So you can imagine how taken aback I was when I say that much the most interesting piece of sportswriting I have read over the past couple of weeks was my insidethegames colleague Michael Pavitt’s recent blog about a boxing match between two leading members of a social media-based clan known as YouTubers.

To recap, this bout between two presumably relatively novice fighters was reported by Pavitt (and others) to have filled out the Manchester Arena as well as attracting a seriously large online audience at £7.50 ($9.63/€8.28) a pop.

No doubt the magnitude of my surprise ( I think the technical term is “gobsmacked”) partly reflects my age: I am of that generation of journalists who started out bashing out stories on a battered old Remington with carbon paper stains on my fingers and a pot of Tipp-Ex at my elbow.

Rightly or wrongly, my eyes do still tend to glaze over when I hear talk of online Friend/Follower/Subscriber numbers and millions of video views.

This though was something even I could relate to; this was two stars from some virtual world I could barely even begin to fathom materialising into flesh and blood and putting real, paid-for bums on real seats – and substantial numbers of them to boot.

Many even top-class athletes and sports franchises would struggle to rack up the sort of numbers for the event that have been reported.

Maybe it is a one-off – but from the perspective of a traditional sports sector fighting desperately to cling on to the hold over young people it has enjoyed for a century or more, it seems to me to raise a whole host of questions.

I suppose the first thing to say is that it might be considered a plus-point for traditional sports that these two individuals should have deemed a 300-year old combat sport a worthwhile medium through which to play out their rivalry.

That suggests that old-fashioned, honest-to-goodness sport retains at least some resonance with the closeted, computer-savvy young generation, cocooned in their bedrooms with their array of touch-screens.

Now for the questions:

- How many YouTubers of similar standing are there around the world? (Furtive enquiries have yielded the rather sobering revelation that just about every 14 year-old wants to be a YouTuber at the moment.)

- What were the audience demographics for the Manchester event?

- What percentage had ever attended a live sports event before?

- Would any of them now be tempted to attend a “proper” boxing event, or even to take up that or another sport?

I don’t suppose that sort of market research was undertaken at the arena itself, although YouTube will presumably have a good idea of who paid to watch online.

It is understanding this audience that seems to me key in determining whether traditional sports leaders should brush this off as an eye-catching, but mercifully isolated, invasion of their carefully-tended domain, or on the contrary do something to harness the wave.

Could YouTubers be the way, at least until the next “thing”, of capturing that critical youth demographic?

Might it be worth, say, archery or rowing earmarking a portion of their marketing budget to go into partnership with these guys to make the next YouTuber duel a longbow contest or a sculling match?

Is there anything to be said for track and field promoters to offer to stage a sprint-off or jump-off between some of these 21^st century Pied Pipers as a sort of half-time interlude in a traditional athletics meet?

In future broadcasting rights negotiations, should decision-makers in handball or wrestling be asking YouTube’s parent Google if some of the big YouTuber megastars could be roped in, perhaps as part of the commentary team, to help attract a youth audience?

Such notions might strike you as hair-raising, naïve and laughable in equal measure.

However, a brief visit to the YouTube channel of one of the Manchester pugilists, Logan Paul, indicates that a meeting of minds is perhaps less far-fetched than you might imagine.

A 10-minute “Vlog” entitled ‘Why 2017 Was The Best Year of My Life’, besides stating that "even old people know who I am", is larded with exhortations that would not be out of place in a promotional campaign for the Olympics.

“Exceed expectations”; “Life’s not short, you’ve just got to do more”; “Be different… don’t be afraid to go right when they go left”; “Everything is possible until it’s not – and even then it’s still possible”.

Paul even refers to subscribers as “family”, in a manner that should certainly strike a chord with Olympic and other sports officials.

He gives every impression of being business-minded and says he is “going to be the biggest entertainer on the planet”.

Even if he ultimately falls short of that modest ambition, there might be something to be said for sport seeking to tag along for a time for the ride.

Pavitt was right to draw parallels with other novelty fights.

You might even be able to trace a path through celebrity soccer matches or pro-am golf tournaments that have raised considerable public interest from time to time.

Where this strikes me as different is that two individuals attracted a large live and online audience for a sports event, seemingly without the involvement of any top athletes, or former top athletes, at all. 

For all its problems, sport remains a multi-billion dollar industry, probably a bigger business than it has ever been before.

It needs to be careful who it associates with.

But equally, it cannot afford to be complacent. 

There is talk, I gather, of a rematch.

If I were sport, I think I would be analysing the heck out the audience drawn by that encounter.