Don Muret of the Sports Business Journal is reporting that Golden Boy has signed a deal with with Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment to host a series of fight events at the new Barclay’s Arena slated to open in 2012.
Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment has signed a three-year deal with Golden Boy Promotions to book 12 fight events annually at Barclays Center, the New Jersey Nets’ new arena targeted to open in mid-2012.
The two groups formed the partnership to develop young Brooklyn boxers and build a relationship between those athletes and the public, said Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer. Together, they have committed to showcasing a wide range of talent, stretching from amateur bouts to championship fights televised on HBO and Showtime.
The key to making the partnership a success is scheduling boxing matches with greater regularity in New York and on the East Coast in general, a region that’s been hit-and-miss for securing signature fights, according to Schaefer.
“There may be two to three per year at Madison Square Garden, but it’s sporadic,” Schaefer said. “We are taking a systematic approach in building a base in Brooklyn. The talent is there.”
The Brooklyn deal is loosely modeled after what Golden Boy has done in Los Angeles at three facilities owned and operated by AEG, the largest shareholder in Golden Boy outside of principal owner Oscar De La Hoya.
Payout Perspective:
The biggest boxing fight in the last ten years may not happen, because the sport’s two most popular fighters cannot set their differences aside for more than a day in order to eliminate the few remaining small obstacles that stand in the way of a bout agreement. Talk about symbolism.
The would-be Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao fight is exactly what’s wrong with boxing. There’s no unity within the industry – just a bunch of self-interested individuals looking to get their cut. If it’s not Floyd or Manny looking out for what’s best for them, it’s the promoters swapping television exposure for higher guaranteed rights fees or creating their own governing council to create a new title belt. It’s ridiculous.
Yet, I still believe there’s reason for hope. We may be seeing an overall lack of interest in the sport currently, but men like Mayweather and Pacquiao have proven that a good boxing fight will still sell. It’s simply a matter of rebuilding the sport to a point where it’s able to generate talent, give them television exposure, and then tell their story.
I see this deal with Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment as part of the evolution of boxing. This deal is one small part of an overall strategy that will help to revitalize boxing in a key market through the sound development of talent and consistent promotion of that talent (and the sport).
The sport may have made many mistakes in the past – or have been comprised of a “bunch of dummies” as Dana White would say – but I think that’s slowly changing.
The way boxing is run practically demands a facepalm. I hope the big fight can happen, but it’s really starting to look like a crap-shoot, probably a 50/50 chance. Good article.
Golden boy is doing the right thing…and actually the UFC just thought them how to do it…think about it boxing has years ahead in ufc as far as mainstream acceptance…and now ufc has become really big but the difference is ufc started from scratch and boxing would start from where they are today..so if boxing fix theyre bad ways they can easily be as big as the NBA because they would start from where they are today…the fertitas spent hundreds of millions in marketing the ufc from a small sport to todays huge sport…and if boxing follows the formula they would start from having 2.4 mill ppv record to even bigger scale….the fact that boxing can pay its top stars 40 million per fight shows you how much money they have…all they haf to do is follow the marketing plan of dana white and theyll be sooo huge again…..its like a marathon and ufc started from mile 0 and is high octane runner and boxing started on mile 10
I agree but when I watch boing now from when I was a kid mma is more entence and exciting then boxing plus people need to realize that mma is mostly white people but now is started to pick a big fan base of latin americans so we’ll see about boxing bein bigger but I still love boxing but will only order the super fights