Female Boxing at the 2012 London Games

I was reading this morning that today marks the two year countdown for the 2012 London Games.
When they announced that women's boxing would be an Olympic sport in 2012, I wondered if we would see a surge in interest in the sport.
Well the best way I know to track surges is internet searches.

So I typed in "women's boxing" and this is what I got...

women's boxing gloves
women's boxing shoes
women's boxing weight classes
women's boxing apparel
women's boxing gear

You'll note all of these results are for boxing equipment.
You don't see any female boxers coming up in results.

So I tried "female boxing"...

female boxing movies
female boxing knockouts
female boxing training
female boxing ko
female boxing male

Not so much equipment here as info.
But still no names coming up.

Then I just tried the terms "female boxing" vs "women's boxing".....

Still no names, and quite frankly pretty disappointing returns on the amount they are being searched.

So is female boxing really not catching on yet?

Well it looks like training equipment is ranking well, which leads me to believe that there are women out there looking to train.
So maybe what we are seeing now is a surge in "doers" and not "watchers".
But as far as the popularity of a sport goes, "watchers" are more important.
It's the watchers that determine if a sport makes money.
Imagine if we had one million people training for football, but only one hundred people watching it.
Football wouldn’t last long.

The US needs some amazing, charismatic figure to qualify for women's boxing at the 2012 Olympics to boost interest here.
And the world needs the same to attract viewers when the competition starts.

Although on the other side of the coin, Women's judo was first awarded medals at the 1992 Summer Olympics.
Do you know who took the gold for women's judo at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing?

Popularity is important, but it's not the only thing.




Female Boxing at the 2012 London Games, posted to http://womenboxing.blogspot.com/ on July 27th, 2010