Joe Setley on Building and Engaging a Worldwide Boxing Fan Base for Top Rank Boxing

@njh287; www.dsmsports.net
On episode 275 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, Neil
chatted with Joe Setley, Senior Director, Social Media and Content
Strategy for Top Rank Boxing.
What follows is a collection of snippets from the podcast. To hear the
full interview and more, check out the podcast on all podcast
platforms and at www.dsmsports.net.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 275: Joe Setley

Joe’s Career Path
“There's a lot of career stops along the way for good and for bad. It's been
a long journey to get here. But I would say everything started at the
University of Miami. I went there in late 2013 to study marketing. When I
started there, I don't think I knew exactly what I was looking to do. I
wanted to do something in sports, I think the dream at the time was Nike.
I started to do some internships with the athletic program. I got to work
with the marketing team. I was rolling t-shirts, I was picking fans for
giveaways, I was a milkshake mascot running around the outfield of
baseball games — that was a little hot for me in the Miami weather. Next
semester I jumped over to their digital strategy team and worked on their
football team's game days.

“I ran the Snapchat account, helped manage the website on game
days, and that all kind of piled together to give me an opportunity to
work for the LA Galaxy straight out of college. I graduated, flew home
to Pennsylvania, drove straight across the country and was there for
the LA Galaxy's 2017 season. The biggest part of my responsibility
was running LA Galaxy II social media. So for those who don't know
what LA Galaxy II is basically like the minor league baseball team [for
the Galaxy], their farm system team. So I would run everything from
their Twitter, their Instagram, their Facebook, and it was my first
opportunity to get hands-on experience of running a team's social
media accounts and then learning from the team that was running the
LA Galaxy main proper account.

“From there, I decided that near the end of the season, I needed to
look for a full-time job. LA is not cheap, notoriously, and I was Uber
driving on the side — it was a lot of hours, but it was definitely worth
it to start the career. I jumped over to the UFC, where I started as
social media coordinator, and then transitioned about two years later
into senior manager. Most of the time I was there, I was running
every platform for the main at UFC handles, we had team members
that were running other accounts like at UFC Canada or Español, but
when it came to the the main 25 million follower Instagram account,
that was me and Twitter and Facebook as well. It was an amazing
time.

“But towards the end of the pandemic, I decided I wanted to try
something new. I had to go home to be part of the Philadelphia 76ers.
So I went home and was there for the end of the Ben Simmons era,
which was a fun time to be running the social accounts there. But I
quickly pivoted back into combat sports, I kind of missed that flow,
and I didn't realize it at the time, but I missed living in Vegas. So I
came back to Vegas to work with Top Rank, and I've been here for
almost three years now, started as a senior director of social media,
and then have now pivoted into that head of content strategy role.”

On the content operation setup for Top Rank Boxing
“We're divided into two portions. So there's myself and then there's
the head of creative. He oversees the production and the creative arm
while I oversee more of the content strategy and the social media arm.
So under the social media team, I believe there are seven of us now
and then on the production side, there are probably 5 or 6, but then
they do outsource for events. They bring in freelance video editors
and videographers to shoot events.”

On adapting to the rapidly changing social media and being the young
guy on staff
“I think I've been blessed to work with organizations that have really been
willing to be on the forefront of apps where it's like, Oh, TikTok's come
out, like, let's try it. Top Rank has built a giant audience on WhatsApp
now, that launched last year. It's like we've been willing to kind of just
jump on these trends. I think there is probably a graveyard of accounts
that I've launched over my time at different places that are in that little
part of the Excel sheet that just say account no longer in use. But I think
that's really where I've had a lot of buy-in from executives and my bosses
in the past, and now where it's really given us the opportunity to say
What's the worst thing that happens? The app's not going to succeed.

