The Business of Boxing Promotion: How MVP Competes With the Giants

Updated: October 2026

Boxing promotion is one of the oldest closed shops in professional sports, and Jake Paul is trying to break into it with his own company. For more than half a century, a small circle of power brokers has decided who fights whom, on which platform, and for what money. Then came Most Valuable Promotions, the boxing promotion outfit co-founded by Paul and his business partner Nakisa Bidarian. Unlike the giants it is chasing, MVP was built by a fighter who was famous before he ever threw a professional punch. This is a plain-English look at how the business of boxing promotion actually works, and whether MVP's fighter-led model can survive contact with the establishment.

How Traditional Boxing Promotion Works: The Old Guard

To understand what MVP is up against, start with the incumbents. For decades, boxing promotion has been dominated by a handful of companies: Top Rank, Matchroom, Golden Boy, and PBC. These promoters traditionally controlled matchmaking, which is the quiet engine of the entire sport. They sign fighters to multi-fight deals, negotiate with broadcasters and streaming platforms, assemble undercards, and decide which contenders get title shots and which get frozen out.

The model is simple: a promoter invests in building a fighter's name, and in exchange the fighter gives up a share of every purse plus options on future bouts. The promoter's leverage comes from relationships with broadcasters, sanctioning bodies, and venues. A young prospect needs the machine far more than the machine needs any single prospect, which is why fighters have historically had so little say in their own careers.

Most Valuable Promotions: A New Boxing Promotion Playbook

Most Valuable Promotions flips that script. MVP is a boxing promotion company co-founded by Paul and Nakisa Bidarian, and it operates on a fundamentally different premise: the star is the promoter. Instead of signing unknown prospects and spending years building them into draws, MVP starts with Paul's enormous pre-existing audience and converts attention directly into events.

The company's ambitions extend beyond Paul himself. MVP promotes Amanda Serrano and Katie Taylor, two elite women's boxers, and has put genuine promotional muscle behind their careers. That matters because it answers the hardest question any new promoter faces: can you outlast your founding star? A promotion that only stages its founder's fights is a vanity project; one that develops other fighters' careers is a real business.

• Founder-led: Paul co-founded MVP with promoter Nakisa Bidarian, giving the company a fighter's perspective at the top.
• Women's boxing focus: MVP promotes Amanda Serrano and Katie Taylor, a serious commitment beyond Paul's own bouts.
• Attention-first: Rather than building audiences from zero, MVP monetizes the audience Paul already had.
• Platform flexibility: The company has worked across venues and formats, including the Netflix-streamed Tyson event.

The MVP Playbook: Attention as Inventory

Traditional promoters sell fights. MVP sells events, and Paul himself is the inventory. The clearest example came on November 15, 2024, when Paul beat Mike Tyson by unanimous decision at AT&T Stadium in Texas. The bout was streamed on Netflix and drew massive reported viewership, and it was reportedly Paul's biggest payday to date. Whether or not it was a competitive sporting contest in the classic sense, it was a masterclass in modern boxing promotion: take a famous name, add a famous opponent, put it on a platform with hundreds of millions of subscribers, and let curiosity do the marketing.

This is MVP's core economic insight. In the old model, a promoter spent years turning a fighter into a star. Paul arrived as a star and worked backward, using fame to buy the credibility the traditional pipeline confers slowly. Critics call it a shortcut; his team calls it efficiency.

Where MVP's Boxing Promotion Ambitions Go Next

The real test of any boxing promotion company is durability. Top Rank, Matchroom, Golden Boy, and PBC have survived for decades on deep rosters and long-term broadcast relationships. MVP has one generational attention asset in Paul, a growing women's boxing portfolio, and a lean operation that moves faster than the giants.

Paul's ambitions point upward. In early October 2026, after being medically cleared to return from the jaw injury suffered against Anthony Joshua, he posted an opponent wish list ending with the words "World Title." If that ambition is real, MVP must eventually do the unglamorous work of traditional promotion: climbing rankings and negotiating with sanctioning bodies. Published estimates of Paul's net worth vary widely ($80 million to $200 million, always estimated), which gives MVP runway. But money alone does not buy legitimacy in boxing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who founded Most Valuable Promotions?

Most Valuable Promotions was co-founded by Jake Paul and his business partner Nakisa Bidarian, who serves as the company's promoter. It is a fighter-led boxing promotion outfit, built around Paul's career and audience.

Which fighters does MVP promote?

Beyond Paul himself, MVP promotes Amanda Serrano and Katie Taylor, two elite women's boxers. The company's investment in women's boxing is one of its most distinctive features compared with traditional promoters.

How does MVP differ from traditional boxing promoters?

Traditional promoters like Top Rank, Matchroom, Golden Boy, and PBC build fighters into stars over years. MVP reverses the model: it starts with Paul's pre-existing fame and converts it directly into events, operating with a leaner, attention-first approach.

What is Jake Paul's net worth?

Published estimates vary widely, generally cited in the range of $80 million to $200 million. All such figures should be treated as estimated, since Paul's private finances have not been officially disclosed.

The business of boxing promotion has always rewarded whoever controls the audience. The old guard controlled it through television contracts and decades of relationships; MVP controls it through a phone screen and a fighter who understands the internet better than any promoter in history. Whether that reshapes the sport or simply carves out a profitable corner of it is boxing's most interesting business question right now.