Is/was MMA ever bigger than boxing?

[Corrado Soprano]

Here is Boxings biggest star waiting like a good little boy and behaving himself for Nate/Jorge to end. Dana was nice enough to let the PPV air for boxing fans while they wait.

960 × 667

https://www.mmamania.com/2019/12/1/...delaying-his-fights-for-ufc-244-diaz-masvidal

Who's the bitch again???

Youtube boxers pay craps on the entire mma community

 

[heavyarms21]

No

 

[Street Samurai]

These guys are an established data analytics firm that works with the NFL, NBA, English Premier League, etc.

They are saying boxing (as a sport) is 4th in America right now as far as popularity with the youth and is growing at the same rate as Soccer in the US.


https://twocircles.com/us-en/articles/boxing-genz-star-stories/




Significantly, the study found that one-in-three (32%) sports fans in Gen Z2 is an avid boxing fan compared to 6% of Boomer sports fans, and whereas boxing ranks as Boomers’ 11th favorite sport, it ranks as number four for Gen Z. Fight sports counterpart MMA is Gen Z’s sixth favorite sport (ranking 12th for Boomers).

The popularity of boxing is driven by several key factors related to Gen Z behavior, also identified in the study. Firstly, Gen Z is more inclined to follow individual athletes compared to older generations – 33% of Gen Z sports fans following specific athletes versus 25% of Boomer fans.






Also, based on 2019 numbers, boxing was still the most watched Combat Sport in America, even the countdown/training camp shows pull in huge ratings.


“For the 2019 calendar year, PBC Fight Night telecasts on FOX averaged 1,403,000 viewers.

Those figures are up:

+12% over 2018’s average of 1,254,000 viewers (4 tcs).

+103% better than ESPN’s average for Top Rank Boxing telecasts (vs. 692,000 viewers)

+35% better than ESPN’s UFC Fight Night

In 2019, Americans consumed over 2.1 billion minutes of PBC Fight Night on FOX, which was plus-147% more than last year’s 849 million (PBC FOX telecasts only).

What really stood out was FOX’s additional shoulder programming. Specifically, the Fight Camp series. The last Deontay Wilder–Luis Ortiz episode set FOX viewership records with almost 2.5-million watching, as well as the Countdown, Face To Face, and Inside PBC Boxing shows.

What’s aided this is how FOX has packaged its broadcasts. It was tough to miss Shawn Porter’s visit to the FOX’s NFL Sunday studio with Curt Menefee, Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long, Jimmy Johnson and Michael Strahan during Week 3 of the NFL season. It served as a nice crossover push to Porter’s much-anticipated fight against Errol Spence Jr. in September.

Above everything else, it’s what FOX did best, giving the fighters a face at mainstream sports events like Sunday NFL Games, Thursday Night Football, baseball games and WWE events in promoting big fights”


I think we live in a UFC bubble.

Very surprising and interesting

 

[cauti0n]

Boxing is bigger, y'all don't go outside.

 

[chinarice]

Certainly better to watch.

Boxing is boring as shit. I watched boxing before I was a MMA fan, during the Tyson/RJJ/DLH eras. Boxing was good shit back then.

Boxing is so fucking bad now. Literally every time I watch it, I comment on how boring it is.

 

[JKS]

Youtube boxers pay craps on the entire mma community

Guess there wasn't much to say about Canalo waiting, that's cool.

No it doesn't lol. Paul barely made 3.5 mill in the Floyd fight. And the other guy didn't get paid that big either. But these are exhibitions, it's entertainment. Kind of sad that the face of boxing now is two youtubers. Perhaps you could have gone with AJ, Fury or Canalo for pay. But then again, popularity of a sport doesn't have much to do with fighter pay.

 

[codfather]

Right now mma is more popular than boxing in america.

Mma currently is not anywhere near as popular as boxing was in the 50s to the 90s

Biggest US boxing PPVs of the 90s (over 750,000 buys):

1. Tyson vs Holyfield II
   
2. Tyson vs McNeeley
3. Tyson vs Holyfield I
   
4. Holyfield vs Foreman
5. Bruno vs Tyson II
6. De La Hoya vs Trinidad
7. Tyson vs Ruddock II
8. Holyfield vs Lewis I
9. Tyson vs Seldon
10. Douglas vs Holyfield
11. Tyson vs Ruddock I
12. Bowe vs Holyfield II
13. Holyfield vs Bowe I
14. Holyfield vs Lewis II

...only 1 fight below heavyweight.

 

[codfather]

Never was, Never will be despite Mcg being popular and giving enough relevancy.

Boxing is coming along nicely and there's some nice matchups like Pac vs Spence and Fury vs Wilder and Usyk vs AJ, MMA is still very niche and in some countries isn't even known or has the same popularity as boxing. i am saying ths as someone who lives in a non mma country, boxing is more known.

Pac, Wilder and Usyk will be retired within 3 years. Then what?

 

[TeenageMutantLesnarTurtle]

You can’t be serious. It’s a sports based data analytics company....you’re not supposed to know about them. They don’t deal with the public nor cater to retail. You won’t know about them unless you work for the operations department of a sports league and are in charge of allocating funds towards marketing and sales based on market trends.