“Going back to that WhatsApp example for Top Rank, we have over 4
million followers on WhatsApp. That's 20% of our audience that we
now have.. That account has been active since June last year, so
there's no reason not to take that risk. Same with the UFC. We
launched the TikTok account and I think it was in the first 50 days we
had a million followers on it. Like, there's no real reason not to
embrace the kind of new apps because again, worst case, you discard
it. But take that chance and hopefully you're going to get lucky a
couple times and really build be an industry leader for a platform that
is just getting started.”

On evolving from the young guy on staff to leading the young guys on
staff
“I think it almost just ties into exactly what you said is I used to be
that 22-year-old, so I trust those 22-year-olds. I know that they know
things that I no longer know. There are trends like the ‘What's up
brother’ [trend]; it was a month and a half ago that I'm like, I don't
exactly understand why this is good, but when our coordinator is like,
we should do this trend, I'm going to say, Hell yeah, brother. There's
no reason not to try new things, as long as it's not alienating our fan
base and it's within our voice, I think it's worth the shot.”

On trying new platforms and allocating content for them
“It's a lot of you're just trying to use content that's from other platforms at
the beginning, because you're not really sure what's going to stick. So at
the beginning you’re not creating as much original content for it, which I
think allows you to be able to sneak more of it in. Like, let's say
WhatsApp; it's like, Oh, we don't have time to create original WhatsApp
content at the start of the launch, but it's, Oh, we make stuff for
Instagram that fits the dimensions and the goals of this platform, we have
stuff from Twitter. So it's bringing in different content from other places
where it's a lot more just programing it instead of original content.

“I think TikTok was probably the one that definitely took a lot more
time and energy. And I think to your point, I was still younger and full
of energy and in love with TikTok at the time, so I was fine spending
an extra three hours making TikToks in my house after work because
I just wanted to see what I could do with the app.”

On the content sources and areas for Top Rank Boxing
“I would say we have a few avenues. We have a social graphic designer just
dedicated to the social media team who does I would say 85% of what you see
in terms of graphics on the channel. We have an agency that does all of our
posters separately, but we have then one dedicated guy to creating content for
the channels. When it comes to YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, from our
production team we request roughly, I would say 15 to 20 videos a week that
are like, We need top five of this or we need an Instagram reel of that. So I
would say those two things are core content and then everything else I kind of
encourage the social media team on like, Hey, the graphics team is going to
knock out these, the production team's going to really knock out the meat and
potatoes, but when it comes to like the TikTok trends and the more creative
stuff like this is on you guys.

“Like I know my team this week is in Newark and they sent the group,
I think, three different TikTok references of like, Hey, we're going to
try to shoot these with athletes this week. So it really comes down to
stuff like that. It's like more of this fun stuff. It's like, Hey, we're the
ones with the bandwidth and we're the ones with the vision, let's go
execute it.”

Shooting content with fighters
“We're usually shooting content with [fighters] on Fight Week and
they're all cutting weight, so I would say all their patience is equal at
that time. There maybe is a handful of fighters who aren't pro-social,
but they are very far and few between. So I would say 99% of the time,
if we need something, we can get it from these guys. We're very lucky
with a really great roster that kind of believes in what we're doing,
and I think they've been able to see that their social numbers have
grown alongside ours. So I think they know what we're doing is
working.”

On the content plan for fights once they get announced
“It all depends. I mean, again, like you mentioned in some of the questions, do we have a
presser that's going to announce it? How soon can we get access to the athletes? When do
tickets get on sale? What is the event schedule of the week? So there are so many variables
that I feel like usually it's all a case by case basis. We do have for the social team event
leads. So whoever's usually the more senior manager or director that's on-site is the one
that's kind of in charge of making sure when it comes to fight week, everything's getting
executed. They're the one that's coming up with the TikToks, making sure photos are
ready, making sure sponsor executions are hit. So we've done a good job of really
empowering certain team members when it comes to them being on the ground where it
allows, instead of everyone needing to be really hyper-focused on the event, it’s like you
give one person that responsibility of making it their own. Because to your point, I think
we have five straight weeks of events; like, it's impossible for all of us to keep all of them on
the same radar where it's if we give, Hey, you're going to this event, so you're going to kind
of oversee this part of it makes it a lot easier to split that workload.”

