fuboTV Grabs Digital Likeness Partnership With Floyd Mayweather

fuboTV, FaceBank Group, Floyd Mayweather, and ONE Entertainment Group are entering a joint venture to create and manage the world-renowned retired professional boxing champion and promoter’s digital likeness, “Virtual Mayweather.”

“My team has always been the past, present and future of sports and entertainment,” said Mayweather. “Now, together with FaceBank, fuboTV and ONE Entertainment, I am continuing that trend.”

The partnership was created to protect and exploit the brand name and likeness of Virtual Mayweather for multiple multi-media opportunities in current and future form content scenarios. Under the partnership, one of the projects that the companies intend to develop is virtual boxing matchups pitting Mayweather’s digital likeness against other boxing legends and icons. Resembling short films, these precise, real-time simulations will feature top-secret results based on a modeling computer that will make incremental relationships between actual performance, velocity of punches, speed of reaction, strategy, and stamina. These unprecedented virtual boxing matches will be exclusive to live TV streaming platform fuboTV and pay-per-view partners to be announced.

“With FaceBank’s tech-driven IP in sports, movies, and live performances, and fuboTV’s direct-to-consumer live TV streaming platform for cord-cutters, we’re already making strides towards building the kind of digital entertainment company we envisioned,” says Commented David Gandler, CEO, fuboTV. “Our joint venture with Floyd Mayweather and ONE Entertainment makes possible a few of the greatest fights of all time that never happened, that could have never happened…until now. Undefeated in the ring after so many years, Mayweather can now step up to compete in the hyper-realistic world of virtual competition, challenging the legends of boxing in hyper-real simulated boxing matches with outcomes that will be as surprising to the fighters as to a live global audience.”

FaceBank will work with Mayweather to research, capture, and analyze photographic, filmed, and mathematical representations of his face and body to develop a comprehensive and hyper-realistic, computer-generated ‘digital likeness’ for global and commercial applications. The company expects to announce similar agreements with other sports icons in the coming weeks.

“If you think this is a video game, you’re wrong,” says FaceBank founder John Textor. “This won’t look like anything you’ve ever seen on Xbox even in 4K. Our virtual championship boxing will showcase the talents and technology of the visual effects community, combined with the most respected of the military simulation community. Our aim is to build a visually stunning, championship-caliber bout that positively impacts the future of fight entertainment.”

The undefeated Mayweather is one of boxing’s most popular champions and arguably the best ever and, not so arguably, the best boxer pound for pound of his generation. His 2015 fight against Manny Pacquiao generated over $595 million in revenue, and his cross-discipline fight against Connor MacGregor earned Mayweather a personal share of more than $275 million.

“This is the time for evolved virtual entertainment and Floyd is the perfect subject for this revolutionary shift in entertainment, he fearlessly approaches new challenges and is never scared of the moment,”  says Brent Johnson, Managing Partner and CEO, ONE Entertainment Group.