Former boxing champion Wladimir Klitschko has some ideas for his sport.
After retiring this year, perhaps to focus on his namesake consulting business, Klitschko participated in a Web Summit conversation and discussed how boxing can use technology to make itself more transparent and less prone to the controversies that often surround it. He focused on digitization.
“Obviously digitalization is the key for everything these days. If you do not digitalize yourself, you are going to be knocked out by your competitors,” Klitschko told James Dart, The Guardian’s sports editor.
Klitschko discussed a myriad of issues with seemingly constant entanglement between promoters, managers, broadcasters, and the various professional boxing organizations.
To help in the dilemma with controversial decisions and varying scorecards from judges, Klitschko suggested to Dart that boxing embrace digitization and data and implement a system whereby fans can vote on the winner of a given fight.
“How can you digitalize boxing, for example? Simple: transparency,” Klitschko said. “You have to put every person that is going to judge any of the fights on the screen with his face and, of course, his points, whatever he’s going to give during the competition. I believe that every fan has to have a chance to vote.
“We have mobile devices; we’re not watching sports — soccer or boxing — only on TV, so we watch it sometimes on our mobile device. Why do we not create an app where every fan can vote and say, well, Joe Schmoe won over Schmoe Joe?” he asked.
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Klitschko also advocated for a public display of information on broadcasts such as punches thrown, punches landed, and “miles (the) referee ran around the boxers.”
The path forward for boxing is an easy one, Klitschko thinks. He said that any organization that wants to go digital can — and once it does, “it’s very simple to get any information in this world that you want to.”
Perhaps Klitschko — as a business consultant — will be at the forefront of that effort.
In conversation with Wladimir Klitschko
Klitschko Ventures' Wladimir Klitschko: Often ranked among the greatest boxers the world has ever seen, this fireside will see Wladimir Klitschko discuss his transition from boxer to business leader, how his sports background has shaped his business career and his goals for the future.
Posted by Web Summit on Tuesday, November 7, 2017