Fury vs Whyte – Boxing Marketing in 2022

In case you’re living under a rock, I’m pretty sure that you have seen Tyson Fury’s spectacular uppercut knockout of Dillian Whyte last Saturday, in front of a record-breaking 94,000 at Wembley Stadium to defend his heavyweight titles. This was of course after Fury's ring walk with a chaotic yet brilliant mashup of The Notorious BIG's Juicy and Kings of Leon's Sex on Fire - after the classic boxing anthem Sweet Caroline and American Pie, which Fury has made his own in recent years; which got the crowd extremely excited for the bout, which ended in round six.

The question is, what made this fight have the highest attendance for a boxing fight ever in Europe and have so many PPV buys?

One of the main reasons could be put down to this being Tyson Fury’s first fight in the UK since 2018, in which his fight was only on the undercard after some years out of the ring due to personal issues – so the British boxing faithful have been starved of watching Tyson in his prime for a long time. And his opponent, Dillian Whyte, had been the mandatory challenger for his WBC title since 2017 and had been extremely frustrated for near enough five years.

The bout was dubbed by promoter Frank Warren and many hardcore boxing fans as the most anticipated British boxing fight ever, bigger than Frank Bruno vs Lennox Lewis, Carl Froch vs George Groves and Nigel Benn vs Chris Eubank. The only potential British fight that could have eclipsed this one would have been Fury against two-time world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua.

What makes the success both with global PPV buys and ticket sales more perplexing were Whyte’s tactics of promoting the fight, which was non-existent. This according to his team was because of the unfair purse split, as Tyson Fury received most of the initial share, and received the winner's bonus. People speculated that Whyte was attempting mind games, which his opponent has been notorious for, and some suggested it was a lack of belief or interest in the fight, but this played well into the marketing from Fury’s side.

Fury then took to his social media platforms to poke fun at his challenger, claiming that Whyte was scared and did not believe in his abilities to defeat ‘The Gypsy King’. Whyte proceeded to not attend the initial press conference, the media open workout and continue his radio silence on social media. Fury took advantage of this in the initial press conference where he was the only one to turn up, labelling his opponent with the nickname ‘Frillian White Knickers’, which then led BT Sport Boxing to take to Instagram to post a picture of his opponent in white knickers, to promote the fight and rile up the opposing side to break their silence.

BT Sport had to work with only one side of the fight for their initial marketing adverts, so placed Fury in the middle of a ring, with a throne to embody him being ‘King of the Ring’, surrounded by fire breathers – with the clever promotional tag line ‘No Hype Needed’ boasts both Fury’s popularity and sent a message to his opponent that his tactics were not working. It also sent the message that the fight did not need any further media promotion, as it sold itself, which is most likely true.

However, the silence from Whyte’s camp at the press conferences did slightly limit Fury’s usual antics. As the heavyweight star has been known for his antics at these events, such as dressing up as Batman in a press conference with Wladimir Klitschko, offering to have a body spar with Deontay Wilder and near enough calling every one of his opponents a ‘big dosser’ multiple times.

BT Sport Boxing’s YouTube and other social media accounts do a terrific job of promoting the fight before and after, with a plethora of exclusive content, which is mainly uncut behind-the-scenes content of what happened directly and before the fight in an almost documentary-style set of videos they release around the date of each Tyson Fury fight in recent memory, with this being no exception. This also covered Fury's comical yet surprisingly good rendition of American Pie after the fight had ended.

Their coverage also involved the sheer number of stars in attendance at the event, such as Rio Ferdinand, Daniel Kaluuya, Noel Gallagher, and Harry Hill just to name a few. They will have attracted several different audiences from the sporting, music, and entertainment industries respectiveThe fight attendance is sure to go down in history, and Fury has since announced that it was his last ever boxing fight, and he will be now retiring. This is quite contrary to what happened after the fight. Fury brought UFC heavyweight champion of the world Francis Ngannou into the ring, to promote their possible exhibition bout which would take place in 2023 to see who the better champion is, and whom they say will be then deemed the ‘Baddest motherfucker on the planet’.

Among the sceptics of the legitimacy of Fury’s retirement plans was Eddie Hearn, who claimed that there is no way that he would retire and called him a ‘bluff merchant’ as he has done this many times before. Boxing purists would not be too happy at Fury retiring claiming he is the best to ever lace up the gloves, and the best heavyweight of his generation, without first defeating the remaining two likely challengers for that title, the Ukrainian champion Oleksandr Usyk and fellow Brit Anthony Joshua, which would be deemed one of the biggest boxing fights to ever happen. But does Fury have anything left to prove? As he has fought and beaten both Klitschko and Deontay Wilder in their backyard and has won all the belts that there are to win.

What’s next for the Gypsy King?