“If it's in the US, like that's where Top Rank is doing everything then, from building
fight schedules to hosting the press conferences. If it's international, we have a
little bit less say, it's more of a co-promotion where we're working with promoters
from that country or that city. Then when it comes to those internationals, it's like
how many athletes of ours are on the card and what is that athlete's status? Is he a
champion? Like, Naoya Inoue is a great example, he's our champion who's from
Japan. So when we go out there, he's probably our, if not one, he's our number two
social performer. So it's like, Hey, we're going to make sure we're leaning all into
this, even though he's fighting at 4 a.m. in Vegas. We might have a smaller show
where it's a non-champion that's fighting in London, let's say; like, we're definitely
going to cover it and we're going to put a lot of coverage behind it, but we're not
going to devote as many resources. So it's it's really a balance of making sure that
we're doing right by the athlete, but then also doing right in terms of not spending
a ton of money sending ten team members out for an event that may not perform
as well when we're technically not the lead promoter.”

On the business objectives with social media for combat sports with global reach
like UFC and Top Rank Boxing
“I would say tune-in is probably the largest. Growing our athletes is very large as
well, which goes along with that engagement. Then really just providing content for
those specific countries and regions like you mentioned. Like, we have a massive
audience on both Facebook and YouTube from Filipino audiences. Obviously, we
used to promote Manny Pacquiao, so we have, I think between our Facebook and
our YouTube, we probably have 3 million subscribers from the Philippines. So
anytime that we have a Filipino fighter fighting, making sure that we are actively
promoting that on those channels. We just launched last year a more dedicated
approach to our Hispanic channels. So previous to, I think, 2023, all we had was a
Twitter account. But now we have a Facebook account, we have a WhatsApp
account, we have an Instagram account, and as of I think on Monday, we have 2.7
million followers on our Hispanic accounts.

“So again, it's boxing. There's a massive Hispanic audience. When we
looked at TV ratings, we rate really highly with Hispanic audiences.
On our main Facebook page, I believe the number one city where we
have followers from is Mexico City, but we weren't really meeting
them where they were. All of our content was in English except for a
Twitter account. So we really decided to dedicate a lot more effort into
meeting these fans. Potentially another language will come down the
pipeline in 2024 or 25, but we've seen a massive success in reaching
these fans, using language as the main component.”

“I think it's more of just integrating in the tune-in [messaging] naturally.
It's Oh, let's add a line to the copy, it's Let's add a little bug in the corner.
For YouTube, every video has a pop-up that pops up like five times that
has the tune-in info, so we're definitely not trying to shove it down their
throats, but more just meet them where they are and just kind of have it
more as a subtle reference. Because to your point, again, we mainly are
focused on promoting tune-in on ESPN and we have a global audience.
So probably, I don't know the percentage off the top of my head, but a
large part of our audience does not have access to ESPN, so we don't
want to make it like flashing graphics across all the screens, but we just
want to make sure that we're doing our best as a partner at ESPN to
make sure that we're putting the message out there as much as possible.”

“We have deals with a bunch of broadcasters around the globe, most
notably with Sky Sports. We actually produce the international feed. We
have Crystina Poncher, who is one of our reporters and hosts, along with
usually an interchanging cast for her other counterpart for the
announcing team, it's been a lot of our young prospects lately. So we've
had Nico Ali Walsh, Richard Torrez, Xander Zayas, so a lot of these guys
who are hopefully going to be the next face of boxing being part of these
international broadcasts, they're getting exposed to basically the rest of
the world. Then we also, for major events, we stream the card on our
Facebook and YouTube channel to countries that we haven't sold the
rights to. So mainly Philippines and Indonesia, and some of those events,
we get to like a million fans that are watching across the globe just on our
Facebook and YouTube page.”

