How boxing is using TikTok to win over Gen Z—and turning fighters into influencers

For years, boxing lagged behind other sports on social media. “The NFL and NBA had these giant social media presences for years now, and I think boxing was a little bit slower to get fully on board with that,” says Joe Setley, the senior director of social media and content strategy for Top Rank, one of the largest boxing promoters. But that has changed in the last year as Top Rank has leaned into TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat to connect with longtime boxing fans and its growing Gen Z audience. The increased viewership of Top Rank content across social media—and the growing popularity of boxing overall—has also led more brands to venture into the boxing space. Bud Light signed with Top Rank in June as the company’s official beer sponsor, citing the “tremendous increase in [boxing’s] popularity” as a core reason for the partnership. Entertainment companies such as Paramount and Amazon Prime Video have also partnered with Top Rank to promote upcoming movies or TV shows, emblazoning their logos on the boxing ring floor. The company only partners with one brand per product category, and aims to break into new sponsorship areas like insurance and fast food in 2023, according to Brian Kelly, Top Rank’s chief revenue officer. Ad Age Next: CMO Get your tickets for the Dec. 7 event in New York Register here A revamped social strategy Influencers such as YouTubers Jake and Logan Paul stepping into the boxing ring have been partially responsible for the surging popularity of boxing among younger audiences, Kelly said. These social media personalities entering boxing matches has “opened their [fans’] eyes to the sport,” he said, and spurred more casual boxing fans to become diehard viewers of the influencers’ fights. Several Reddit users in a thread on the platform’s boxing forum credited the Paul brothers with reviving their interest in the sport, including one user who wrote, “I used to only watch the big fights with my family … but ever since this YouTube boxing started to take off I have bec[o]me a regular viewer.” “Boxing was a little bit behind the times,” Setley said. “There wasn't really a platform to access it. And I think now that we're building Snapchat channels and driving giant TikTok growth, we're really putting this content out for these kids to be able to find now, where before it was a little harder for them to reach.” TikTok provides Top Rank the most direct route to the Gen Z audience the company is courting. Since creating its account last year, Top Rank’s TikTok has amassed 1.3 million followers, with over 300,000 of those followers gained within the past two months. The company’s TikTok content is one of its primary vehicles for communicating fighters’ stories in a shorter, accessible format that also gives necessary context to audiences less familiar with boxing, Setley said. “On TikTok, [narrative] is what drives,” he said. “If we mention Nico Ali Walsh is Muhammad Ali's grandson, that spikes interest ... We need to make sure that we’re educating people on the storylines, describ[ing] the rivalries, so that people who are more ‘off-the-street’ can understand the context of these videos.” Top Rank’s TikTok videos also intentionally focus more on the league’s younger fighters, such as 20-year-old Xander Zayas, with the aim of “creating a link between these younger fighters and these younger fans so that they’ll basically grow up together,” Setley added. The company’s Instagram page similarly seeks to showcase individual fighters by offering boxers the opportunity to have their content shared on Top Rank’s page via the Instagram Collab feature, which expands a post’s reach by making it appear on both the fighter’s personal page and Top Rank’s account. Additionally, Top Rank’s social media team provides “Office Hour” opportunities to fighters to answer questions and share tips about how they can build their social media presence. In the weeks leading up to a match, fighters can come to the social team to get stats about the performance of their past content and receive polished photos and videos they can share on their accounts, among other things. “The goal is always to build the stars,” Setley said. “If they have more followers, we're getting better tune-in on TV and better social numbers. We always want to make sure that we're building these guys along with us. We're a package deal, and our fighters are just as important as the brand.” Top Rank has also started to incorporate influencers into its social media strategy—particularly 16-year-old Javon Walton, an actor who rose to fame in the HBO series “Euphoria.” Walton, an amateur boxer himself, has an Instagram following of nearly 6 million and 8.3 million TikTok followers, many of them part of the teenage demographic. Top Rank reached out to Walton after he tagged the company in one of his Instagram posts while watching a match, and Top Rank now invites Walton to fights to shoot photo and video content, sends him Top Rank merch and creates collab posts with him, Setley said. A post shared by Top Rank Boxing (@toprank) The fast-paced format of TikTok videos aligns well with the “quick hits” that audiences seek from boxing matches and other combat sports, said Joe Favorito, a sports and entertainment marketing consultant. For years, sports leagues like UFC had focused their social media strategies around packaging exciting moments from fight broadcasts into short video clips—and boxing’s rising popularity within the last two years correlates with companies like Top Rank embracing a similar social content strategy, he said. “No matter what sport you’re in, it’s home runs, catches, celebrations, the end of a round—that’s what it’s all built around,” Favorito added. For boxing, those moments boil down to peaks in the violence inherent in the sport, as “violence is what really drives interest” in boxing, he said. Those quick, thrilling compilations of big hits and knockouts—like those Top Rank shares on its social channels—are what boxing