Gervonta Davis vs Ryan Garcia: Showtime Sports President Stephen Espinoza Explains How Unique Promotion Will Cater To Younger Audiences
Showtime’s Espinoza Believes Gervonta Davis vs Ryan Garcia Promotion Will Be A ‘Social Media First’ Promotion
After months of speculation, fight negotiations between Ryan Garcia (23-0, 19 KOs) and Gervonta Davis (28-0, 26 KOs) looked to have hit a brick wall with no new positive updates and the fighters seemingly looking elsewhere for their next bout, a much too familiar fate for boxing in recent years.
Last November though, fight fans finally got an announcement with Tank Davis and Garcia, alongside networks executives Stephen Espinoza (Showtime) and Joe Markowski (DAZN) announcing on social media that they had agreed on terms to meet in a Las Vegas super fight in April, with the rumoured date being April 15.
No official poster or details and warm-up fights for both did hinder excitement and rightly so as months later the contracts still hadn’t been signed and there were obvious issues to resolve that had seen public light. Last month, an announcement was finally official for the 136-pound pay-per-view catchweight clash on April 22 available on Showtime/DAZN PPV.
With a fight as big as this, a huge promotion that will capture the imagination of boxing fans around the world is expected and Espinoza, the president of Showtime Sports, explained to Fight Hub TV how all parties involved in the fight expect to deliver that in a unique way that better appeals to the boxer’s respective fanbases.
“This one even more so is going to be a social media promotion. Especially with those two who have among the top 2 social media followings in the sport.”
“Traditionally we would’ve said multi-city (press tour), you want to generate all this publicity in all these different areas. We don’t have to do a multi-city press tour to create content. Those guys are experts at creating content.”
“Given the age and demographics of their fanbase, this will be the first ‘social media first’ boxing promotion.”
“Instead of thinking about how many episodes of all access we’ll do, we’ll do a couple for sure, but more so how do we adapt what we’re doing to get maximum exposure on TikTok? Because that’s the demo that we can capture with these two fighters because they already have an audience there.”
Boxing has often been accused of not moving with the times but it appears that Tank vs Garcia could be one of the first fights to move into promotion fitting of 2023. Social media platforms will be the key instrument to push this fight which is expected to appeal to audiences that may not be traditional boxing fans but may have seen reels/clips of Gervonta Davis and Ryan Garcia on TikTok or Instagram.