Credit –  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lace_Up_Boxing_Gloves.jpg 

Opening Thoughts

There was a time when titans in the sports video gaming world, such as EA Sports, would spend significant time and effort releasing a boxing game every year. However, it’s been over a decade since an actual titan of the video gaming industry has attempted to make a boxing game, and with EA Sports moving into the realm of MMA and UFC – it feels like we are truly beyond the golden age of boxing games. 

But why have they taken such a dip in popularity over the last 20 years? Why has boxing gone from a once great sport respected in video gaming to a niche sport no major video game developer wants to go near?

Online Gaming Popularity

EA Sports invested a lot of money and time into boxing games throughout the early 2000s, including Knockout Kings and the Fight Night franchise, culminating in several titles, all selling as poorly as the last. Online gaming works as a great measuring stick for a game’s popularity. How many people are accessing the servers and facing off against each other, and is there a demand for a professional video gaming market?

All of these are valid questions, but they are a microcosm of what defines success in the modern gaming realm. Boxing games, simply put, did not have that popularity. On the contrary, there were gaming industries that were able to flourish once the internet started to open up the market. 

Every sector within the casino industry found a fresh audience online, ranging from the most notable casino games to niche games like baccarat. From a video console gaming perspective, even games like Grand Theft Auto, which fused the popularity of online casinos and the rise of online video console gaming, made a considerable profit by harnessing this potential. 

Although online baccarat was a standalone market to the might of GTA, it showed that video games were able to adapt to the rise of other online gambling ideas and broader innovations—the fact that boxing games couldn’t was one of many factors why they began fizzling into irrelevance during the late 2000s. 

Copyright Issues

Although there are distinct differences between boxing and MMA, the UFC, the premier organization within MMA, has all of its fighters and image rights under one company. This is a much simpler model from a copyright perspective, and it is much cheaper for EA Sports to make games with a raft of fighters available.

By the mid-2010s, the Mayweather-Pacquiao 2015 megafight secured purses for both fighters that exceeded $70 million. Both fighters had rival promoters, and with so many cross-border international promotional issues and image rights to contend with, boxing is a far messier sport for gaming companies to obtain full image rights.

A Dying Market

Recently, Undisputed became the first boxing game to be made in over a decade. While it received some good reviews, I found the gameplay to be quite sloppy. Honestly, the games from 15 years ago had a better feel to them—even with the recent updates. 

Its eye-watering price of over $100 didn’t do much to attract a casual audience, and while it’s far from the worst sports game ever made, it’s not going to ignite the interest in boxing video games.

EA Sports has so much money available that it can afford to make games that lose money. Boxing might be a dying market, but the market for UFC games is hardly booming either; it costs much less to make them. So, not only are combat sports a niche area, but video games are becoming increasingly niche, too; it’s a double whammy. 

Another elephant in the room is that boxing has been dying slowly since the early 21st century. While there have been snippets of fighters who have captured the public eye, it’s nothing compared to the golden age of the 1970s or the 1990s, when the sport was considered a mainstream staple, particularly in the US. 

Summary

Ultimately, it boils down to the three main points we touched on today. Boxing games and boxing as a sport are not as popular as they were in the 1990s; the games are too expensive to make, and there isn’t a market for them online. 

Sure, the sport might be going through a better period, with Saudi Arabia becoming the host nation for the biggest boxing matches the sport has put together over the last two years. 

However, with the UFC to contend with and a range of other factors resulting in boxing becoming a much more expensive sport to watch for a casual fan, it will take much more than a spike in popularity to save the boxing video gaming market. The sport needs a grand name, somebody of the ilk of Ali or Tyson, to help it rise from the ashes. That doesn’t look like it’s going to happen anytime soon.