Growing up poor in the U.K., Ed Pereira dreamed of seeing a boxing match in person. Now 49, the CEO of London-based marketing company iVisit Media is aiming to make history — organizing what he hopes will be the most-attended boxing match ever, in the heart of San Francisco’s Civic Center Plaza.
There are more than a few details to work out. For starters, Pereira admits, he must exorcise the demons of his last stateside excursion: a bout last Spring in the middle of Times Square that was upended by traffic, a 10-foot-high chain-link fence, and resentment from the New York Police Department.
The San Francisco fight card has yet to be determined. But like any boxing promoter, Pereira can’t help but zealously sell his vision for the July 11 event. More than a one-night showdown, the fight as he envisions it will be the anchor for a weeklong festival meant to celebrate the sport and its fans — and bring “boxing back to the people.”
If he gets his way, attendance will outstrip the 1941 bout between Tony Zale and Billy Pryor in Milwaukee, which drew 135,132 people. It would also be the first heavyweight boxing match in San Francisco in more than 70 years.
The Standard caught up with Pereira on Saturday to discuss his plans, his dealings with Mayor Daniel Lurie, and why a partnership with YouTube might be his secret weapon.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Why did you lock in on San Francisco?
San Francisco is an iconic city. It’s a city that the world knows. For me, it was also an old fight town. Some of the biggest boxers in history have fought here, and I think it’s been forgotten by the boxing world. It really has had its thunder stolen by Las Vegas and New York and, more recently, by Saudi Arabia.
The Bay Area is the center of the tech world. It’s also an incredible example of a community living together and growing together and inspiring — with the food, with the sense of community, the incredible sporting fans that you’ve got in the Bay Area. So I saw an opportunity to bring a great, big sporting event back to San Francisco.
The mayor was just as jazzed as Pereira when the duo announced the match on Friday. | Source: Courtesy iVisit BoxingHow did this get underway?
It must have been March of last year. That was my first visit to the city. I fell in love with it, and the mayor’s office was very kind to give me a meeting. I went to City Hall, and as soon as you step into the Civic Center Plaza, it takes your breath away.
At the time, I was working on a fight at Times Square, which is everything that the Civic Center Plaza isn’t. It’s pretty tight. It has a lot of security concerns, with hundreds of thousands of people walking past it every day. The plan here is for everybody to be able to see the ring — or as many people as we can get.
The YouTube deal is kind of the final piece of the jigsaw. Our vision is to essentially bring boxing back to the people. You can do that in one of two ways — what we’re about to do, which is offer a huge amount of free tickets to San Franciscans so that they can experience boxing. And also, use the technology that was created and invested in and grown from the Bay Area to project that to the world.
This event will be shown exclusively on YouTube. They felt that it was a cultural moment — a cultural moment in the city, a cultural moment in the world of boxing — and they wanted to get involved and broadcast that exclusively.
When did you get into boxing?
In the U.K. during the ’90s, boxing was free to air. My mum would let me stay up to watch the boxing, and I got bit by the bug. There were two boxers called [Nigel] Benn and [Chris] Eubank. These guys had some of the biggest British battles in boxing history. I could see how they put everything on the line — how they put their heart and their soul into the fights, how they never gave in. They were always coming forward.
Then my favorite boxer of all time is a guy called Joe Calzaghe. He had a very close relationship with his dad. His dad was his trainer, his manager, and everything in between. They went to Las Vegas, won every belt, went undefeated all the way through to the end, and were inducted into the Hall of Fame.
I always say this: If I could, with my dad, achieve just 2% of what Calzaghe achieved, I’ll be a very happy man.
You met Lurie this week. What was your impression?
The guy’s an inspiration. I’ve been following him on social media for a long time. He’s inspirational but charismatic. He loves the city — truly has the city at heart, you know, and its people. You can sense that incredible energy around City Hall.
His openness — his vision of generating growth for the city, of investment in large-scale events — is inspirational. To be mentioned by him in the same sentence as the World Cup and the Super Bowl is really, truly humbling.
How many people will be given tickets?
The target is 135,000, so we’re going to sell or give away more than 135,000. I can’t give you specific numbers, but the majority of the tickets will be free — more than 50%, for sure.
You’ll also have high-end tickets available. But for me, bringing boxing back to the people means you’ve got to give a bigger majority of the tickets away, and that’s what we’re going to do.
How is the fight being financed?
I come from the world of business. Our financing model is a lot more aligned to corporate business than it is to the boxing world. Working with YouTube gives us access to two key things: advertising revenue, as well as pay-per-view sales. So that’s one of the revenue streams.
