Internet users are becoming smarter as well.

There is almost no discussion in our obsolete boxing media about the obsolete pay-per-view model. One article which does refer to this phenomenon, “Do Not Pirate This Saturday’s Pay-Per-View” by John Chavez on BoxingConfidential.com, oddly argues that it is OK to pirate most boxing shows, but not Saturday’s Miguel Cotto-Antonio Margarito showdown: “If you call yourself a boxing fan and choose to pirate this Saturday’s Pay-Per-View bout, in essence you’re telling HBO and the other major players in boxing that exciting style match-ups still won’t entice you to purchase the event. To support this weekend’s match is to support boxing as a whole as it will point to the fact that we are educated fight fans that know good from bad.”

I would respond that it is better to be consistent, and either eschew pirating altogether as unethical, or eschew pay-per-view altogether as unethical pirating of the consumers.

Granted, something in-between may be more practical for many people, but once you open the door to pirating as acceptable, it is hard to argue that sometimes it is OK while at other times it is not.

In the end, different groups of people just have different economic interests. And many of them may be pirates of one sort and size or another. You just have to choose, or realize, which type, if any, you are.

Boxing is Run by Complete Idiots, Part 651,909

After getting sick of having everyone tell me that they couldn’t hear me on my aging cell phone, I finally decided to retire it and replace it with a new one Friday afternoon. The one I had, like Arturo Gatti, was once pretty good and very durable, but it had taken far too much punishment, and was now starting to bleed much too easily.

I went to my favorite T-Mobile store where I have purchased all my phones. I’m quite satisfied with the service, and having been involved in telephone company evaluations in another lifetime, that is quite an endorsement from me (make checks payable to “Eddie Goldman”).

A young man helped me make this cell phone transition, setting up the new phone and handling the paperwork, while we chatted. Judging from his name, he was of either Russian or Eastern European origin, although by his accent he had either been born in America or had moved here a long time ago.

After we had some techie talk about new cell phones coming soon like the Google phone (actually a phone running a Google-devised operating system) and similar stuff, he asked me if I had watched the soccer game yesterday. I said I hadn’t, and, in an instant, added that I watch boxing (interesting that this was my first reaction considering some other sports I cover).

He perked up and said he, too, likes boxing, and asked me whether I liked the heavyweights or the lightweights. I said these days the heavyweights were awful, and that Saturday there would be an interesting lightweight title fight between Manny Pacquiao and David Diaz.

Now one of his co-workers came over to join our little discussion, and he said he expects Pacquiao to win. So here, out of the blue, I had discovered two young, knowledgeable boxing fans.

Then I said to these obviously tech-savvy guys that while the fight was on pay-per-view, you could watch it for free online.

Now my helpful retail sales representative, as I believe they are called, smiled broadly, and nodded. He said he knows all about these sites, and implied that this was how he would watch this fight live.

So there it is once again. Boxing still has a lot more young fans than the ruling networks and promoters realize. These fans just aren’t coughing up 45 or 50 bucks a month to HBO pay-per-view when they can watch these same fights, and even more, for free through a site like SopCast.

When a sport’s business model is based upon relying on obsolete technology that has already been bypassed by new, user-friendly services available to almost anyone with a computer and a high-speed Internet connection, then it needs a major change.

But while I realized that I had to retire and replace my cell phone ASAP, how long will it be before the dinosaurs running this sport will come to a similar conclusion?

Boxing is Run by Complete Idiots, Part 648,362

This past Saturday night, June 21, in Birmingham, England, one of the most popular boxers in both the UK and the world, the 21-year-old Amir Khan, participated in a wild and entertaining brawl with Michael Gomez, one of the most reckless but exciting brawlers in that part of the world.

Khan, of course, is a 2004 Olympic silver medalist. He is now 18-0 with 14 KOs as a pro and still the Commonwealth lightweight champion after TKO’ing Gomez in the fifth round.

This fight, however, was one which many believed would be a one-sided blowout for Khan, who was dropped by Gomez in the second round and hurt later on by a vicious body shot. Khan, who dropped Gomez in the first round, did rally in the fifth to force a referee stoppage on a beaten Gomez, who falls to 35-9 with 24 KOs, with six of those nine losses coming by KO or TKO.

Gomez is actually an Irish-born fighter named Michael Armstrong, who has taken a Mexican name and wears the colors of the Mexican flag on his trunks, and sometimes a huge sombrero, in honor of the many great Mexican brawlers. At age 31, however, he is becoming almost a sideshow, guaranteed to come forward, throw lots of punches, and eat many more before being stopped by whoever the main attraction is.

This one belongs in the same category as the Gatti-Ward fights, albeit with even less technique and defense than those battles. Such slugfests, though, especially involving two popular figures, do have a place in boxing, and can help the sport. But this seesaw contest once again shows that the preferred rating given Khan at lightweight by ESPN.com (#8) and The Ring (#7, actually the same since they have a “champion”, Joel Casamayor, atop those ratings) is unwarranted.

All this, no doubt, should interest boxing fans regardless of where they live. It was certainly one of the most exciting televised fights of the weekend. How good Khan is or isn’t will be debated again for some time to come. Yet, because of the stupidity of the guys who run boxing, it was not televised in the U.S.

That, of course, did not stop many outside of the UK from viewing this fight. Because the dolts running boxing are largely still ignorant of the Internet, and especially online video, anyone can see this fight for free on YouTube. Anyone can also embed the videos in their blogs, as I have done so below.

This is also something about which the major boxing media idiots, who are mainly current or former newspaper hacks, do not like to discuss. They may offer occasional powder-puff criticisms of the promoters or networks, but real journalists should be acting as watchdogs for the public and educating the people to the realities of the woeful decline of boxing.

And here is the most feared word in boxing, for those few who even understand it: SopCast (http://sopcast.com). That is a site through which you can watch most pay-per-views for free, and without spyware or adware. Yes, it is a pirate site, but where else have you seen a boxing journalist mention it by name?

It is not the job of the journalist to conceal the existence of such sites, which are widely discussed on many message boards, just because the current technology has outstripped the business model of the promoters and networks. That fact should be openly discussed, and the fact that it is not just demonstrates how conciliatory most of the boxing media is to these promoters and networks.

If a free web site undermines the crux of their business plan, what does that say about the business and their understanding of technology?

While you mull all this over and get ready to post comments about these idiots, watch Khan-Gomez:

Part One, Rounds 1-3



Part Two, Rounds 4-5 and postfight interview