Boxing is a long way from escaping the collective shadow of Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao.
Mayweather is retired (for now) and Pacquiao may be on the back end of his career, but they are still dominating the boxing conversation, at least in the digital universe. That’s what the latest numbers pertaining to social media suggest, according to Forbes, which drew its conclusion from data culled by ListenFirst, an analytics firm that tracks social media engagement.
As of Dec. 31, 2019, Mayweather’s total audience across his social media platforms measured 44.5 million. Likewise, on the same date, Pacquiao had a total audience of 20.6 million.
Compare that to Canelo Alvarez, arguably the most bankable star in the sport today. The Mexican star had a total audience of 11 million on his social media accounts as of Dec. 31. Gennadiy Golovkin tracked at 5.27 million.
According to Forbes, you have to look outside of boxing to find anyone who rivals Mayweather’s reach. UFC’s Conor McGregor had a social media fan base of 48.9 million on the last day of 2019.
Of course, both Mayweather and Pacquiao have seen their influence on social media diminish since their ballyhooed matchup in 2015.
ListenFirst’s Fan Growth score, which measures the increase of a person’s digital audience — Facebook page likes, new Twitter followers and more — shows that Pacquiao’s score dropped from 5.9 million in 2015 to 735,892 in 2019; similarly, Mayweather’s Fan Growth score dropped from 8.7 million in 2015 to 45,861 in 2019. Again, Mayweather is retired while Pacquiao is still active.
And yet, ListenFirst claims that a rematch between Mayweather and Pacquiao remains an attractive possibility, despite some moans and groans from hardcore boxing fans. ListenFirst’s Chief Marketing Officer Tracy David says that as far as mainstream appeal goes, there is no bigger fight in boxing despite the drop off in popularity for both fighters and the fact that Pacquiao’s team recently suggested that Mayweather-Pacquiao II isn’t realistic.
“…[T]hat Mayweather and Pacquiao both have more of a social media following than younger stars like Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin speaks to why there’s still so much anticipation around a potential rematch,” David told Forbes. “Even at a diminished popularity level, Manny and Floyd remain the biggest names in boxing, and a sequel to their 2015 fight would likely be a PPV draw, despite questions about how much each fighter has left in the tank.”