fans crave, he said. Highlighting boxers and their narratives A 2021 study from U.K. sports marketing agency Two Circles found roughly one-in-three Gen Z sports fans in the U.S. are “avid boxing fan[s],” making boxing the fourth-most popular sport among the age group. Part of this appeal stems from Gen Z fans’ interest in the story and personality of each fighter and the “fight narrative” that emerges from a boxing match, such as a longstanding rivalry between two fighters or an underdog story. According to the study, 33% of Gen Z sports fans tend to follow individual athletes, and boxing lends itself to this type of sports fandom. When boxing promoter Bob Arum teamed up with Jabir Herbert Muhammad, manager of boxing icon Muhammad Ali, to found Top Rank in 1973, the company’s business model revolved almost entirely around its Saturday night boxing matches, Kelly said. Leading up to each fight, the company would zero in on “getting as many pay-per-view buys as you possibly can and driving revenue through [ticket] sales”—and once that match had concluded, Top Rank would simply begin preparing for the next fight. But, since joining Top Rank in April 2021, Kelly has sought to fill that vacuum between boxing matches with social media content designed to generate excitement for upcoming fights; highlight thrilling moments from both recent matches and historic showdowns, and, perhaps most importantly, familiarize followers with the dozens of fighters signed to Top Rank and their personal stories. “A lot of our fighters have stories that people don't know about, and it's our job to tell those stories and get the fans invested,” said Alex Adeyanju, Top Rank’s senior director of digital production and programming. “And then, in the end, they’ll want to watch them fight.” Adeyanju oversees the production of Top Rank’s longform video content on both YouTube and ESPN, the latter of which has the exclusive rights to broadcast Top Rank matches. On YouTube, the company leverages its extensive library of footage of former boxing stars like Muhammad Ali and Floyd Mayweather Jr. to create countdown videos recalling famous knockouts and other historic moments. And for Top Rank’s Saturday night fights, the company partners with an outside production company to film behind-the-scenes videos that reveal the trash talk and tension fans may not have witnessed during the live broadcast. Face-offs, or pre-fight confrontations between boxers, are especially popular with fans, he said. Boxing has always historically been centered around fighters with strong personalities going toe-to-toe, including Muhammad Ali, whose personal brand and boxing rivalries were “built on his personality,” said Favorito. This focus on individual fighters and their backstories “got lost in the mix” of championships and title belts—until recently, as boxing leagues like Top Rank returned to that original strategy of highlighting the backgrounds and personalities of their individual fighters, he said. “This is not a new idea for boxing; this is what boxing was built on,” he said. “When you look at the backgrounds of a lot of elite boxers over the years, they come from diverse backgrounds—sometimes troubled [ones]—and have very relatable stories to the general population. “You don’t need to have the belt or a world champion,” Favorito added. “It's nice, but what you really need are relatable stories; and boxing and MMA probably have more of those stories than most sports. That's their big advantage.” Top Rank’s fights have also consistently drawn solid ESPN viewership. An October match between Devin Haney and George Kambosos Jr. reached nearly 950,000 viewers, for example. More hotly-anticipated fights are bigger draws—the one between Shakur Stevenson and Robson Conceição in September averaged 1.1 million viewers. And viewership of an April 30 match between Stevenson and Óscar Valdez averaged 1.2 million viewers, with broadcast ratings coming in a close second to that day’s ESPN broadcast of the NFL Draft. Overall ratings for ESPN broadcasts of Top Rank were 33% higher in 2021 compared to 2020, per Nielsen data. The April 30 edition of Top Rank Boxing on ESPN—topped by Shakur Stevenson's dominant win over Oscar Valdez in WBC/WBO Jr. Lightweight unification bout—averaged 1.166 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research. By far most watched TR show of 2022. #StevensonValdez The production company also assists with Top Rank’s “Blood Sweat and Tears” series, a collection of short documentaries that share the personal stories and careers of fighters ahead of an upcoming match and help “showcase their personalities” to fans, Adeyanju said. Top Rank uploads these specials to its YouTube channel after they air on ESPN, often cataloging them in playlists labeled with a fighter’s name that also include other videos featuring them. Top Rank has gained over 570,000 new YouTube subscribers since the start of 2022, with its overall subscriber count recently exceeding 1.9 million. Many of the company’s most popular videos have racked up millions of views each. Top Rank’s focus on storytelling will continue to drive its content strategy into 2023, as the company plans to keep the spotlight on each of its fighters with new documentary-style content—and potentially even produce a large-scale documentary going behind the scenes of the sport, inspired by the success of F1’s “Drive to Survive” docuseries created by Netflix, Kelly said. “Whether they’re actors or actresses, Major League Baseball players or boxers, we crave content—we crave wanting to know everything we can about the people who we will emotionally and financially invest in,” Favorito said. “For years, boxing has had these pretty strong personalities ... it took a while for the sport to not just realize that, but take advantage of it.” ~ ~ ~CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly reported the number of TikTok followers Top Rank recently gained.

How boxing is using TikTok to win over Gen Z—and turning fighters into influencers

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