On targeting fans of fighters, specific boxers, and Top Rank Boxing
“That was actually a really large reason why we launched the Spanish
Facebook and WhatsApp and Instagram pages;, especially for that
market, we wanted to have an account that could be more dedicated
and focused to them. So we have a large Puerto Rican audience, we do
a boxing event at MSG every Puerto Rican Day weekend, so we wanted
to create an account that was more dedicated to promoting our
Hispanic champions, our Mexican champions, our Puerto Rican
champions, and really making sure that like where the main account
can't do 30 posts about them a day, this account could. So hopefully
the Spanish account is a start of a larger, more global and regionalized.

“You see it at the UFC where when I was there and they still do. They
have a Canada page, a UK page, a Eurasia page, and a Brazil and an
Australia page. They have all those to provide that regional focus, and I
think eventually I hope that's that's where we get going to as well. But
right now we're starting with that Spanish page and then we're focusing, I
would say on a different demo, where we did audience surveys over the
last year and really tried to identify what a fan of Top Rank is, and we
learned that tons of people love boxing, but they don't all know the rules
of boxing. And just inside the ring and outside there are things like purse
bids or co-promotions or what makes a ten-eight round and things like
that; it's not the easiest to find resources of how to learn these things. So
we're spending an effort this year to launch a series called Boxing 101 that
provides these educational points for everyone.

“From a casual fan to a hardcore fan, we want to be able to provide a
resource even just for the hardcore fans. They are arguing with their
friend, they want to be like, See on Top Rank's website, they define
this as that. So we're trying to really help educate the fans because I
think boxing has become, if you know it, you know it, but sometimes
it's a little harder to get into that inner audience base.”

About promoting Top Rank fighters and fights along with the sport of boxing overall
“That's something that our production team and my boss, Morgan Dewan, has been
focused on is creating those crossover athlete content pieces where we have a show
called One More Round that airs on ESPN and ESPN Plus, where it's fans of boxing,
but they're huge global athletes or celebrities. We bring them into the Top Rank
office and we put on a fight for them that I think most of them haven't seen this fight
or one of them hasn't. Like, our pilot episode was Karl-Anthony Towns, who was a
big boxing fan, and Taurean Prince, who was his teammate on the Minnesota
Timberwolves, and they watched Hagler-Hearns, which is arguably the greatest
boxing event ever. So they watched it and it gave fans like a new perspective to
watch it and see it through these celebrities' eyes, and has Karl-Anthony Towns
bringing in his audience as well. We've had a couple other episodes. We have some
big ones on the way with Michael Vick and LeSean McCoy, and just bringing in this
other audience.

“We have another show that we did with Chad Ochocinco last year for
one of Shakur's fights (Shakur Stevenson), where he trained with
Shakur and he interviewed him. So bringing in these other athletes
from these other walks of life to almost provide a comparison or
reaction and bring in their fan bases as well to the sport of boxing.”

On working with the athletes to produce content, including when fighters have
their own individual productions going on
“We are blessed with an amazing amount of access. Our Head of Production
and Creative, Alex Adeyanju, oversees all of our shoulder programing and we're
in there with every camp, we are shooting features with all these guys for
basically every high-profile event. I don't think there's an athlete that we are
ever starving for content from. I think they all realize that the benefit of being
on Top Rank, having our social platforms, having 21 million followers, having
the backing of ESPN — I think they all realize that that is a benefit for them,
and that there's no reason — Have your own exclusive content, and we help
coach our athletes on building their brands on social media. But I think that
they know that they can do both, and that there's only benefits to really leaning
in on the promotion.”

