INTERVIEW OCTOBER 2026
Interview with Lee McFarland and Claire Osborne: Behind The Gloves brings the industry into the ring
Lee McFarland and Inspired's Claire Osborne on the 7th Punch: the blow nobody sees coming
Interview
Our editor had a conversation with Lee McFarland, founder of Behind The Gloves, and Claire Osborne, Managing Director Interactive at Inspired Entertainment.
Boxing has six punches: the jab, the cross, the lead and rear hooks, and the lead and rear uppercuts. Behind The Gloves has added a seventh: the one nobody sees coming, like a diagnosis or a redundancy. The idea sits behind Midnight Mayhem, a charity fight night during ICE Barcelona on 19 January 2027, where 22 fighters will box across 11 bouts, including an opening adaptive bout, for 25 charities and a €200,000 target. It began with a handful of people boxing in a park early in the morning during trade shows. What it has become reaches well beyond one night in the ring. Claire Osborne explains why Inspired, the event's Platinum Impact Partner, said yes.
Lee McFarland (left) and Robin Hutchison with the Midnight Mayhem WBC belt.
Lee McFarland — Founder, Behind The Gloves
Current title: Founder
Company: Behind The Gloves
Background: A former British Army paratrooper who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, Lee McFarland has built a career in technology and the international iGaming industry. He founded Behind The Gloves, a purpose-driven business that uses boxing to build stronger communities, promote wellbeing, and create social impact. He is the driving force behind Midnight Mayhem, a major charity boxing event during ICE Barcelona 2027 that brings together industry leaders, businesses, and WBC Cares UK to raise funds for 25 charities. Through Behind The Gloves, he is committed to proving that commercial success and social impact can go hand in hand.
Claire Osborne — Managing Director Interactive, Inspired Entertainment
Current title: Managing Director Interactive
Company: Inspired Entertainment – inseinc.com
Previous roles: Commercial Director, Nektan (2017–2018); Rank Interactive (2005–2016), becoming Mecca Digital Operations Director in Gibraltar in 2013.
Sector experience: More than 20 years in online gaming, on both the supplier and operator side, across multiple markets, products and countries.
Recognised projects: Has led Inspired's Interactive business since 2018, and between 2019 and 2025 the business's EBITDA grew by more than 500%, according to Inspired.
Six punches, and a seventh
The seventh punch, McFarland explains, is "the one we don't see coming". In the ring, it is the shot that lands unseen. In life, it is the event that knocks people sideways: "the diagnosis, the redundancy, the death". Behind The Gloves wants its impact to be about supporting people through that blow, and the fighters, he says, will face a seventh punch of their own on fight night.
McFarland developed the idea with the London agency Brothers & Sisters. Its launch film, set in 1970s Mexico, was made with AI; founder Andy Fowler told LBB there was no budget because it was a charity film. Videos of the fighters' own stories follow until January.
"We're trying to tell people's stories," McFarland says: those of the industry's people, the organisations that back the event and the charities that receive the money. Each fighter steps into the ring with a story and a charity of their own, and that is what sets the event apart for those taking part.
Behind The Gloves grew out of earlier industry fight nights. McFarland coached the fighters at the Oliver's Wish charity nights in London, training them in their gardens through the wet autumn months. When they travelled to ICE and SBC Summit Lisbon, he kept the sessions going at 7:30 in the morning in whatever park was nearby.
Word spread through social posts and colleagues, and attendance has risen at every conference since. McFarland and the participants describe three draws. One is community. Another is health: amid long conference days and late nights, more people want to look after their physical and mental wellbeing.
The third is the challenge of stepping out of a comfort zone and facing a natural fear of getting into the ring. Everyone faces that challenge on equal terms: at those sessions, a chief executive runs the same hills as someone in their first industry job, and job titles no longer count.
