Canadian boxer Sara Bailey with her WBA light-flyweight title belt at the West End Athletic Club in Etobicoke, in August. This weekend, Bailey will face Argentina’s Evelin Bermudez in Ottawa in a women’s world title unification bout, with the IBF and WBO belts also on the line.Jalani Morgan/The Globe and Mail
Sara Bailey the boxer heads into Saturday’s world title unification showdown against Evelin Bermudez looking to break records.
The winner of the bout, which takes place at the Hard Rock Casino in Ottawa, would own three world titles in the women’s light-flyweight division, with only the fourth championship belt still outstanding. So a victory would put Bailey, who lives in Etobicoke, Ont., and trains at the West End Athletic Club, one win away from becoming the first undisputed champion in Canadian history.
But Bailey the business person simply seeks to break even.
Where Terence Crawford and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez split a reported US$200-million to headline last Saturday’s blockbuster boxing card in Las Vegas, elite women’s boxers live a different reality. Smaller crowds. Smaller payouts. Self-funded training camps.
Bailey, who won a world title in just her fourth pro bout, knows she faces a long, steep path to profitability, and tackles it with an old school strategy: Sell tickets and build from there.
By Tuesday afternoon, only about 100 seats remained in a theatre set up to accommodate 1,300 people. Earlier that day, TSN+ signed on as the event’s streaming partner.
“I’m trying to make history. In the long run, it’s going to be worth it,” says Bailey, the WBA champion. “I’m trying to make my name as big as possible. I’m not here to box forever.”
Bailey carries a perfect 6-0 record into Saturday’s fight with Bermudez.Jalani Morgan/The Globe and Mail
Saturday’s fight card is the first in Ottawa since 1987, when Toronto’s Shawn O’Sullivan, the Olympic silver medalist, slugged out a 10-round decision over a tough guy named Denis Sigouin, from across the river in Hull, Que.
The main event pits Bermudez (21-1-1, 7 KO), a forward-moving slugger from Argentina, against Bailey (6-0, 0 KO) a slick technician who grew up in North Vancouver, B.C. Bermudez enters Saturday with two belts – from the IBF and WBO – and will earn a bigger share of the purse. She will also pocket the proceeds from Argentine broadcast rights, concessions Bailey made to lure her to Canada.
If boxing is a business to Bailey and her husband Stevie, her trainer and manager, then they measure their payoff not just in dollars but in wins and accolades. They might have grossed more fighting in Argentina, but they prioritized home-field advantage, and more lucrative future fights.
“The biggest payday out there for Sara is probably a $200,000 or $300,000 fight, but by the time you get there you’ve probably spent a million dollars,” says Stevie Bailey, Sara’s coach since 2014. “I’m not going to be sad years from now if there’s 50-grand less in my bank account, but I’m going to be really happy if I have all four belts on my table.”
Domestic boxing hasn’t had a regular presence on English-language airwaves since the late 2000s, when Sarnia, Ont. native Steve Molitor held the IBF super bantamweight crown, and his title defences aired live. Bailey’s promoter, Tyler Buxton, hopes the streaming deal will introduce Bailey to a national audience, but says her power as a local attraction that fills mid-sized Ontario venues sets her apart.
“Until you get the TV element of it, you’ve gotta start with tickets. Who’s pushing numbers?” says Buxton, who is head of United Promotions. “Fighters are their own brand. Whether they move tickets or pay-per-view numbers will change what their purses are.”
Elsewhere in the boxing industry, seismic changes are jolting a once-dormant sport into action.
Terence Crawford, left, beat Canelo Alvarez last Saturday in front of 70,482 spectators at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, with another 41 million viewers tuning in to watch the fight on Netflix.David Becker/The Associated Press
On the men’s side, the sideshow novelty bouts generate attention and revenue, if not long-term interest in boxing. Last year 108 million people logged on to Netflix to watch Jake Paul, the YouTuber-turned-boxer, defeat a then-58-year-old Mike Tyson over eight dreary rounds. In November, Paul will box in an exhibition against lightweight champion Gervonta “Tank” Davis, whom he’ll outweigh by 60 pounds. Meanwhile, Tyson is slated to face retired welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather in a springtime exhibition.
Among competitive bouts, the biggest money now flows toward mega-events that are funded by Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority, and achieve mixed results. Alvarez’s win over William Scull last May set a record for fewest punches thrown in a 12-round fight. But his dramatic loss to Crawford drew 70,482 spectators to Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, and another 41 million viewers to Netflix.
Industry veteran Mark Taffet, who ran HBO’s now-defunct pay-per-view programming, says streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime combine network TV’s reach with premium cable’s prestige, lending heft to boxing broadcasts.
“They have the ability to … treat big boxing events like one-night original programs, and actually present them to the broadest audiences possible, and achieve tremendous growth in subscriber volume,” said Taffet, now the head of global events at CSI, the group behind the Tyson-Mayweather exhibition. “It’s actually preferential to the model of pay-per-view, which says, ‘Take the most money from the fewest people possible.’”
Meanwhile, women’s boxing has seen Paul’s company, Most Valuable Promotions (MVP), embark on an extended, aggressive signing spree. Last winter it signed Canadian Olympian Tammara Thibeault, and last month it acquired former world champion Kim Clavel. Both boxers will compete on an MVP event in Montreal on Sept. 27.
‘The biggest payday out there for Sara is probably a $200,000 or $300,000 fight,’ says her coach, manager and husband, Stevie Bailey, left. ‘But by the time you get there you’ve probably spent a million dollars.’Jalani Morgan/The Globe and Mail
Bailey headlined MVP’s first Canadian show in March. She says the company offered her a contract, but she reasoned that the bump in up-front pay doesn’t outweigh the benefits of being the featured fighter on cards closer to home.
“Everyone keeps asking when I’m going to fight in the States, but why would I?” Bailey says. “I have so much control here. I don’t want to give up control.”
The setup is expensive
For a world champion like Bailey, finding the right sparring partners often requires flying them in, covering their travel, plus compensating them for lost wages on their day jobs.
Last month, she travelled to support Lucas Bahdi, a stablemate fighting on an MVP card in Orlando. From there, she and Stevie drove to Miami to spar with a contender named Taylah Robertson, whose style mimics that of Bermudez.
They paid all their own expenses.
“We’d rack up debt, pay it off. We’d rack up debt, we’d pay it off,” Stevie Bailey says. “We didn’t really care, per se, about making money in her pro career. We wanted legacy.”