Meet boxing's new money mark shark, Ed Pereira
Is this the man who can fight Turki & TKO?
He calls himself The Visionary.
In a recent Youtube video, iVisit Media chief Ed Pereira announced that iVisit Boxing would be running 12 big events in 2026. Mr. Pereira is claiming his initial event will be a “make or break” show in April, perhaps in San Francisco.
“I never, in my wildest dreams, ever thought I’d be a global boxing promoter. But that opportunity to become a boxing promoter that was too good to pass up.”
Who is this guy?
You’re not alone in asking this question. The name Ed Pereira has been hyped up behind-the-scenes in boxing circles for the last several months as “the only man” who could possibly rival Turki Alalshikh.
It turns out they’re former business partners in boxing.
Mr. Pereira founded iVisit Media in 1997 in Cardiff, Wales, and it quickly became an advertising agency. iVisit Media touts itself as “a global marketing services & live events company” headquartered in London with satellite offices in Los Angeles & New York City.
In a paid article, Mr. Pereira claimed iVisit Boxing was involved in advertising & production campaigns for SELA/Turki-backed fights, including Oleksandr Usyk vs. Tyson Fury, Terence Crawford vs. Israil Madrimov in Los Angeles, and Anthony Joshua vs. Daniel Dubois at Wembley Stadium.
A June 2025 Business in Wales article claims Mr. Pereira was also involved with Turki’s plans to put on a big fight at Alcatraz: “Battle behind bars.”
That Business in Wales article featured a claim that the Alcatraz event was going to air on both ESPN & Amazon.
Given the amount of money that SELA & Turki Alalshikh have spent on boxing ventures, there’s one obvious question to ask Mr. Pereira:
Why would any advertising and events promotion company decide to run in opposition against their (former) rich boxing client?
The Times Square Takeover
The key sales pitch behind Mr. Pereira’s vision is that he was the man who helped Turki Alalshikh and Riyadh Season execute what he calls the Times Square Takeover.
“I had to get permits from 43 agencies. I realised it was getting serious when I was talking to Homeland Security, the NYPD [New York Police Department], FDNY [Fire Department of New York].”
Anyone who followed what was happening behind the scenes with Riyadh Season in New York fully understood what a chaotic administrative and diplomatic mess the proceedings were.
It’s safe to say that Mr. Pereira views it as his greatest accomplishment, thanks to what he considers his superpower:
“You know, I’ve been in business 28 years. Someone said to me the other day, they asked me, what do you think your super power is? I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that. And it hit me!
Our super power is that when most other people see an obstacle, that’s when we come out to play. That is when I say let’s bring that place down, let’s take that obstacle out of our way. And we actually see a challenge and we love a challenge.
You know, people ask me, was it easy to get the permits for Times Square? And the answer is, no, it was pretty much impossible. But we did it because of that super power, that mind set, which is seeing an obstacle but seeing it more as a challenge and we’re never ever ever giving in.”
Thomas Hauser, veteran boxing writer and HBO Boxing consultant, chronicled the Times Square chaos in immaculate detail.
I asked Mr. Hauser for an on-the-record comment regarding Mr. Pereira’s previous and current relationship with SELA. Here’s the response we received:
Ed worked on several projects for SELA in the past (most notably, the January 2025 "Ring Magazine" Awards dinner in London and the May 1 Times Square show). That relationship has been completely severed, and I would think that, at this point, SELA-Zuffa-TKO regard Ed as a rival.
I initially ignored the marketing hype behind Ed Pereira until his boxing supporters, behind the scenes, started making big promises.
Like… Perhaps a major media rights deal with Amazon Prime? Perhaps an NWA-style unification of rival promoters to take on Turki & TKO?
The common theme in all the behind-the-scenes chatter about Mr. Pereira is Amazon. Whether Amazon is an actual media rights partner, a possible media rights partner, or simply a potential opportunity remains to be seen.
Gossip is gossip. Everyone in boxing is always looking for the next hustle. But now we have a concrete statement from Mr. Pereira, on the record, promising to deliver a big announcement on January 16th about his 2026 global boxing plans.
What’s his deal?
Here is how Mr. Pereira makes the case that he has the capacity to compete against Turki & TKO on a global scale:
“I started my life learning to understand audience behavior for 28 years. I have dug deep into the audience’s lives, understood what makes them tick. And for that reason we know that we can talk to the audiences and we know what the audiences want. It’s those 28 years running a world-class marketing services company for the biggest brands in the world that has given us this huge, I would say, foundation really to rebuild a vehicle like iVB that can create not just these great moments but actually get the buy-in from the audience.”
Except there’s one curious development: Ed Pereira’s vision is all over the map, literally and figuratively.
One minute, he’s advertising a takeover of Australia and Indonesia during his Visionary sales pitch. The next minute, he’s marketing himself as a Hero of the Community by wanting to bring a Times Square-level event to any local municipality.
What does he want to be? A Big Shot or club promoter?
Whatever Ed Pereira’s vision is, the financial and media rights landscape for boxing in 2026 is looking rather gnarly. The bottom is quickly falling out on both boxing & MMA media rights in 2026.
Remember Mr. Pereira’s “make or break” claim about an April 2026 debut event? It turns out that it might end up being an event called “Battle of the Bay” in San Francisco.
“Whenever we go into a new city and everybody knows we want to break the world record for the biggest audience, biggest attended boxing audience of all time. We’re looking to break that 1941 record set in Juneau Park. That in itself is a huge obstacle. It hasn’t been done in 84 years. So, I’m looking forward to breaking that obstacle. Seeing that obstacle as a challenge and overcoming that challenge. But that’s the main one. How are we going to put in all of those people in San Francisco and make it a moment where we make history.”
What makes Mr. Pereira’s entry into the boxing space unique is that he clearly has inside knowledge, or at least portrays himself as having insider knowledge, of how things really work behind the scenes at Riyadh Season.
Riyadh Season has managed to marry itself to pretty much every single corner of the boxing industry as both friend and foe. Now that Turki and TKO are officially connected via their Joint Venture, there are billions of dollars at stake.
The question is how to gain market share in this political, regulatory, and financial climate.
Boxing observers will find out a lot more in the first half of 2026 as to who will survive and who won’t make it.
Zach Arnold is a lead opinion writer for The MMA Draw on Substack. His archives can be read at FightOpinion.com.