• by Karl Greenberg , November 13, 2010

Boxing hasn't been a broadly disseminated sport since the advent of closed circuit TV. But while cable and pay-per-view via HBO and Showtime are still the main platforms for fight broadcasts, the Web is fast becoming the medium of choice for fans of the sport and for the big promotional companies who are desperately seeking ways to popularize a sport that used to sell out stadiums.

Actually it's no coincidence that, as boxing is returning to stadiums -- Yankees Stadium in New York, and Cowboys Stadium in Dallas -- promoters are becoming a second conduit for video boxing content, both in the ring and out. When Top Rank-promoted Manny Pacquiao fought in Cowboys Stadium in March, the promoter re-launched TopRank.com to incorporate video streaming capabilities and integrated social media windows. Top Rank isn't alone among promoters branching into content. Rival Golden Boy acquired Ring magazine and video-friendly RingTV.com and has created a new roster of televised boxing events, such as the once-per-month Thursday night boxing exhibitions at LA's Nokia Center, streamed on RingTV.com

Top Rank is doing it differently, though, by creating in-house channels for boxing content. Todd DuBoef, president of the Las Vegas-based promoter says the goal is to bring back wide dissemination of boxing content, which, he concedes, has become exclusive and narrow.

New content channels are necessary to keep boxing alive because the pay-per-view system for broadcasting boxing matches limits audience, as well as sponsorship and marketing opportunities. "We have choked off content to consumers for many years," DuBoef says. "We have starved consumers of the product." His goal with the new TopRank.com has been to create a rich-media hub with social-media tentacles that virtually reach millions on sites like Twitter and Facebook, and also link to fighters' social-media platforms. "Old media was: I have content here's my platform, now the audience can come get it," he says. "What we are doing is: I have content, and I'm going to bring it to the audience."

DuBoef says he is going full bore into Web content and social media to promote events like Saturday's super-fight between Manny Pacquiao and Antonio Margarito and to create a portal for content previously unavailable to the public, such press conferences featuring the trainers and fighters.

"We launched the new Web site in March and have become very proactive," he says, explaining that through constant feeds and integration on the Web site itself of Tweets, for instance, "We easily reach 1.5 million people, not counting fans on boxers' own sites; we would never have been able to do that before."

Top Rank has launched a banner ad campaign promoting the fight, but the banners incorporate real-time video. The banners, which are running on sites like NYTimes.com, WSJ.com and USA Today.com will -- when a user runs his or her cursor over it -- drop a video screen that today will stream in real time, the fight's weigh-in at 4 p.m. Central Time. The banners rotate with ones promoting the fight and one promoting one of the fight's sponsors, History Channel's "Top Gear."

"We have two goals," says DuBoef of the social-media integration. "Awareness of the PPV product, and a way to bring fans to a place where they can interact with other fans and see new video content." He says he has moved a big chunk of his media budget from traditional to online. Npw. it's 50/50 when before only 15% of my budget was digital," he says. The majority of PPV views are coming from outside the U.S. "Manny Pacquiao has 100 million fans, and 561,000 of them are on Facebook.

Social-media also lets Top Rank reach new demographics within the U.S. that have little awareness or interest in boxing. For example, Top Rank has made a deal with R&B star Nelly to perform his new hit just before the main event. The artist Tweeted to his own online fan base of some 850,000 and Top Rank re-Tweeted it and posted it to its pool of 1.5 million fans.

The social media team is running a "tailgate Tweet-Up" at Cowboys Stadium on Saturday around a "Tecate Fan Zone" grass roots effort. Top Rank also has a mobile app for iPhone, Android and is looking to streaming Top Rank's video content to mobile.

What is all this doing for the fighter's own Facebook pages? Steve Rin, who runs social media at Top Rank, which also has someone dedicated to Spanish-language social media, says Puerto Rican star Juan Manuel Lopez' fan base has tripped since Top Rank linked its platform to his site. "His page was stagnant at 25,000," says Rin. "It's growth three times that size in three months. That's 30,000 new users per month."