From travelling the world with his father to experience major sporting events as a child to building one of Nigeria’s most influential boxing platforms, Dr. Ezekiel Adamu is proving that conviction – not hope – can change the course of a sport. Vanessa Obioha writes
The first thing you’d learn about Dr. Ezekiel Adamu, the Chief Executive Officer of Balmoral Group and owner of Chaos in the Ring, is that he has little patience for the phrase “I hope.” Mention it, and he winces. To him, hope is no substitute for conviction. He prefers certainty, decisiveness and action over words that, in his view, often mask hesitation or absolve people of responsibility.
The lesson came quickly during our virtual interview. In the course of our conversation, I casually used the phrase “I hope.” His media adviser, Latasha Ngwube, immediately interjected. “We don’t use that phrase around him,” she said. Adamu smiled.
It is easy to understand why he refrains from the phrase. Throughout his career, Adamu has ventured into spaces many people only dream of entering.
Born into a family steeped in sports – his father is a former sports administrator in Nigeria, while his younger brother is the current General Secretary of CAF – Adamu developed an early fascination with sporting events. As a child, he travelled to major sporting events with his father, but what captivated him most was the transformation of spaces. He marvelled at how an ordinary road or open field could become the centre of a global sporting spectacle, only to return to its original state once the event was over and the structures dismantled.
Therefore, when he returned to Nigeria after graduating from the University of Bedfordshire, where he studied Computer Science, he interned briefly at Dowell Schlumberger in Nigeria before he founded the Balmoral Group. From being a fixture at festivals, fairs and weddings, Balmoral has grown into one of the country’s most recognisable event brands.
These days, however, the Group is increasingly associated with boxing. Sport, it turned out, has always been Adamu’s first love right from those early days attending sporting events.
“I remember going to Athens for the Olympic Games and my father used to tell me that football is his business, but boxing was his first love. We went to a boxing fight, and I was captivated by how everything unfolded,” he recalled.
That feeling from the pugilists in the ring stayed with him. So while he used the events and venues to build a brand, his love for sports never waned. “I built Balmoral events to a certain level. So I thought, let me go back to my first love, which was sports. So, we started doing a lot of viewing centres, and a lot of activation for football events.”
Then, in 2024, as British-Nigerian boxer Anthony Joshua prepared to face British boxer Daniel Dubois, Adamu saw an opportunity.
“I called my team and told them ‘Let’s do something experiential for boxing, like a boxing film centre,’ and they found it interesting.”
They immediately rolled up their sleeves and got to work.
For one who has a knack for creating immersive events, Adamu had a particular vision on how the event should feel.
“I’m a very experiential person. I love to create,” he said, describing how he wanted the event to feel like a Las Vegas fight night. “We wanted to actually have professional boxers come and fight as well, so that when Joshua’s fight starts, we would bring the screens down.” But something unexpected happened that evening.
“The talent I saw on display was even better than the talent I was watching on TV. And from that day, I think boxing got me.”
Through Balmoral Promotions and its Chaos in the Ring series, Adamu has helped breathe new life into a sport that had been struggling for mainstream attention in Nigeria.
The problem, he insisted, has never been talent.
“We don’t have a talent problem. There is an abundance of boxing talent. If you look at the landscape of heavyweight boxing globally, you will find out that about 70 per cent are either Nigerians or people of African descent. What we have is a platform issue.”
For him, the real challenge lies in building a sustainable industry—one with the right structures, commercial opportunities and pathways for athletes. He cites the cumbersome process of obtaining boxing licences as one example of the systemic hurdles facing the sport.
He admitted that he did not fully appreciate the complexity of boxing promotion until he entered the industry. But rather than waiting for someone else to fix the problems, he set about finding solutions.
He came up with a couple of winning formulas, such as broadening boxing’s appeal.
“We brought in the influencers because they would give us eyeballs. The first influencer fight we did was Portable and Charles Okocha, which was great. And then we did Portable and Speed Darlington, which was also amazing. The strategy is to use the influencers to bring the eyeballs to the game, and then use the professionals to keep them watching.”
The strategy worked.
“The last event we did, I think, is the highest, if not globally, because we had almost two billion views across all social platforms, and about 4.2 billion impressions across all social platforms.”
Visibility, he believes, is everything.
“I’m also not one to take the easy way out. I felt that the best way for us to showcase boxing is to go to the highest level, and who is the biggest platform when it comes to boxing? Da-Zone (DAZN) is the global home of boxing.”
Determined to secure that level of exposure, Adamu immersed himself in the international boxing circuit.
“I met with a lot of big stakeholders in boxing. I got to meet DAZN, and they wanted to see what we’re doing in Africa. When they saw the level of production we’re doing, they were interested.”
After observing Balmoral’s events over several editions, DAZN came on board as a partner, giving Nigerian boxing unprecedented international exposure.
“To be honest with you, when I started boxing, I used to look at DAZN like a dream,” he shared. “It was like a dream for me. So having them already is super exciting. And recently, we found out that Netflix Live also got into boxing, so we are also speaking with them. We are speaking with the biggest platforms in the world. They understand the power of Africa. They understand the talent that Africa has and they see us doing things the right way.”
The boxing ecosystem in Nigeria, as he sees it, deals with talent development, media, streaming platforms and betting integration. Overall, he wants Nigerian boxers to earn purses comparable to those of their international counterparts. According to him, elite fighters can now earn as much as US$300,000 for a single fight night.
His ambitions also have an international dimension. Balmoral has begun attracting globally recognised fighters to Nigeria. Recently, British professional boxer Chris Eubank Jr. visited the country and was received by President Bola Tinubu through arrangements facilitated by Balmoral Group. Adamu also believes that if Anthony Joshua ever chooses to fight in Nigeria, his organisation is well positioned to host the bout.
“We reversed the old order completely because before now, athletes had to travel abroad to gain visibility. Today, they can achieve that visibility from Nigeria. In fact, we now have international fighters looking for opportunities to fight here.”
Storytelling has also helped in bringing the audience. Chaos in the Ring events blend boxing with celebrity culture, music and entertainment, attracting audiences beyond traditional fight fans and encouraging investors who might otherwise have overlooked the sport.
In fact, he admitted that his DM is often inundated with requests from celebrities hoping to settle their rivalries in the ring.
“Sometimes my kids tell me that their friends warn them not to annoy them because they’ll ask me to put them in the ring,” he laughed.
The way he sees boxing growth in Nigeria, it is the new form of entertainment. He recalled how his well-heeled guests at the last December event had a swell time, saying they preferred the boxing event to other entertainment shows.
“Boxing is an elite sport and has everything. Music, storytelling, fashion, everything is there.”
Adamu is very clear on his vision with boxing.
“I’m not here to just create fights. What we are doing is building a proper boxing ecosystem,” he said.
And he has no interest in hoping it happens.