On how a boxer’s performance or expected performance affects Top
Rank’s content strategy around them
“In my mind, all of our guys can be a world champion, and I always try to
promote and position them that way. I think if we start promoting these
guys as just like more of an attraction it kind of takes away from a little
bit of; again, Top Rank is since 1966, we've been the longest boxing
promoter around that exists today. I don't think we want to — no offense
to the Jake Pauls, but more where he started; like, we want to make sure
that we are presenting them as future world champions like Jake is now
presenting himself as. We don't really want to be like, Oh, we're just using
him for the social numbers. I think then that kind of takes you on a weird
path.”

“I think we're always full steam behind our athletes, and the good and
the bad thing of boxing is you kind of lose a couple in a row. Things
change in terms of where you're placed on the card and things like
that, and that almost gives us another sign; like, if fighter A was main
eventing and now he's the opening of the card, you kind of know, like,
Oh, let's change the way we're talking about them, but you kind of just
have to dial it around the way that the cards are built, I would say.”

How the influencer boxing events affect Top Rank and professional
elite boxing
“I would say, and this is more my personal opinion, I applaud Jake
Paul. I mean, that takes a lot of guts to really dedicate yourself to a
sport, and I know he's not always fighting boxers, like he's fighting
Mike Perry now, but as someone that worked in the UFC, Mike
Perry's a scary dude. So I think it only provides more eyeballs to the
sport, and I give him credit, he definitely is bringing more eyeballs to
the sport, but he's also — I think he's doing it the right way. We'll see
how far that goes, but I appreciate it personally.”

On covering events on social (at UFC and, less so, at Top Rank) when
they are/are not behind the pay-per-view paywall
“I mean, it's a dance. I would say there's a fine line on both strategies
where Top Rank, obviously you have the power in theory to show the
whole fight on social, but you obviously, again, you're being a good
partner with ESPN where you want to be driving tune in. For UFC,
obviously, everyone would always want us to post the finishes, but
those again fall behind that pay-per-view paywall, so it was always
tricky.

“I think a lot for UFC more was building up to the fight, a lot more
getting that coverage in the locker room, getting the walkouts, the
rivalries, [whereas] Top Rank — we still do that stuff, but we can
definitely lean more in terms of our content on the timeline for
Instagram, for example, on the platforms itself. Like, we can show this
finish or that finish, and I think it's really helped our athletes grow. You
can see it when athletes are on ESPN proper versus ESPN Plus, you can
see how much their following grows more because [when] they're not
on Plus they are in front of anyone that's basically in a sports bar that
night or watching it on their TVs. So I think, more than us, it's really
benefited our athletes who have been able to get this massive exposure
of not being stuck behind that pay-per-view paywall.”

“ I think Dana [White] has the example of you go to any sporting
event, like a basketball game and it’s a great game, LeBron and Kobe
are on the court, but there's a brawl that breaks out in the crowd —
you're going to go watch that. So it has that benefit of Top Rank of
being on in these bars, like, you're there to watch some other sport
but there's a fight on, you're going to turn to look at the fight.”

On how Top Rank stokes engagement on social media, with the fight
decisions and other needle-moving tactics
“So it mostly depends if it's pro or con for our athlete. If our athlete
just won a controversial decision, we're not going to be like, ‘Did you
agree with this’? because that is opening basically our fans to have a
platform to complain about them thinking our athlete lost. But if we
felt like we were on the wrong end of the decision, we will definitely
lean into that. I forget who told me this when I was learning, I was
either at UFC or Top Rank, it’s like We're not in charge of the judges,
we're not in charge of the commission.

“At the end of the day, it's not a bad look on us if we share a highlight
that is like not poking fun of it but — there was one time that a ref
made a fighter get a haircut in the middle of the fight. We're going to
share that because it's crazy. But if we were running the commission
or the judges or the ref [that’s] probably not the best look that we'd be
showcasing giving a fighter a haircut in the middle of the fight. So it's
that delicate balance of who we're upsetting and what's beneficial to
us.”

