Leaders Sport Business Podcast

Leaders Sport Business Podcast


Boxing special: Lou DiBella, Joe Markowski, Stephen Espinoza, and Hannah Brown

February 21, 2020

Under the hood of the boxing business | Manchester City's FFP penalty | Fun With Balls and squash.


Boxing business heavyweights Lou DiBella, Joe Markowski, and Stephen Espinoza were joined by FuboTV Chief Strategy Officer for a spiky panel on the state of the boxing industry at the Leaders Sport Business Summit in New York in May (conversation starts at 13:56).



Harvard law graduate DiBella spent 11 years building HBO into America’s go-to boxing platform before becoming an independent boxing promoter in his own right with DiBella Entertainment in 2000.


Espinoza is President of Showtime Sports. He began his career while still at law school working for renowned sports agent Leigh Steinberg. He represented Oscar de la Hoya and Mike Tyson before becoming lead counsel for Golden Boy Promotions. Since joining Showtime in 2011, Espinoza has delivered the three highest grossing pay-per-view events in TV history : Mayweather Canelo in 2013; Mayweather Pacquiao in 2015; and Mayweather McGregor in 2017.


Markowski is EVP of North America for DAZN. He led the pure-play sports streaming service’s Japan business before moving to the US in 2018 to do similar in North America. In the US, DAZN has high profile agreements with Matchroom Boxing, Canelo, and Gennadiy Golovkin and has moved into the boxing market with a subscription model and a pugnacious advertising campaign declaring that pay-per-view is dead.


On the agenda:


- Is pay-par-view dead?


- What is DAZN's boxing model in the US and can it work?


- The general health of boxing in the US;


- Wilder vs Joshua and how it might work;