There are much much larger b2b companies and corporations in this world that none of us have “heard of” because they don’t cater to the public/retail, does the fact that you haven’t “heard of” those companies mean anything? You can look at who they’ve worked with on their site, linkedin etc. So let me ask you this again, why are you supposed to know about them when they have nothing to offer you or me, unless we own or run a major sports team or league.

https://twocircles.com/us-en/clients/

Okay, but again, 6000 is a small sample size, they dont go into the specifics of what and who they asked, and their conclusion isnt consistent with the other measurable things I brought up (YT views, social media followings, forum traffic, the fact that EA dropped boxing video games to make UFC video games etc) which just makes it seem pretty dubious tbh. I mean, just on an anecdotal first hand experience level - do you really believe young people are following boxing more than the UFC? and when I say boxing i'm not talking about Jake Paul fights.

 

[TeenageMutantLesnarTurtle]

Biggest US boxing PPVs of the 90s (over 750,000 buys):

1. Tyson vs Holyfield II
   
2. Tyson vs McNeeley
3. Tyson vs Holyfield I
   
4. Holyfield vs Foreman
5. Bruno vs Tyson II
6. De La Hoya vs Trinidad
7. Tyson vs Ruddock II
8. Holyfield vs Lewis I
9. Tyson vs Seldon
10. Douglas vs Holyfield
11. Tyson vs Ruddock I
12. Bowe vs Holyfield II
13. Holyfield vs Bowe I
14. Holyfield vs Lewis II

...only 1 fight below heavyweight.

The crazy thing is 2010s UFC actually did better than 90s boxing on PPV. Even with it being easy as fuck to watch without paying now.

 

[avenue94]

Part of that is that it'd be much harder to make up viewing figures now than it was in the 70s. The Rumble In The Jungle is claimed to have done a billion viewers which is obvious bullshit, thats like a quarter of the worlds population at the time. Even 300m sounds OTT.

I do agree that MMA wont ever be as big as boxing was up until the 80s/90s though. But boxing never will be again either, its a different world now thanks mainly to the internet.

Why do you think that number is bullshit?

 

[avenue94]

Okay, but again, 6000 is a small sample size

If it's randomly selected 6000 is an insanely large sample size for the U.S. That's good enough for most continents lol.

The crazy thing is 2010s UFC actually did better than 90s boxing on PPV. Even with it being easy as fuck to watch without paying now.

Did it do better than boxing plus CCTV in the 90s?

Boxing has a significantly lower barrier of entry. A person can start their boxing career with a few months basic training if they have decent athleticism. MMA requires a vast multitude of skillsets, and by extension, a lot more gear, training time, coaches, gym fees, etc.

lol what. Other way around.

I mean, just on an anecdotal first hand experience level - do you really believe young people are following boxing more than the UFC? and when I say boxing i'm not talking about Jake Paul fights.

I think people vastly overestimate the age and income of mma fans. Look at the commercials during broadcasts and you'll notice they don't target 20 years olds.

 

[Kratos94]

Lmao no. This 'sport' will never be as big as boxing.

There is something about bigger boxing fights that the biggest draws in mma can't even achieve.

 

[JudoJabs]

Okay, but again, 6000 is a small sample size, they dont go into the specifics of what and who they asked, and their conclusion isnt consistent with the other measurable things I brought up (YT views, social media followings, forum traffic, the fact that EA dropped boxing video games to make UFC video games etc) which just makes it seem pretty dubious tbh. I mean, just on an anecdotal first hand experience level - do you really believe young people are following boxing more than the UFC? and when I say boxing i'm not talking about Jake Paul fights.

Social Media has been brought up on this already. It’s closer than people think.

EA Sports is an easy one, the UFC is a league, they (EA) need licensing for fighters/players in a league. The UFC provides this all in a neat and cheap package, just like the NBA, NFL, NHL does, yet drastically cheaper.

Boxing on the other hand is not a league, it’s the exact opposite of a league, it’s the wild wild west, and those licensing fees have to be sought out across various avenues, and a lot of times individually through fighter managers, it’s a much more difficult process and I can imagine pricier as well.

If you look up Fight Night sales, they were on par with any UFC game. The demand for Fight Night has never stopped and EA is constantly spammed on their socials with fans asking about Fight Night. There are literally youtube channels dedicated to the return of fight night. EA itself has released statements and have commented on this demand yet they are contractually obligated at the moment to produce UFC. If you are EA, why would you go away for something that is cheaper and easier to make (UFC) and will get you around the same results sales wise.

There are other companies that are picking up the slack though, ESBC is a game about to be in production that has about 40 guys licences already, including Canelo.

 

[avenue94]

Social Media has been brought up on this already. It’s closer than people think.

EA Sports is an easy one, the UFC is a league, they (EA) need licensing for fighters/players in a league. The UFC provides this all in a neat and cheap package, just like the NBA, NFL, NHL does, yet drastically cheaper.

