Fighting to build a boxing business
Toronto businessman looks to step up his game with event at Mattamy Centre
When Lee Baxter entered the boxing business four years ago he knew it would cost.
For a manager without a promotional company, building a protege’s record often means paying to stage fights on other promoters’ shows. So Baxter has grown used to covering purses and travel expenses for his fighters and opponents, and sometimes paying promoters and additional entry fee.
“Canadians will help you out,” says Baxter, head of Lee Baxter Management.
“But when you cross that border, the American (promoters) are really looking for your money.”
This year the 32-year-old Baxter decided to stop paying to play and began hosting his own shows, hoping to grow his boxing business while filling a void he sees in the local live sports market.
Friday night’s six-bout card at the Mattamy Athletic Centre represents a huge step up from the event Baxter staged at the Woodbine racetrack in August, and he hopes a bigger venue and more robust lineup will give the downtown sports scene something it has lacked for a long time.
Entertaining live boxing on a consistent basis.
“We have to get these athletes looked at like other athletes are looked at in Toronto,” says Baxter, who also owns FYInk Tattoos and Gangster Burger restaurant. “You can go to a hockey or a baseball game every week. Boxing is only every three months.”
While mainstream sports fans are familiar with stars like Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, and the eight-figure paydays that come with pay-per-view main events, the fighters filling out Friday’s card are more representative of boxing’s rank and file.
Headliner Sam Vargas built much of his 23-2 record travelling between Toronto, the U.S. and Mexico to take fights Baxter financed, for payouts that peaked around $10,000 but were often smaller.
He went to Las Vegas in March, hoping to goad Toronto-based wel- terweight Phil Lo Greco, who was fighting there that weekend, into a future fight. Instead he struck an informal deal with the team managing rising welterweight star Errol Spence.
Three weeks later Spence’s team called Baxter asking if Vargas, a Bogota native who grew up in Mississauga, could face Spence on short notice. Baxter agreed, but only after negotiating a purse of more than $50,000 for a fight Vargas would eventually lose by fourth-round knockout.
Vargas faces Brazil’s Robinson Assis on Friday, and a win would mean a regional title and the leverage needed to make even bigger fights.
“I want to win the fight and I want to win it well,” says the 26-year-old Vargas.
“It’ll be a big motivation. It’ll open a lot of doors for me.”
Baxter similarly sees Friday’s card as a foundation on which he can build both a stronger stable of fighters and a recurring boxing series at the Mattamy Centre.
A successful event would make Baxter the second-biggest promoter in the city after Global Legacy Boxing, which debuted at Mattamy last October and in September co-promoted the first world title fight in Toronto since 1985.
But the gap in audience reach and pay scale between the two companies is massive. When Adonis Stevenson defended his WBC lightheavyweight title in September at the Ricoh Coliseum, on a televised card with big-ticket sponsors like Corona, he grossed $2.5 million (U.S).
“It doesn’t matter what the live gate it, it’s not paying for that (purse),” says Global Legacy president Les Woods. “You need TV. You need corporate buy-in for that.”
Staging Friday’s event will cost roughly $100,000, and without TV coverage Baxter says the bulk of his revenue will come from ticket sales.
Coaxing fight fans to buy tickets has bedevilled fight promoters since the 1950s, when TV networks first began broadcasting fights. But Baxter says he only needs to sell 70 per cent of the roughly 1,100 available seats to turn a profit, and that his other two businesses have helped drive sales.
“We weren’t going to wait around and let a fight not happen because we couldn’t get TV,” Baxter says.
“We can go back to how it used to be. If they paid (for tickets) before, why can’t they pay now? People used to listen to boxing on the radio.”