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If you were to rank the top television events in New Zealand history, what would you include? The Rugby World Cup? The Olympics? Diana’s death?
Well, yes, you’d be right; all three are in the top 12. But what’s number one? Would you pick Lennox Lewis versus David Tua, shown on TV3 in 2000? The bout dragged in 1.8 million viewers, or 43 percent of the country, making it the number one event by an enormous stretch. The second, by the way, is the movie Ghost on TV2 in 1995. How embarrassing.
Anyway, boxing features four times in the top 12, more than any other sport, more than One News and more than most of us would expect.
It’s those kind of numbers that stopped David Higgins and John McRae in their tracks one day in 2007. The owners of event management firm Duco were chatting after a corporate event when the conversation turned to speakers who’d draw a really big crowd. Someone suggested Tua.
“If you ask most marketing managers if they’d sponsor a boxing event, you’d get turned down. The middle-aged women who run marketing departments find boxing unsavoury. But look at the numbers”
“I didn’t get it at first,” says Higgins. “Who’d want to hear from a boxer? Particularly one whose career has stalled. But boxing is misunderstood. If you ask most marketing managers if they’d sponsor a boxing event, you’d get turned down. The middle-aged women who run marketing departments find boxing unsavoury. But look at the numbers.”
In the US, boxing, along with porn, commands the largest pay-per-view audiences; in Europe it attracts big brands such as Hugo Boss; and in New Zealand and Australia boxing consistently pulls the highest viewership on Sky TV.
So it was with great confidence that Higgins and McRae announced mid-2008 that they had signed David Tua to challenge his Kiwi rival Shane Cameron. The signing was big news, getting coverage on all the prime time media. Cameron had long sledged Tua in the media and the journalists were in a frenzy of speculation. It would be the fight of the century, fo’ sure. But who were these young tyros? Could they really pull it off? And would Cameron sign?
Higgins, a tall, slightly awkward-looking fellow with an intense, level voice, shrugged at all the speculation. “We had Tua. What could go wrong?”
A lot it seems. The journey to Hamilton’s Mystery Creek was as steep for Duco as it was for the overweight Tua, taking almost 18 months of tortuous and public negotiation, setbacks and media slagging.
With the benefit of hindsight, Higgins and McRae’s early confidence looks justified. Sitting in their artsy office in Auckland’s High Street, the pair nonchalantly reel off the numbers. Tua versus Cameron sold in excess of 80,000 pay per views, a record in Sky’s history and possibly a world record in the proportion of views per total audience. They sold 7,500 tickets to the event, including 150 corporate tables at an average of about $8,000. Sponsorships were secured for undisclosed cash sums from Samsung and Woodstock. Hamilton City helped out with the venue. Duco collected a share of the food and liquor sold at the six-hour event. Estimates for gross revenue from the event range from $3 million to $8 million. Duco isn’t saying. What matters, they say, is that Duco is now poised as the country’s preeminent boxing promoter.
All in all, a knockout performance.
Critics had cause to doubt. McRae and Higgins are young; McRae turned 30 only this year. The largest events they’d handled were black-tie corporate gigs with 800 people coming to hear the likes of Bob Geldof and Bill Clinton. Only four years ago they were working as marketing assistants at the Employers and Manufacturers Association, running networking events and business breakfasts.
- Actually editor McRae was 32 and the largest event was 2200
They were especially inexperienced in the murky world of boxing, dominated internationally by unlovely characters like promoter Don King and convicted rapist Mike Tyson. New Zealand boxing is an even messier affair, a hodgepodge of wannabes and toughnuts. The biggest players until Duco were Mark Hotchin and Eric Watson, of Hanover fame, whose company Knockout Boxing effectively owned Shane Cameron. The millionaires had been trying to sign Tua for their version of the Fight of the Century for years. Tua wasn’t biting.
John Fellet of Sky TV says the company was delighted with the entire spectacle, and confirms that pay per views were “north” of 80,000, making it the biggest show in Sky’s history
Maybe this is where youth helped. Higgins could see the issue was one of mana. “Their offers to David were low and easily interpreted as disrespectful. I knew what the event was really worth and so did David.”
Using back-of-the-envelope accounting, Higgins and McRae calculated they could afford to pay Tua $500,000. The contract was simple, giving Duco two years to pull the bout together and providing Tua with a hefty upfront deposit, followed by regular payments and the balance upon completing the fight.
“I learned about that from watching the movie When We Were Kings,” laughs Higgins. “No one thought Don King could get Ali and Foreman together but he pulled off the ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ by apparently paying what everyone said was an outrageous price to the boxers. Of course he knew exactly what the fight was worth and sold the rights for more.”
Duco employed former Tua associate Greg McCalman to do the negotiation (another smart idea) and it worked, with Tua sensing the opportunity to resurrect his career but to also knock the mouthy ‘mountain goat’ to kingdom come. All Duco had to do was sign Cameron.
