What South Africa can learn from the British boxing model.

At this stage of the game there are kids in South Africa who have never in their lives seen a fight on the telly. Contrast this to the United Kingdom. They have minor fights on Channel five. Mega local cards on Sky, international superfights on Boxnation (that's right... The United Kingdom has a financially viable boxing network), and just recently, ITV has gotten themselves into the mix, attaining the rights to show the next Carl Frampton fight. Four competing channels mean the British fan has all his needs taken care of, and fighters can fight for the absolute best purses possible. Contrast this with a rather dire situation in South Africa, where boxing is almost exclusively shown on Supersport. Even the recently concluded Premier Boxing League, when it was on eTV, was banished to a late time slot, which would have hurt it's circulation figures. But if the current state of British boxing, where fights are held at the Wembley, and fights between two rather middling heavyweights like Tyson Fury and Dereck Chisora can sell out 10 000+ seat arenas is a story of success - and it certainly is - it is also a story of redemption from which we can learn. The first thing we have to understand though, is that even a viable South African boxing scene is never going to be as financially lucrative as a British one. The current, and future economic outlooks are too far apart to ever have realistic designs on matching up. What we can do, however is learn lessons from them and apply them to our reality. When looking at the current state of prosperity which British boxing finds itself in, it's a little easy to forget that not too long ago, there was no boxing on BBC, and that as recently as five or six years ago Sky was very strongly considering scrapping it's boxing program. What changed? Well, put simply, British boxing had an influx of personalities. Where they had basics only had Ricky Hatton and a fringe star in Amir Khan a few years ago, they now have an assortment of fighters who are, if not household names, then guys whose names have a sense of familiarity. Carl Froch has fought at the Wembley, but before that he's been selling out arenas since the Super Six. Frampton vs Quigg is a fight the average British boxing fan is itching to see get made. Groves, Johnson, Khan, Brook, Eubanks Jr., Fury. These are all big names, and equally important for a sport trying to pry itself out of the fringes, big personalities. In contrast, I honestly don't think the local scene has one transcendent persona. The guy who gets columns in the paper even when he isn't fighting. Daily Mail can tell you all about Amir Khan's love life and holidays. We don't have that equivalent. Of course, we don't even have that for the rugby and soccer stars, but those are huge sports. They can survive without one mention out of the sport pages. Boxing needs to be on the front page, the society pages... It needs to infiltrate public awareness. Without this, it becomes a difficult affair. What local boxing does absolutely need though, is privatisation. Government should be nowhere near the sport. Boxing SA should become a self run and governed body, with government only overseeing matters. Doing things like investigating qualifications of employees. But certainly not making the employments themselves. British Boxing board of Control don't negotiate TV deals on Matchroom's behalf. Good governance should be like good structural support... I shouldn't notice it's there.