New tickets website taking boxing by storm
Ticket selling just became easier for pro fighters!
Sponsors of Sam Eggington launch new platforms for selling tickets
Idris Virgo, Shakan Pitters, Brian Rose all using buymyfight.com
The website offers a service for pro-fighters (Boxing or MMA) to set themselves up for free, and upload their Fight event, ticket prices and stock availability. Fighters can then share their unique BMF (Buy My Fight) weblink on social media, share with close fans/friends/followers over email or message groups, so that tickets can be purchased online in a simplified process. It’s still a personal interaction from the fighter to the fan, except there’s no need for multiple platform messages, orders flooding in, repeated questions, tallying up orders and hunting for addresses, different payment offerings and no more chasing money. It’s now very seamless and easy.
Ryan Clark, co-founder of Buy My Fight, commented, "It’s a necessity [selling personal ticket allocations]. It’s business, plain and simple. It has to happen for the fighters to earn every penny they can from commission as well as build a favourable following for their respective promoters to recognise. The more popular they are, the more likely they’ll get more shows/fights and therefore it’s a snowball effect – career wise – of course the boxing ability speaks for itself too, but it all plays a part. Nothing will change that but what we can do is bring the process up to speed with modern methods.
"We are I guess, the replacement for the little black book."
Buy My Fight (BMF) doesn’t touch the fighters' money or inflate the prices astronomically, it goes direct to the fighter as it would normally. BMF also doesn’t touch the tickets, they too go direct to the fans from the fighters as usual, whether that’s via post or hand delivery to local fans. What many fans won’t realise is that Boxers or MMA stars pay for postage or even hand delivery costs (fuel, envelopes, time) out of their own pocket. BMF enables those costs to be covered by the fan just like any other purchase online that needs delivering.
“It would be embarrassing for a boxer to turn up on a fan's doorstep asking for a delivery fee, or sending a message back asking for P&P on top of the ticket price. They’d rather absorb the cost themselves, but that’s not right is it? We are all fans, we all respect what these guys and girls do, so the best way of supporting them is not just turning up to the fight, but buy directly supporting their income. A small fee is less than buying them a coffee. That’s a true fan isn’t it?” Added Ryan.
“So, what do we get our of it? The simple answer is, not a lot actually! We obviously do need to get something otherwise it wouldn’t work, it’s not charity (almost though!), but we charge a small booking fee of 3.5% which the ticket buyer pays, not the fighter.
"Putting that into perspective, £1.22 on a £35 ticket, or £2.10 on a £60 ticket doesn’t really register as a hardship. We’ve done our research on finding a workable amount and wanted to keep it as low as possible to barely cover costs. When we had the idea, we couldn’t find anyone else doing what we do, except for official venues and ticket outlets. They all charge much more, I mean much more. So actually, buying tickets directly from the fighters is not only cheaper but it's supporting them too. We are also open to the idea of working closer with promoters too.”
BMF sits neatly in between others in the business. The boxers or MMA fighters only have a certain allocation of tickets, and that would never change. When they’re gone, they’re gone. So it will never compete with the official ticket outlets or promoters who obviously have the lion share. It works well because it should help to sell the fighters tickets quicker, easier, and perhaps more of them too. It will help reduce the amount that get returned to the promoters. It’s a positive addition to both the promoter and venue to bring in revenue efficiently. The beauty of it is simply that it doesn’t replace anyone, except for the little black book and the inefficiencies that come with selling, between the actual fighter and the fan.
Former European, British and Commonwealth champion Sam Eggington was the first to use the platform for ticket sales, as he prepares for his fight with Liam Smith on March 30.
“It’s really nice to walk out the gym to a bunch of emails confirming tickets have been sold. I don’t have to do anything yet, just watch them drop into my mail box and wait” said Sam, 25 from Stourbridge.
“I’d usually go home, go through messages, answering everyone, writing in orders and sometimes I wouldn’t get addresses until weeks later. It’s so time-consuming but now, it’s so nice to relax and play with the kids instead. You wouldn’t understand how much of a relief this is!”
The professional fighter would see a personalised private dashboard, giving a functional report of who ordered what, when, their address and a smart clickable link to mark as dispatched. The fan would then receive a personalised notification of ‘Your tickets from Sam are on their way’. The dashboard also enables a neat label print option too which includes a tear off summary of what the order is.
“It’s not ground breaking stuff. It’s just modern technology being used correctly." said Ryan. "We have already started to help boxers add their teamwear ‘merch’ to the site too. If a fighter wants to show off their teamwear to the correct fanbase that’s buying their tickets, they’ll be offered it at checkout or simply available on their store page. It’s all about capturing the correct audience for the sale, and making it simple for the fan. In fact, we have something pretty good in store already – we’re linking up with Boxfit UK (BXF) who are widely known for semi-sponsoring professional fighters with equipment, Suzi Wong fight shorts and team wear. They will be able to link with us to design/create and fulfil the fighters teamwear. All for the benefit of the fighter,”
You can check out Boxfituk.com who designed and supply the popular camo wear for Tyson Fury.
BMF is built to work globally, in multiple currencies. Within it’s first two weeks of launching, Kerry Foley a light-heavyweight from Sydney, Australia had signed up, proving the international concept works. There are forward thinking plans already in place to take BMF further forward in exciting ways which will improve the process even more.
Give them a follow on social media to keep an eye on progress, and see who’s being added to #TeamBMF