Easier said than done. Knockout Boxing’s Hotchin and Cameron’s manager Ken Reinsfield were incensed that these young upstarts held the trump card. “Initially they ignored us,” says Higgins. “They really felt that this was their fight to organise. At one point during the negotiations Hotchin turned to his lawyer and said, ‘We better include a clause in the contract that all rights for the fight return to us if these fellows get hit by a bus.’ We kind of looked at each other and didn’t know whether he was joking or not!”
By the time December rolled around the negotiations with Cameron’s camp had been dragging on for months. Duco was forced to double Cameron’s pay to $500,000 but still Reinsfield continued to delay, engaging Higgins in a public spat that the media delighted to report.
RANK EVENT PERCENT OF NATION WATCHING
1 Tua v Lewis, TV3, 2000 43.1
2 Ghost, TV2, 1995 29.2
3 Diana Exclusive, TV2, 1995 29.1
4 Once Were Warriors, TV3, 1996 29.1
5 One News Special, 1997 (Di’s death) 29.1
6 Tyson v Holyfield, TV3, 1996 28.7
7 NZ Idol Grand Final, TV2, 2004 28.6
8 Forrest Gump, TV2, 2004 28.3
9 Jurassic Park, TV2, 1997 27.7
10 Tua v Lewis Build Up, TV3, 2000 27.1
11 Fight for Life, TV3, 2001 26.8
12 Rugby World Cup NZ v France, TV3, 2007 26.3
Delays
Something snapped over Christmas. Higgins says Duco’s threat to walk away tipped it. Some media reported that Cameron just wanted to fight. “We signed on January 18, the day of the Big Day Out. It was the best day out I think we’ll ever have,” says Higgins.
The delays, the spats and the size of the purse took its toll on Duco. Sports commentators like Bob Jones, Murray Deaker and Joseph Romanos ridiculed the pair as naive and unable to deliver. And when Cameron broke his hand during a fight early in 2009, the show had to be delayed, inviting more scorn.
“We were hammered in the media,” says Higgins. “That really hurt us, but the delay was a blessing in disguise. It gave us time to find the sponsors and find a weekend free of competing sporting events.”
By then Duco had signed Hamilton as host city. It had also contracted a who’s who of the entertainment world to front for the inexperienced pair. Dean Lonergan (who organised the Fight for Life events) was in charge of the table sales and venue; Ian Fraser handled terms with Sky TV; Gordon Campbell handled the host city negotiations; Gray Bartlett was on entertainment; and Malcolm Boyle was on PR.
To amp up the media hype, Duco contracted ‘Colonel’ Bob Sheridan, the legendary US boxing commentator and international referee Bruce McTavish. The big names were all part of the credibility-building programme.
But sponsors remained elusive. Despite the scale of the event, approaches to 30 corporates were knocked back. Blame it on the recession, blame it on boxing, the sponsorship was the weakest link and Woodstock and Samsung were in the end the only sponsors paying cash.
Nigel Owen, senior brand manager at Independent Liquor, owner of Woodstock, says the investment paid off handsomely. “I don’t think anyone realised how popular it would be.”
Sponsors received branding at the event, which was picked up by Sky’s cameras, and advertising slots between breaks during the 4.30pm to 11pm event. The fight was hugely promoted by Sky in the lead up, all with Woodstock, Hamilton and Samsung branding. Higgins has not commissioned any formal research but claims the media value is close to what could be delivered by a domestic showing of a Rugby World Cup final.
John Fellet of Sky TV says the company was delighted with the entire spectacle, and confirms that pay per views were “north” of 80,000, making it the biggest show in Sky’s history.
“Our most popular pay-per-view shows are wrestling and cage fighting, which typically get about four or five percent of the total Sky audience [near 800,000]. But this was much bigger. It’s the biggest event I’ve ever been involved with,” says Fellet.
“It is hard to gauge how many people watched the fight because AC Nielsen does not normally measure our pay-per-view channels and because a large number of people watched the fight from bars. But here is what we do know. About 33 percent of the normal Saturday night television audience disappeared the night of the Tua fight.”
Fellet says advertising agencies find it hard to estimate the media value of such one-off events, despite the fact that Tua historically pulls a huge crowd. Indeed it puzzles Fellet as to why Tua is undervalued by sponsors (see box story).
The actual show in late September was an entertainment and sporting spectacular lasting seven hours, and culminating in a three-minute-six-second blast of David Tua fury.
“There was a 30-minute gap between the last bout and the boxers entering the ring and things had reached a fever pitch. Even though the fight was over so quickly we’ve had no complaints. It was such a brutal mauling, people were just stunned,” says Higgins.
As Cameron sprawled on the canvas in the second round, Tua raised his hands in victory with barely any sweat on his brow. Tua was back—as focused, potent and menancing as before. The question now is not if there will be a next big fight, but when.
The same is true of the Duco boys, who have now earned their stripes. Higgins isn’t saying when but he promises there will be more boxing to come.
“I mean, just look at the numbers!”