World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) has recently made some astonishing business moves. Global creator, Logan Paul, is featuring in this year’s WrestleMania. Betting operator, DraftKings, has recently penned a partnership to become the sport & entertainment property’s gaming partner. WWE continues to strengthen its cultural sensitivity, but how does Logan Paul help them with this?
Logan Paul is an online personality with over 50 million followers. He’s won the Streamy Award twice in a row, three YouTube creator award’s and featured in the first-ever professional YouTube boxing match against KSI. His online presence has been pivotal to embed a new culture for combat sports.
His enormous audience also happens to be predominantly young tech-savvy members of the next-gen. Sports content hasn’t been tailored more specifically towards the next-gen than it is now. Influencers like Logan have become marketing powerhouses to entice high volumes of millennials towards brands. WWE is utilising Logan’s marketability to attract more tech-savvy youngsters towards WrestleMania and wrestling.
Logan has a brother, Jake Paul, and both are collectively recognised for their polarising and self-promotional personalities. Logan’s boxing match against KSI included plenty of gimmicks, meme-worthy exchanges and childish banter. Despite the Paul brother’s behaviour being unappealing to a mass-sporting audience, their self-promotional attention rapidly creates awareness.
Logan is no stranger to combat sport. He was ranked 5th in the 2013 OHSAA State Championships. 2013 also saw Paul join Ohio University’s wrestling team who are recognised in NCAA-Division 1 for wrestling.
His choice to leave school to become a YouTuber full-time worked out very well! Since then, he’s headlined the largest white-collar fight of all time, an event at The Staples Center and is in the pipeline to fight 50-0, Floyd Mayweather.
The YouTube boxing trend has rapidly accelerated Logan’s profile across combat sport. He trained with boxing World Champion Shannon Briggs for his rematch against KSI in 2019. He’s sparred with UFC fighter Paulo Costa alongside receiving a call-out for a wrestling match by Conor McGregor’s training partner, Dillon Danis.
The exhibition with Floyd was due to commence in February but is now postponed. The occasion will be broadcasted across US TV Network, Showtime, magnifying Logan Paul’s brand onto the next layer of culture, sports and entertainment.
Boxers crossing over into wrestling has proven lucrative. Floyd Mayweather took on The Big Show in 2008, where 74,000 fans attended; Floyd took home $20 million and over 20 million YouTube views were acquired from the event’s footage. British heavyweight, Tyson Fury, took on Braun Strowman at WWE’s Crown Jewel in 2019. Fury reportedly walked away with $15 million, and the fight footage on YouTube also gained 20 million+ YouTube views.
Boxings appetite for exhibitions synergises with the business model of WWE. Both sports are entering into becoming entertainment entities to get a firmer grip on the next-gen. Therefore, Logan Paul will be pivotal for this transition for WWE to draw in tech-savvy audiences from YouTube and his sporting initiatives.
WWE joins many sports properties riding the culture wave of entertainment-led sport. Video-sharing service, Triller, created a celebrity boxing league called the Triller Fight Club. Their rivals, TikTok, formed sport-related partnerships with global football governing body, UEFA, and MMA promotion, the UFC.
Logan Paul has helped WWE pivot into a new era of sports culture through his impressionable following, rapidly growing combat sports profile, self-promotional personality, and wrestling passion.
Ash Sports Media 