“I think you hit there to the difference between Top Rank and the
UFC, where UFC can’t be a homer for any of the athletes because they
are a league, they're promoting both fighters. We're more just a
promotion where we are promoting, most of the time, either the A or
the B side, we're not always promoting both. So when it's a fight
where we don't have promotional contracts with both guys, we can
hammer home our guy. Like this weekend, Shakur [Stevenson] is
fighting Artem [Harutyunyan] and Shakur is the only one of those two
that is our guy, so we're going to go hard for Shakur the whole night.
Same with Keyshawn Davis. But in another fight, we have O'Shaquie
Foster fighting Robson Conceicao. Both those guys are ours, [o] we to
make sure that we're staying more down the line on that fight.”

“Fans definitely have their favorite promoters, and you can see it in
the comments where some people will be defending Top Rank, some
people will be saying that Matchroom or PBC does things better. I
wouldn't say that we're actively really taking note of the other
promoters' content on a daily basis. I try to keep my view a lot more
wide of looking at what NBA teams are doing, whwat NFL teams are
doing. But definitely in terms of how they do some things like press
conferences and weigh-ins and how they present that stuff that is
unique to boxing, we definitely take a closer look.”

“Something that [Top Rank] really does well is we have boxing footage since
1966. So something that we made a very strong push and effort on is
showcasing that vault. We now have a Facebook page that's called Top Rank
The Vault that has over 600,000 followers. It’s not dedicated to promoting
upcoming fights, it's just you want to watch an old Muhammad Ali fight, you
come here. You want to watch an old Marvin Hagler fight, you can come here.
And bringing that as well onto our main accounts, but it's more of when we
have off-weeks. It's like, Hey, we have an off-week, let's bring back the best
knockouts of Butterbean, or let's bring back the best of the Sugar Ray Leonard
era. It's bringing back that kind of content that separates us, because none of
these other promoters have that deep of a library. We have Floyd
[Mayweather], we have Manny [Pacquiao], we have Hagler, Hearns, Ali — like
anyone that has ever been a legend in boxing at some point has come through
the Top Rank doors.”

On the content that performs well for Top Rank’s social
“It's definitely the knockouts, but also just something that you can tell a
story behind. So we had over this last weekend, Nico Ali Walsh, who's the
grandson of Muhammad Ali, fought, and after the fourth round, he
separated his shoulder. We put out basically footage of him trying to
punch his shoulder back in or jump and get back in and, the caption
[was] like ‘He battled two rounds with a separated shoulder,’ and I think
across platforms it's at 10 million views. So the knockouts are great, but
also these weird moments in boxing, like the haircut, separated shoulder,
whenever a fighter bites another fighter — like these weird moments that
you don't see every day are what really break through the noise.”

How Top Rank drives sponsorship revenue through social media content
“I mean, sponsored content is definitely a massive part of what we do. A lot of
things we're trying to create are things that we're like, Oh, like we can have a
workout content series and we can talk to our, CRO and be like, Hey, this would
be beautiful to have Bodyarmor or for someone integrated. We do create
content where there's that avenue. But a large majority of what I focus on is
through programmatic ads on YouTube, like the ads that pop up before the
video or in the middle of the video or Facebook as well. Focusing on that kind
of content is where we really honed in when I was at the UFC. I think in my last
year we made over eight figures in revenue on our Facebook page alone in a
year. So bringing that into Top Rank and really trying to focus on building
revenue on Facebook and creating the secondary Facebook pages, like the
Spanish account and the vault page, have been also amazing for that.

“But then YouTube as well, like how can we create more content? How can
we get more resources to build more content to really game the system and
really just, again, create more things that these fans want? But I would say at
the end of the day we have an amazing president of our organization, Todd
duBoef who, revenue or not, has really been a massive supporter of our
content overall. He was the second person I interviewed with, and he didn't
want us to be the best boxing promoter on social, he wanted us to be the best
top organization on social out of any sporting organization. And he's been
able to give us that belief, that expertise and the resources to make it happen.
So over the last two and a half years, our numbers have gone through the
roof, and it's really all thanks to him being able to just be an advocate for us
when he's speaking with other members of the executives, when he's talking
to us, working with him to really build out what our social strategy is.

