🥊 Fury vs Whyte: The £30m bout
Dillian Whyte is in line to earn the biggest payday of his career. This week we unpack how he got there.
Before we dive in, please don’t forget to follow me on Twitter!
Now, let’s start with the definition of a Purse Bid.
A Purse Bid is a method used in boxing for a promotional company to secure the rights to a fight and its subsequent undercard.
If a fighter and a challenger agree to fight one another, their respective promotional companies typically engage in negotiations to agree the terms of the bout.
When an agreement cannot be met, a Purse Bid is called.
In Boxing, the bids are made blind and the highest bidder wins the rights to the fight at a venue and date of their choice.
Now that we have covered the above, it’s worth explaining why all of this is important.
Dillian Whyte is the Mandatory Challenger to Tyson Fury’s WBC Heavyweight Championship Belt. The promotional scene here is convoluted however:
Dillian Whyte is promoted by Eddie Hearn and Matchroom Boxing (DAZN)
Tyson Fury is promoted by Bob Arum and Top Rank (ESPN) in the USA and Frank Warren and Queensberry Promotions (BT Sport) in the UK
These three companies could not agree on terms for this fight so the WBC made a ruling that this fight must go to a Purse Bid.
Whenever a Purse Bid is ruled with the WBC, they declare that:
10% of the bid goes to the winner.
80% of the remaining bid goes to the belt holder
The other 20% to the challenger
Well, the bids were submitted this week in what turned out to be the biggest Purse Bid in the history of Boxing:
This then means guaranteed amounts for each fighter are as follows:
Remember the winner gets an additional £3.06m ($4.1m) too!
Crazy numbers.
Whilst this is great for fans like you and I, Queensberry Promotions and Top Rank now have to work tirelessly to make a profit on this event.
Typically, there are three main ways in which a promotional company can make money:
Pay-Per-View Buys
Gate receipts
Sponsorships & Merchandising
Pay-Per-View buys historically are where the lionshare of the revenue is generated. In the UK, PPVs are usually priced at £24.99 whereas in the US they are £69.99(!).
Tyson Fury has a worldwide appeal meaning it is highly likely that this fight will sell out a stadium in the UK. With the football season in full swing Cardiff’s Millenium Principality Stadium is being rumoured as the destination here which would fill 80,000 tickets if they do manage to sell out the event.
Sponsorships and merchandising then make up the rest of the revenue potential.
I have written before on Anthony Joshua’s PPV history.
If we work on an example that Fury vs Whyte does circa.800,000 PPVs in the UK and c.250,000 PPVs in the USA then we are speculatively exploring a sizeable revenue haul:
(800,000 * £25) + (250,000 * £70) = £37.5M
Anthony Joshua vs Joseph Parker in 2017 was hosted at the Principality Stadium and hauled £7.8m ($10.4m) from 78,000 attendees.
You are starting to see where the total gross of this fight will come from.
However we are also not factoring in the costs.
Big boxing spectacles are amazing business and it’s brilliant that the Heavyweight Division is now hosting two British fighters on British soil in such a lucrative event. There will be several press conferences for this fight however. Transport, security and administration will be to the tune of several millions.
Frank and Bob now begin to sell the ass out of this affair to drive up PPVs as high as they can!
I’ll leave you with the following tweet showing the recent purse history for Tyson Fury.
Say what you want, his return and rise to the top of the game has been sensational.
See you next week.