The other one, obviously, is sponsors. We come from the world of soccer, working with some of the biggest soccer names in the world. FIFA and the World Cup have given us access to large funds that we can invest not just in the event itself, but in the fight week.
What do you see as the biggest challenge in putting on this event?
The obvious: getting 150,000-odd people. It’s never been done before in boxing. We’re going to break that record. It’s been held for 85 years, and it’s not been done for a reason, right?
But the event isn’t just going to be about a world championship boxing fight — which will have a great card, by the way — but it will also be about music and food and a fan zone and entertainment and coming to see your favorite content creators on their own stage. It becomes much more of a festival to celebrate sports and to celebrate fans in the center of San Francisco.
The challenge will be to make sure that enough people come in to break that record. But I think what’s also exciting is that it means that the fans themselves — the San Franciscans — will hold the record themselves. It will be their record, and if they come, they will be record holders. They’ll be able to tell their friends and their kids and their grandchildren, “I was there when we broke the world record.”
Are you targeting Oleksandr Usyk and Deontay Wilder for the headline?
My head, my vision, and my workload have been very much focused around working alongside the mayor’s office to ensure that they’re happy with our plans and, secondly, to put together the YouTube deal.
It’s not to say I haven’t been in talks with everybody, but now the work starts to put together the card. But whoever Usyk gets to fight with, and on whatever card, anybody would want them on his card.
So Usyk will be on the card for sure?
No, no, no, no, no. What I mean is that I think Usyk would be a great person to have, but nothing is confirmed.
Can you tell me anything about who you’re targeting?
For me, the card has got to have a little bit of everything. We have to have the heavyweights, and the heavyweights have to be big names to attract a big crowd. We’re going to need the biggest names out there.
For us, it’s about adding a really strong Hispanic card in there as well, and giving everybody not just one main, but a co-main as well.
And then some of the fun stuff that we like to do — which, in Times Square, we did — was the New York Fire Department versus the New York Police Department. That was a great fight.
It feels like people get into boxing when there’s some kind of buzz around it, or if Floyd Mayweather or Jake Paul are fighting.
For the boxing purists, they’ll hate me saying this, but they won’t be able to deny it. When Jake Paul fights, the world stops and listens, and America stops and listens and watches.
Jake Paul’s fight with Mike Tyson was viewed by 75 million people. Forty-odd million people watched Jake Paul versus Anthony Joshua. So the fans still love boxing. The fans still love the show and the razzmatazz. There were about 75 million people that watched Canelo versus Crawford. So the American public still loves boxing.
You can see it in the figures, but you’re absolutely right: It’s got to be a big show. We make that big splash. We bring in the biggest boxers, and we add to that a little bit of magic. Stardust. We add music and Hollywood and content creators.
Pereira promoted rugby and soccer matches before getting into boxing. | Source: Courtesy iVisit Boxing
Because the beauty of when you look at somebody like Jake Paul — when he fought Anthony Joshua — you know, the American public didn’t know who Anthony Joshua was. They went really to see Jake Paul get knocked out. Jake Paul is a hugely talented person, but the platform that built his celebrity was YouTube. We’re going to work alongside YouTube to build that celebrity, content-creator sparkle magic in San Francisco.
So you’re really leaning into the new mediascape?
One hundred percent. They’re gonna have their content-creation stage. The secret of this whole thing is YouTube. It’s ubiquitous. The reality is that it has 2.7 billion monthly users. That’s your audience base. The water-cooler moments are not led now by the legacy networks. They’re led by the streamers.
I’m Gen Z and grew up on these platforms. Why is that revolutionary to older folks?
That’s a really good question, and I’d like to unpack that. Look, I started in the magazine world. I’m 49 years old, and I remember the power of print. I remember the power of newsprint. I remember the power of magazines. I was one of the people that was involved in that heyday of print magazines.
That was the storytelling vehicle of the time. Newspapers and magazines were the most successful storytelling vehicle of the time.
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It would be lovely if everything stayed the same, right? But the truth is they were the media distribution vehicles of the time. The media distribution vehicles of this time are YouTube and TikTok, etc. But the world of boxing hasn’t evolved to change. The guys are still stuck to the legacy operators.
We took the first step. The company that makes the first step — you’re either going to fall flat on your face or you’re going to succeed, one or the other. The moment for us is now, and we’re the guys taking the first step into a different world.
Are you planning on announcing more fights before July?
We will be announcing more fights before and after July. July is the biggest. I’m not going to do anything bigger than this. July will be the pinnacle.