KSI v Logan Paul: What traditional sport can learn from the online influencers’ boxing match
Just over a week ago, 20,000 fans packed into Manchester Arena to watch one of the most talked about UK boxing events in recent history. Several million more watched online.
This wasn’t a professional fight, however; rather a white-collar event involving two of the world’s biggest YouTubers and online influencers, KSI – real name Olajide William “JJ” Olatunji – and Logan Paul.
These two men might not be experienced boxers, but between them they have over 37m subscribers on YouTube alone.
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So what can traditional sport take from the fight, as well as the trend of YouTubers and vloggers entering mainstream sport and entertainment?
Paying for content
The fight was available on YouTube’s pay-per-view channel for $10. While it peaked at a reported 860,000 concurrent viewers, more than a million more are believed to have accessed the fight for free, via illegal streams – primarily on Twitch.
It is no coincidence that fans of KSI and Logan Paul are largely young and digitally native: Generation Z and millennials. These age groups aren’t used to paying for live content.
For them, streaming easily accessible content for free has always been the norm. £7.50 might seem like nothing for a major event like this, but this demographic is a much tougher nut to crack when it comes to pay-per-view content.
The piracy problem
The ease with which fans accessed illegal streams of the fight raises interesting questions about the approach platforms such as Twitch take to pirated content.
Some will argue these platforms have a responsibility to do more to tackle infringement, and Twitch has received criticism since the event.
However, there were few bigger commercial winners from this fight than Twitch given the traffic on their platform during an event they weren’t even hosting.
The future of live-streaming of major events makes for a fascinating debate.
Sport or entertainment?
Cynics will point out that the fight wasn’t sanctioned by any regulatory body and nor were the fighters licensed. “Surely this isn’t sport but entertainment,” traditionalists might argue. But just as in eSports, the lines between traditional sport, entertainment and the online world have become blurred.
And in many ways the choice of definition is irrelevant. The fight generated revenue from the same sources as a traditional sports event: ticket sales, streaming revenue, advertising, merchandise and betting. From a production perspective, the fight was just as impressive as recent professional boxing events. The eyeballs and engagement levels pre- and post-event were on a par with traditional events on a global scale.
So whether this was sport, entertainment, neither, or both, is in many ways meaningless. All that really matters is that it represented an incredibly valuable set of commercial rights.
A powerful narrative
Not everyone will be a fan of the online feuds that have become a trend within the YouTube and vlogging world. KSI and Logan Paul took it to a new level.
There is some science behind the trash talk, however. The rivalry created a powerful narrative and turning it into a physical fight in a stadium is, in some ways, the obvious climax.
Add the fact that these two individuals weren’t boxers and you had fascinating potential for entertainment.
Influencers and mainstream entertainment
The KSI v Logan Paul fight is part of a wider trend involving influencers making their move into mainstream sport and entertainment. Most recently the BBC announced YouTuber Joe Sugg as a contestant on Strictly Come Dancing.
Provided traditional sports and entertainment brands do due diligence on an influencer’s online history, it’s a no-brainer move and an obvious way of targeting a new and younger audience.
More of the same
This wasn’t the first – KSI fought fellow YouTuber Joe Weller in February – and won’t be the last time we see online influencers seek to commercially leverage their profile in the live events and mainstream sport and entertainment space.
It’s impossible to say just how much both KSI and Logan Paul will have pocketed from the Manchester fight but rest assured that it will have been more than enough to incentivise other YouTubers and influencers to pursue similar commercial opportunities.
Jonny Madill is a sports and entertainment lawyer at Sheridans in London. He advises rights holders, social media and digital agencies, streaming platforms, brands, and individual athletes and influencers across the sports, esports and digital spheres.