Some aspects of Golden Boy’s plea for domination
It’s been an eventful week for boxing, in that business and politically-charged headlines have all but stolen the show. You have the details of a lawsuit between Golden Boy and Top Rank spilling over; Gary Shaw saying Bob Arum tactfully publicized Alfredo
Angulo’s immigration issue to dodge a fight between him and Miguel Cotto; the IBF saying they may strip Devon Alexander’s title; and finally Oscar De la Hoya’s saying Golden Boy is out to dominate boxing.
At least on the blogosphere, that last story caused the most uproar. Everyone from Bob Arum to Gary Shaw and Dan Goosen replied to De la Hoya's interview with Broadcast & Cable, where he effectively said he hopes his promotional company, Golden Boy, will
take fighters from all other promoters and eventually become the sole promotional company in boxing. De la Hoya contended that with this business model, boxing would lend itself to much more organization: one promoter, one commission, less titles, more simplicity.
Attractive, but bold. In so saying, De la Hoya presented himself as the Karl Marx of the boxing world. The socialist platform offered explicitly rejected liberal-democratic market competition and equality of opportunity, presumably in the name of cleaning
up boxing. But of course other promoters didn’t see it that way. Bob Arum simply called De la Hoya an idiot in response for about the millionth time. Others like Gary Shaw were clear to bring out the structural contradictions in having a business monopolies
and yet claiming to equalize things. Equality, Shaw suggested, is really in the eye of beholder.
After all, if one can compare De la Hoya to Karl Marx, it can only be in some lofty philosophical sense. Last time we checked Mr. Marx wasn’t looking to sell a lifestyle brand, buy out stadiums from Los Angeles to New York, and gain ludicrous amounts of
profit at others’ expense.
In point of fact, Golden Boy, since its inception in 2001, has been all but socialist in their policies, all the while somehow preserving more socialist ideals as they go along and opt for monopolizing boxing (as per De la Hoya’s comments). Following suit
from the Don King-Bob Arum era of the late eighties and nineties, they’ve successfully established wide-reaching, exclusive contracts with HBO and others that give them undisputed playing advantages against other business partners, and have bought, bought,
bought (fighters and just about everything else). All of this constant capitalizing has given them huge sway and placed them in quite better ranking than their cohorts. This kind of marked inequality cannot be called socialist in any sense.
One possibility some of the smaller promoters have conspiratorially pondered is that Golden Boy’s next step will be to buy out HBO and other broadcasting companies in a bid to broadcast fights themselves. This business model is already in place in the UFC,
and has a number of consequences. But if Golden Boy was really to sever relations with HBO, it would mean cancelling out the middle man entirely. That could be good and bad. As it stands, the broadcasting networks hold a lot of undeserved sway in determining
what fights happen and when, and placing those choices back into the hands of promoters would be a good thing.
At the same time, if Golden Boy is able to buy out HBO, one can be sure that it’s game over for the smaller promoters. They will be forced to make deals with either independent broadcasters (HBO), or Golden Boy. And chances are they will not be happy with
Golden Boy, since by virtue of owning broadcasting capabilities they will be able to determine all kinds of advantageous details (they will make all the rules, when a fight will happen, etc.).
Another possibility, a classically socialist one, would be to give more power to the commissions, and even unify them. If a commission was unified and given power to legislate the big-time promotional companies in boxing, they could stop Golden Boy before
they turn into the Lehman Brothers of North America.
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