Mr. Jenkins Alumona, Managing Director/CEO of Flykite Productions, promoters of GOtv Boxing Night, explains how the event has brought Nigerian boxing back from the dead

How well would you say GOtv Boxing Night has done in meeting the objectives for which it was conceived?

That we are having an African title fight at the fifth edition of GOtv Boxing Night is indicative of the fact that the growth of the sport, which is the objective of GOtv Boxing Night, is being realised. And were it not for time and other logistical considerations, we could easily have two African title fights on the same night. Over the last one year of GOtv Boxing Night we have produced boxing superstars locally. These include Olaide Fijabi, Skoro and Oto Joseph. We are still not where we aim to be, but we have made genuine progress. Amateur boxers are now keener to turn pro because GOtv Boxing Night offers them the platform to get fights on a regular basis, something that was no there before. By next year with the Olympics and world championships, we are certain to have many more amateur boxers turn pro and take the opportunity being provided by what we are doing. It is why

why we are having GOtv Boxing regularly. The MultiChoice representative, Martin Mabutho, told the press that the competition will hold regularly and assured that there would be five to six editions of it next year. I think the contribution of GOtv towards the development of boxing in Nigeria will rekindle the desire of other boxing promoters to come and promote more boxing competitions.

Given how good initiatives fizzle out in Nigeria, did you see GOtv Boxing Night lasting this long when you were starting out?

A: I sure did. When I spoke to the management of GOtv, headline sponsors of the competition, they told me they wanted a long-term relationship with Nigerian boxing. Their position was that it should be developmental in nature, with an intention to grow the sport. I also had the benefit of having interacted with boxers at the professional and amateur levels. That familiarity made it clear to me that there is a wide pool of amateur boxers seeking opportunity to turn pro, but were being held back by a paucity of fights. Do not forget that I was a sports journalist and I covered boxing early in my career. GOtv Boxing Night was conceived to by GOtv to give back to its large number of subscribers and help grow the sport in Nigeria, just as they want to contribute to the growth of the country in general.

Initiatives like this gulp a lot of money. Can an investor in this type of project make money from what he has invested?

Why not? But you must have a solid plan and a solid team to recoup your investment down the line. GOtv is already recouping its investments because the public is starting to associate it with professional boxing. This also extends to the continent, where the event is shown live in 47 countries. When people think of professional boxing now, they think of GOtv. So they are starting to recoup their investments. The GOtv brand is already benefitting from that relationship. For us at Flykyte Productions, we are satisfied that our efforts are being rewarded and people are appreciating what we are doing. Financially, we are of the belief that as the sport grows, we can get more people on board beyond GOtv and also to partner with GOtv and then, perhaps, we may have our financial compensation or benefits.

What did you think you needed to change when you were kicking off?

We saw a dire lack of organisation. If you are putting something live on the television, the quality has to be high in terms of organisation, getting the logistics right, including the quality of the ring, refereeing, etc. We also saw that the Nigerian Boxing Board of Control needed to raise standards in terms of training the referees. Successfully confronting these challenges has raised standards. Another problem we identified was the venue for the competition. The Indoor Sports Hall of the National Stadium, where we use hadn’t been used for a long time. So, we needed to get the place ready to the level we wanted. Then, we saw that the lights in the arena weren’t functioning properly, which we couldn’t blame the stadium management for because they hadn’t been used for a long time. What we did was to get good lightning. The boxers also provided a challenge. We saw that some had become rusty because they hadn’t fought for a long time. But we got around those challenges and we are still in the process of raising a new breed of pro boxers from the amateur ranks.

Some of them made their pro debuts at GOtv Boxing Night. Fijabi, Eribo and Otto Joseph are examples.

The challenges will always be there but we are happy that we have been improving on quality. For instance we intend to make the next competition on Boxing Day a family-friendly event. We expect parents to come with their kids and they are assured of maximum security, which has always top-notch at every edition of the boxing competition.

We take security very seriously and thankfully, one of our partners is the leading private security company in Nigeria. Also, we have gifts for all the kids coming to watch the boxing competition. We look forward to having a great evening of fun and sport.   We always arrange, our own power sources other than that provided by the stadium management.

As part of your developmental approach, are there plans to invest in training facilities for the boxers?

I can say for certain that Flykite Productions has a plan to provide training facilities for boxers as a means of encouraging them. We don’t expect the sponsors to necessarily do that, but GOtv might be interested in contributing to such cause anyway. But I don’t think it is incumbent upon GOtv to do so because the boxers belong to different camps and I know they have training facilities in their various camps. It’s professional boxing and the boxers themselves are professionals, who know they have to take their training very seriously through whatever means they can.

Flykite has financially assisted ex-boxers and one wonders what that is about since the focus is on active.

It is obvious that some of the retired boxing heroes need help and that is why we honour those who have attended the competition by giving them a percentage of the gate-takings. We are grateful to the Chairman of MultiChoice, Mr. Adewunmi Ogunsanya, for his support. He can be rightly described as the number one supporter of boxing in Nigeria. He also provided a trophy, along with cash prize of N1million for the best boxer of the night.

The prize money has been increased to N1.5million and that is what will be giving out on Boxing Day. It is just to help the boxers.

Big sums are spent in the organisation of this event, yet you charge so little at the gate. Why?

It is because we want to grow the sport and bring back the fans. The fact that we’re in the fifth  edition is some encouragement. We do not want to scare the average boxing fan away by charging heavily. People pay N200 for the regular tickets but they get gifts, if they come early, worth more than five times the amount they pay to get in. The people who come to the Vip section pay N1000 and get gift items that are worth double if not triple of such. We we are not unaware of that, but we think we need to grow the sport gradually to the stage where we can now charge something at par with the value of entertainment they get.   You attend with N200 and get a decoder worth N5000. That’s part of it; it’s part of growing the sport and that’s why I said at the start that GOtv takes a developmental attitude towards the sport of boxing and they underwrite the losses in terms of what the gate takings are.