Cash is King of The Ring & Chelsea's Sponsorship Chaos
Carl Frampton on why Saudi's commitment to delivering big fights & big purses is something to celebrate & the extraordinary (lack of) commercial deal-making within Stamford Bridge
What makes sport?
Pandora’s box opened, there’ll be a lot of different answers to that. To me, it is watching people at the top of their craft compete on the biggest stage, showcasing the fruits of thousands of hours of sacrifice and dedication, where the best prevail.
Poetic? I hope so, because that is what makes sport so treasured.
We want our entertainment to be poetic in its process and outcomes; we also want it to be pure.
…and the enemy of purity has increasingly become money; cold hard injections of cash.
Chelsea, Man City, PSG, LIV Golf…even heritage poster boys Real Madrid; there’s little beauty in their successes to anyone but the direct fanbases. Then you add unfavourable politics (Saudi, Qatar, Abramovich) to ‘Cash: The Antichrist’, and you have the critic’s most perfect storm.
Where is all this going? Welcome to boxing 2025…and this week’s compelling conversation with Carl Frampton.
Carl was the first Northern Irishman to unify two weight divisions.
He was Ring Magazine’s Fighter of the Year in 2016.
He’s recognised as one of the best fighters of his generation.
His voice carries weight; a direct set of experiences to call upon matched with an intense knowledge of the sport. In other words, this is someone whose opinion on the industry is one to pay attention to.
So we asked a simple question in this week’s Business of Sport show: Is Saudi influence good for boxing?
Paraphrasing, Carl’s immediate response certainly pointed towards a reshaping of the sport:
More money - £50-£100m for the biggest names, mid 6-figures for undercards.
Making the biggest fights happen - Fury vs Usyk | Alvarez vs Crawford
Unifying previously un-unifiable promoters - “Hearn & Warren hated each other. Now they’re like best mates”.
Challenging traditional governance structures - long out of date to support the sport of today, is the end goal to unify the sport?
The boxing world we see evolving is a different one to when Carl competed…and he hasn’t been retired long!
“Turki Alalshikh is good for the game. He's paying fighters what they're worth, but he's also making the big fights that people wanna see happen. He picks out to the top guys in the division. They're with different broadcasters, different promoters. Before he got involved, a fight like this would never have happened.”
Carl Frampton —
The influence of Saudi Arabia in sport is an unavoidable reality in an industry increasingly dependent on deep pockets and grand plans to keep moving forward. As we’re all well aware, this new financier has not been well received by the majority.
But without going into a deep and complex essay on politics in sport, we’re all still here watching football, F1, boxing despite the moral challenge. And why do we do that?
Let’s revisit what it is that makes sport great.
Boxing has often struggled to make the big fights happen. AJ vs Fury…How can that have not happened? It’s just infuriating to the fan! And that is because the real protagonists of the sport are not in the ring; they’ve been in the representation.
Ego, purse splits, even the ordering of names of the promotion poster (AJ vs Fury or Fury vs AJ?) have prevented the fans from enjoying some of the moments that would undoubtedly have created sporting history.
As Carl simply puts it, in a swift opening of the chequebook and commitment to the sport long term, Turki Alalshikh has facilitated not only better conditions for the athletes, but finally a pathway to premium entertainment not to be blocked by the egos of 3rd party ‘contributors’.
Bringing Eddie Hearn and Frank Warren together is no mean feat according to the people in the know…
So while we can criticise, lambast, scrutinise a sport now funded by infinite cash reserves, if it gives us, the fans, what we long for while creating better conditions throughout the industry, we should embrace this contribution and look forward to the future of a sport which for a long time has been held back by restrictive legacy behaviours.
Catch the full show with Carl on Spotify & Apple
OPINION PIECE
The Cost of Lost Inventory: A Chelsea Madness?
This may seem late to the party, but as one of the 55 people watching Chelsea’s Club World Cup win over LAFC earlier this week, there was one glaring and quiet extraordinary situation on show that needs to be addressed, and it wasn’t the thousands of empty seats in the stadium at 3pm on a Monday afternoon.
We all know American owners have copped a lot of critique from fanbases regarding their ability to manage (or not) the performance side of their club. One thing they are revered for however is complete.commercial.optimisation.
There is an ever-growing feeling that football clubs are leaving a significant amount of money on the table. Poor fan engagement, data application, consumer experience?
US sports assets are far better across these areas. And many American PL owners have accompanying US franchises.
But where there hasn’t been a deficiency to date is Premier League clubs ability to sell key inventory, most notably shirt sponsorships…until now.
Welcome to Chelsea.
Almost a full year last season without a front of shirt sponsor; a highly questionable £40m one season deal with biometrics STARTUP(!) Infinite Athlete was followed by a big gaping royal blue hole for most of the 2024/25 season.
I find this so hard to come to grips with because I married the massive £4.25bn total purchase price paid by Behdad Eghbali and Todd Boehly for Chelsea with their confidence that they could turn a £550m turnover business to a £1-1.5bn in 5-10 years, thus increasing the asset price and eventually achieving the minimum 2-3x return private equity expects at eventual sale.
But this last season suggests the complete opposite, on two fronts both as dangerous as each other:
In simple finances (with the fractured Fever/Live Nation sleeve deals included), that is c.£50m total left on the table. Under current regulation, no team can afford that.
Optics - it just doesn’t paint a good picture. No market confidence in the product? The creation of a zero-sum negotiation feeling, which is the exact opposite of what the best sponsorships look to achieve?
‘It may take us a while to bring in the trophies, but we’ll get the commercials firing in the meantime’ —Assumed BlueCo Conversation
But no, the most sellable asset now seems the equivalent of sending a candy floss trader into a dental clinic.
Yes, creative accounting has been impressive to show a stronger than expected financial performance on paper. Selling your own assets to yourself and registering it as profit to navigate the porous financial regulations supposedly keeping Premier League clubs’ spending under control verges on comical. Fair play… tip of the hat.
But when you are playing in the most watched league in the world with an audience in the billions, not selling your premium inventory is a commercial crime. One can only imagine the price being requested is so extraordinary that even the biggest sports sponsorship spenders are taking cover.
What are the commercial department (undoubtedly costing the club a seven-figure sum) doing??
To not even structure a deal to keep ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ end of season sponsors Damac and Live Nation on the shirts for the much hyped and broadcasted Club World Cup seems unfathomable. It’s actually one step further; it’s embarrassing.
We could go on, but let’s just say from the business of sport perspective, this is all a bit hard to compute whatever the excuse, of which I’m sure there are many.
With Champions League confirmed next season and a marked football improvement to play on, will the £50m+ deal finally land? If it doesn’t, see you back here soon!
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