“The same even goes for Bob Arum. At 98 years old, I would say he
probably doesn't know as much about social as Todd, but he was the one
who was really a large advocate for dedicating resources to our athletes.
So now we have one of the members of our team, Maddie Dobbins, who
does master classes with our athletes. She offers basically every athlete. I
think she's talked to them all at this point, a 30-minute class where she'll
go over, Hey, this is what you're doing on the social media pages, this is
what we're seeing that could be improved, this is where we see growth
and really just helping these guys make it to the next level. Because Bob
sees it as like if these athletes aren't growing, we're not growing — and I
completely agree. So, revenue aside, we've been blessed with executives
that have really just put a ton of resources and belief into our team, which
has been amazing to continue this journey.”

What is the nature of fans when it comes to pugilistic sports; i.e. is
there crossover between fans of MMA and Boxing?
“Large crossover, I would say on major events, but on a day-to-day
there's not. And even in boxing, I think we mentioned before, there
are definitely fans who prefer certain promoters to other promoters.
So I would say that there's a lot of segmentation that goes on.”

Talk about how the nature of this fragmented boxing world kind of
affects strategy, if at all
“At the end of the day, our goal is to promote ESPN and get the
audience to fall in love with our athletes, When it comes to other
promoters, we definitely stay away. But we'll occasionally insert
fighters fighting, if we have a really good fight with them, let's put it
on our YouTube account that week just to more just steal eyeballs
than promote their event. But that's about the limit that we kind of
acknowledge those other events happening on our social accounts.”

Back to Joe’s time at Miami — Most memorable game, most memorable
marketing promotion, and most memorable piece of content that Joe worked
on
“Most memorable game is I worked a University of Miami versus Clemson
football game, and we were losing by so much in the first half that the entire
marketing intern team was allowed to leave at halftime because there were no
fans that wanted to do activations anymore. Most memorable marketing
promotion was definitely when I was a milkshake and I had to race around the
field. At the beginning, basically the races were pre-scripted, and when I started
becoming an intern, I said, ‘If I'm racing as a milkshake, I'm racing to win every
night.’ So it really changed the competitive nature, and by week two, everyone
was full-out dead sprinting because we didn't want to be the one that finished
last.

“And most memorable piece of content — when I was working for the
football team running their Snapchat account, over Christmas break
or Thanksgiving break, I waited in New York to get Snapchat
Spectacles at like the vending machine; I waited for eight hours in the
freezing cold, but then used those for the next five events just
capturing as much content as I could. Very much a fad product, but it
was really fun to be able to be one of the first organizations that were
using them for a team sports perspective.”

The lesson or story or experience from Joe’s time with the UFC that
most sticks with him
“I think it was just traveling around the world. There was one stretch
where I traveled five straight weeks and didn't go home. When I was
at UFC I think I was on the road an average of two of every five weeks,
so you get really close with the people that you're working with. You
either learn to love them or hate them, and I learned to really love the
team that I would travel with on a weekly basis. So you definitely miss
just that, being 22, nothing in your bank account, but it really doesn't
matter because you're traveling the world creating content.”

