The growth of Influencer-led sport, particularly YouTube Boxing, has been undeniable within this generation. For example, seeing KSI’s return to the ring after 3-years accumulate into global streaming network, DAZN’s top 5 most watched boxing events in history. Seeing the meteoric rise of high-prize fighter, Jake Paul strongly establish himself as a pivotal figure of discussion in the combat sports landscape. The appetite for influencer-led sport has been so impressionable that it’s captured the attention of many elite athletes, including Tyson Fury, Anthony Joshua, Lebron James and more!
The core value separating YouTube Boxers from traditional athletes is their ability to optimise their personal brands through content creation. For example, the reason much success has accrued from the influencer-led sports trend is due to the connection the next generation predominantly has with consuming content, which typically links to the formula that has elevated YouTube Boxing to where it is now.
You’ll have the opportunity to view content breakdowns across the YouTube Boxing community, which will cover transferable lessons that athletes from other sports can learn from when growing their own personal brands across digital.
Establish your brand identity
Notice how Faze begins the video by saying “Osu”. This is a part of Faze Sensei establishing his brand identity amongst his audience. Athletes can benefit by finding a way for their audience and new fans to recognise them. Whether via a hashtag, an action or another sound, it establishes your brand identity, which helps build a rapport with your audience that translates into impact through increased reach and engagement via online channels.
For example, this worked for the UFC creating different hashtags per event for MMA fans to engage with.
Consider different audiences you’re potentially enticing
Jake gave his interpretation of this fight, and there was a mistake that Jake made regarding his analysis but then Faze corrected it via his response. With YouTube Boxing being a relatively early trend across sports, the core audience isn’t likely so knowledgeable on the technicalities and rules. For this reason, include content produced via your personal brand to consider ways to better educate this demographic on components they’d find valuable.
For example, UFC fighter Francis Ngannou, on his IG channel, released a sub-series called #FitnesswithFrancis. Typically, Francis’ core content on this channel focuses on his lavish lifestyle, yet this video acquired over 1m views, demonstrating the new and current audiences’ appetite for this type of content.
Be an advocate for your sport
Faze mentioned how he believes live scoring should be a key part of boxing that needs to change to make the sport fairer and similar to other sports such as baseball, football and so forth. This became a hot topic in his comment section, and considering the impressionability of the younger generation; this can be transferred over to other social channels capturing the attention of parties responsible for making these decisions.
For example, German footballer Toni Kroos openly advocated disagreements he has with the FIFA 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Multiple football media touchpoints recognised this. Therefore, having this principle when producing content works well if delivered authentically.
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