Boxing on the other hand is not a league, it’s the exact opposite of a league, it’s the wild wild west, and those licensing fees have to be sought out across various avenues, and a lot of times individually through fighter managers, it’s a much more difficult process and I can imagine pricier as well.

If you look up Fight Night sales, they were on par with any UFC game. The demand for Fight Night has never stopped and EA is constantly spammed on their socials with fans asking about Fight Night. There are literally youtube channels dedicated to the return of fight night. EA itself has released statements and have commented on this demand yet they are contractually obligated at the moment to produce UFC. If you are EA, why would you go away for something that is cheaper and easier to make (UFC) and will get you around the same results sales wise.

There are other companies that are picking up the slack though, ESBC is a game about to be in production that has about 40 guys licences already, including Canelo.

Not to mention it was either or with EA. They have a longterm deal with the UFC so they don't have the bandwidth to do boxing these days cuz...well it's EA

 

[wwkirk]

Boxing has been more culturally relevant than MMA since the start of the UFC, what will it take for MMA to surpass boxing?

How are you measuring cultural relevancy? Depictions in movies and TV, social media following, MSM coverage? Or does overall revenue matter more? This or similar questions come up all the time, but the parameters needed to answer it are unclear.

 

[ironfist05]

No I wouldn’t say so, certainly not globally. Mma doesn’t have global reach the way boxing does.

 

[ironfist05]

These guys are an established data analytics firm that works with the NFL, NBA, English Premier League, etc.

They are saying boxing (as a sport) is 4th in America right now as far as popularity with the youth and is growing at the same rate as Soccer in the US.


https://twocircles.com/us-en/articles/boxing-genz-star-stories/




Significantly, the study found that one-in-three (32%) sports fans in Gen Z2 is an avid boxing fan compared to 6% of Boomer sports fans, and whereas boxing ranks as Boomers’ 11th favorite sport, it ranks as number four for Gen Z. Fight sports counterpart MMA is Gen Z’s sixth favorite sport (ranking 12th for Boomers).

The popularity of boxing is driven by several key factors related to Gen Z behavior, also identified in the study. Firstly, Gen Z is more inclined to follow individual athletes compared to older generations – 33% of Gen Z sports fans following specific athletes versus 25% of Boomer fans.






Also, based on 2019 numbers, boxing was still the most watched Combat Sport in America, even the countdown/training camp shows pull in huge ratings.


“For the 2019 calendar year, PBC Fight Night telecasts on FOX averaged 1,403,000 viewers.

Those figures are up:

+12% over 2018’s average of 1,254,000 viewers (4 tcs).

+103% better than ESPN’s average for Top Rank Boxing telecasts (vs. 692,000 viewers)

+35% better than ESPN’s UFC Fight Night

In 2019, Americans consumed over 2.1 billion minutes of PBC Fight Night on FOX, which was plus-147% more than last year’s 849 million (PBC FOX telecasts only).

What really stood out was FOX’s additional shoulder programming. Specifically, the Fight Camp series. The last Deontay Wilder–Luis Ortiz episode set FOX viewership records with almost 2.5-million watching, as well as the Countdown, Face To Face, and Inside PBC Boxing shows.

What’s aided this is how FOX has packaged its broadcasts. It was tough to miss Shawn Porter’s visit to the FOX’s NFL Sunday studio with Curt Menefee, Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long, Jimmy Johnson and Michael Strahan during Week 3 of the NFL season. It served as a nice crossover push to Porter’s much-anticipated fight against Errol Spence Jr. in September.

Above everything else, it’s what FOX did best, giving the fighters a face at mainstream sports events like Sunday NFL Games, Thursday Night Football, baseball games and WWE events in promoting big fights”


I think we live in a UFC bubble.

Very surprising and interesting

I wouldn’t be shocked if a lot of this was driven by the relatively high share of Hispanics/Latinos in the younger generations, particularly Mexican-Americans. The Hispanic/Latino viewer base is the bedrock of boxing viewership, and it’s something MMA has had a difficult time breaking into.

 

[ironfist05]

That's a big part of why it's seen as barbaric.

Not sure I agree. Definitely didn’t help, but a lot of the biggest era of Korean boxing (mid-late 80s and early 90s) was after Kim’s tragic death. Sung Kil-Moon, Jung-Koo Chang and Myung-Woo Yuh were household names and genuine superstars at that time and the Koreans usually produced pretty good ammy boxers. The bigger issue was that the talent started to dip off and the Korean tv networks got in the way of making big fights (most famously Chang/Yuh).

 

[djason1988]

If it's randomly selected 6000 is an insanely large sample size for the U.S. That's good enough for most continents lol.

Did it do better than boxing plus CCTV in the 90s?

lol what. Other way around.

I think people vastly overestimate the age and income of mma fans. Look at the commercials during broadcasts and you'll notice they don't target 20 years olds.

As for barriers of entry, starting boxing requires a pair of $20 gloves and boxing gyms cost 50-75% less than mma, as well as significantly less time in. People from piss poor countries can regularly box and be seen in high level boxing, but exceptionally rare to see them in mma.