The International Boxing Association (IBA) is still taking sponsorship money from the Russian state energy supplier Gazprom but could still play a role in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games, its chief executive has said.
Chris Roberts, the former British army officer who has led the IBA since September last year, said he was looking to diversify the sporting body’s sources of funding but that “the Gazprom thing is still there”.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) ran the boxing events at the Paris Games after withdrawing recognition from the IBA as a governing body due to governance, finance and corruption issues. The IOC has said it will not organise the boxing events at the LA Olympics, raising concerns that the sport will not feature at the 2028 Games unless a deal can be struck with an alternative organiser or a compromise with the IBA can be found.
Roberts said that his organisation remained in receipt of funding from Gazprom but that he had no doubt that boxing would feature at the next Olympics, adding that talks were already under way with IOC officials about his organisation’s status. The IOC president, Thomas Bach, with whom the IBA’s leadership has repeatedly clashed, is due to stand down next year.
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Roberts said: “There are some negotiations happening already. The IBA has a lot of friends in the IOC. Let’s say ‘bye bye’ to Thomas Bach. ‘Thank you very much, go retire somewhere. Thank you.’ We continue to see a bright future. We have a really good financial package behind us.
“I think this myth about the boxing not being in the 2028 Olympics is just another shift to try and get people to jump camp [to another boxing federation]. ‘Oh, it might not be happening’. Course it’s gonna happen. Course it is.”
An IOC spokesman said: “There are no conversations with the IBA about its involvement in any future Olympic boxing competitions or about any other topic. The IOC Session withdrew the IBA’s recognition in the summer of 2023 with an overwhelming majority and only one no-vote, and this decision was upheld by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Thus, IBA plays no role whatsoever in Olympic boxing any more.”
Gazprom became a “general partner” of the IBA – the president of which is Umar Kremlev, a Russian national – in 2021. The energy company was then targeted by western financial sanctions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In May last year, Kremlev announced that its contract with Gazprom had ended but Roberts said that the company remained a sponsor. He declined to comment on the level of the funding.
“We are looking for alternatives,” he said. “We have alternatives, and we are moving forward. We are still in negotiation, because we have, obviously, contractual stuff with Gazprom, you know. You look at the sponsorship agreements. We want to become more independent internally. We are not sure yet [if the IBA will end the relationship]. We keep the door open. We are still working on various things at the moment. The Gazprom thing is still there.”
A new organisation called World Boxing is seeking the support of national bodies to replace the IBA as the organiser of Olympic events and governing body of the sport at an amateur level. World Boxing suffered a blow last month when the 25 members of the Asian Boxing Confederation voted down a proposal to break from the IBA during an extraordinary congress held in Bangkok.
At a forum in Dubai this month, the IBA changed its constitution to allow national bodies to be members of multiple sporting federations. Roberts said this was due to some national Olympic committees withholding funding from national bodies who remained affiliated to the IBA rather than World Boxing.
He added that the rival organisation had “lost momentum” while the IBA was planning to double the level of prize money at its world championships. He said: “They’re [World Boxing] coming into our nest, you know, trying to steal our members, to pull them across. You know, at the end of the day, I’m focused on what we want, what we’re doing, what the IBA is doing.” – Guardian
