Saudi Arabia has thrown vast amounts of money into professional sports since the start of this decade. The new TKO Group boxing promotion, spearheaded by Turki Al-Sheikh, an advisor at the Saudi Royal Court and chairman of the country’s General Entertainment Authority, is one of the kingdom’s latest ventures.
The parent company of both the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), TKO Group will be putting on its first boxing promotion event this September. Founders Ari Emanuel and Vince McMahon’s long-term plan is to do away with boxing’s multi-promotion, multi-title model. Fans of mixed martial arts (MMA) will recognize this divide-and-conquer, anti-labor approach from the UFC, which has also consolidated an industry once made up by a plurality of legitimate fighting outfits.
Devotees of boxing have long decried what they see as the bureaucratic nightmare of a sport in which a variety of competing promotions make arranging fights between the best athletes difficult. From this perspective, Al-Sheikh’s attempt to consolidate the industry might look like a needed development for a sport long overdue for change. But to accomplish its vision, TKO taking aim at federal legislation designed to ensure fighter protections.
In contrast to MMA, where the UFC has around a 90 percent market share, boxing is a far less monopolistic sport. This deprives athletes of competitive leverage. The Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act, colloquially referred to as the Ali Act, was introduced in 2000, a period in which MMA was still a fringe enterprise and boxing was in dire need of reform. The act was an amendment to the Professional Boxing Safety Act of 1996, meant to protect athletes from promotional malfeasance within the sport.
Some of these issues included the prohibition of unfair contracts, dividing manager and promoter roles, requirements of financial transparency, granting audit power to the fighters, and the…
Auteur: Jack Bedrosian