What do the hours, days, and weeks look like after a fight gets set?
“I ask a lot of questions. It's me ironing out — do we have a presser?
How soon until launch? What are we thinking on creative? Are we
creating a promo to launch this? It's working with — we have a small
leadership team between our marketing content arms, and it would
be a lot of immediately jumping on a call and trying to iron out all the
details of what happens from now. I try to, whenever I can, gather as
much information as I can before we make that next step. So what's
been definitely the next two hours of making a lot of phone calls and a
lot of WhatsApp messages to the team…

“[The allocation of focus and resources] really depends on the card.
This week coming up in Newark we have Shakur Stevenson, who is a
bona fide pound-for-pound star, [we’re] definitely going to focus on
him. But we have an amazing title fight underneath of Jackie Foster
versus Robson Conceicao. And underneath that we have these two
guys who will be probably the next big stars of boxing, Keyshawn
Davis and Abdullah Mason in separate bouts. So it is definitely
Shakur, Shakur Shakur, but hey, there's this amazing title fight. And if
you want to watch the future of boxing, you need to tune in right at
the start of when we go live on ESPN. You don't want to wait to, you
want to be at 830 Eastern watching on ESPN.”

Joe is in charge of the world of boxing and gets to make one change —
what does he do?
“Make it easier for collaboration between promoters. I think there are
a lot of big fights that can be made, and I think we've seen a lot of
them happen over the last two years, especially with Fury-Usyk
happening and now a rematch with Fury-Usky. I think there are a lot
of these big fights that are just out of reach, and I think if there was a
little bit more collaboration between the promoters, we could really
see some amazing stuff. I think boxing is heading in that direction
already, but I would give it a little bit more of a little push.”

The best meal to get in Vegas and where to get
it? And then a little bonus question. And tell us
whether fighters have epic cheat meals after
fights
“So Vegas meal, if I'm just trying to eat
something very unhealthy - Roberto's, which is
like the local chain, similar to Taco Bell. If I'm
trying to go out for a nice dinner, I love
Momofuku at the Cosmo. And I don't think
fighters' epic cheat meals exist as much
anymore, I think everyone has now has a
nutritionist and they want their bodies now to
be in tip top shape. I don't think everyone's
going out for pasta and pizza right after
anymore. It's a lot more calculated, I would say,
these days.”

The boxer[s] whose social media we should all go check out today and
why
“I'll give you two. So Richard Torrez (@theerichardtorrez), who is a
rising heavyweight, he won the silver medal in the Olympics. I think he
has posted a Reel a day, probably a year and a half now. Like, he
understands that Reels are how you get a following on Instagram. He's
got 210,000 followers, but he's had Reels that have hit 6 million views,
he's had Reels that I believe have hit 10 million views. Like, he's
figured out that just creating constant content benefits your exposure.

“The other one is Emiliano Vargas (@emilianofvargas), who is
another rising prospect we have. His brand is really strong, like the
way he has his team shoot videos and photos — it's very non-pieced
together; like you can tell it's very intentional, which I really
appreciate.”

Who would avid boxing fans say is the greatest pound-for-pound
boxer of all time?
“It depends what year they’re born. I think a lot of them would say
Floyd Mayweather right now. I mean, I think everyone forgets that
early Floyd was an absolute monster. He even beat Canelo. Toward
the end obviously he was more picking and choosing his fights, maybe
some would say. But in his prime, no one can mess with Floyd.”

Joe’s Social Media All-Star to Follow
“Follow Harrison Green on Instagram. (@harrisonn) I met him
through UFC. I hired him back in probably late 2020. He ran the
TikTok account. He's now on his own freelancing. We brought him
out for an event in Saudi [Arabia]. If I could steal one person's skill
set, it would be Harrison's. He's unbelievably creative and is not only
creative, but he can back it up and shoot it and do photography and
do everything that a young content creator should be able to do.”

Where to find Joe and Top Rank Boxing on digital/social media
Joe is @joesetley on Twitter
Follow Top Rank on Twitter and Instagram and across platforms
@TRBoxing

@njh287; www.dsmsports.net
Thanks again to Joe for being so generous with his time to share his
knowledge, experience, and expertise with me!
For more content and episodes, subscribe to the podcast, follow me
on LinkedIn and on Twitter @njh287, and visit www.dsmsports.net.

Joe Setley on Building and Engaging a Worldwide Boxing Fan Base for Top Rank Boxing

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