The morning sessions have travelled with the trade shows to Lisbon and Barcelona, but the earlier fight nights were held in London, which in practice limited them to people based there. To open the format to the whole industry, Behind The Gloves is staging Midnight Mayhem in Barcelona with WorldGaming, the ICE organiser. Its card includes fighters from Malta, Gibraltar, Spain, Finland, Switzerland and the UK, and an adaptive bout between a British and a Ukrainian military veteran who both lost limbs in combat.
Claire Osborne, Robin Hutchison and members of the Inspired team in training at CMR Boxing Academy, the local gym the team found through Behind The Gloves. Image courtesy of Behind The Gloves
Claire Osborne, Managing Director Interactive, Inspired Entertainment. Photo: Inspired Entertainment
Why a supplier says yes
Inspired is Platinum Impact Partner and sponsors one of the fighters, Robin Hutchison. For Osborne, it was a way to take part without boxing: "This is a chance for me to get involved without having to get in the ring." She adds: "I'm no spring chicken anymore."
The personal motive was not enough on its own. "Behind the Gloves works for Inspired on so many levels, the sponsorship offered an opportunity to combine a personal passion with a broader business value. It's a chance to support a meaningful charitable cause while creating fresh stories beyond our game launch content. The partnership provides a platform to showcase the company's social responsibility, engage audiences in a different way and highlight its positive impact at ICE Barcelona."
Seventh punches are not only personal; businesses take them too. "This industry has thrown quite a few seventh punches recently," Osborne says. In Great Britain, remote gaming duty rose from 21% to 40% on 1 April 2026, according to HMRC, and she sees another potentially coming from machine games duty.
In a tough year, the team matters most to her. About half of her team work remotely, including the sales team. "We don't get together that often," she says. "It's great to have a reason to do it." Training alongside Hutchison gave them one, and a chance to "become stronger as a team while we do it and have some fun".
The training has also produced something neither side planned. During that session, staff from Inspired's Burton upon Trent office found CMR Boxing Academy, a local boxing gym that runs youth and community work. Osborne now plans to send her team to train there and, if possible, to support it financially.
That is what makes the format hard to pin down. One event serves personal health, team building, community and charity at once, for companies in a competitive market where remote work keeps many teams apart.
No apology for a sustainable business
McFarland sees no conflict between commercial visibility and charitable purpose. He calls the partnership "a legitimate exchange of value between both parties" and adds: "I don't think we should apologise for trying to build a sustainable business." He says an event like this is "not cheap to put on"; the costs cover an entertaining evening for guests and the fighters' protection through five months of training.
What fight night has to prove
For McFarland, safety comes first. "There's a lot of unlicensed boxing out there, and it is unsafe," he says. Midnight Mayhem is affiliated with WBC Cares UK, according to Inspired's announcement of its sponsorship. Behind The Gloves says fighters will be matched by weight class and age, and that head guards, mouth guards, groin guards and certified gloves will be compulsory. The organiser also says medics, a doctor and an ambulance will be at the venue, that the judges and referee appointed by WBC Cares UK are fully certified, and that the WBC has commissioned a Midnight Mayhem belt for the event. "If at any point we don't think a fight's going to be safe, we'll pull it."
The sport's governing bodies share the concern. In the UK, white-collar boxing operates outside the sport's governing bodies, so safety standards depend on the organiser. England Boxing, Welsh Boxing, Boxing Scotland and the British Boxing Board of Control have commissioned research arguing for regulation of the sector.
Hutchison, Chief Commercial Officer at Square in the Air, the event's PR partner, says the fighters have had nutrition advice, training advice and coaching throughout.
On the money, McFarland puts transparency first. "We want to be transparent on where the funds are going," he says. Each fighter nominates a charity, from Parkinson's UK and Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity to local causes in Romania, Hungary and Gibraltar. According to Behind The Gloves, €50,090 had been raised so far as of 7 October 2026, a quarter of the €200,000 target.
After the event, Behind The Gloves will publish an impact report showing where the money went, how it was spent, and what difference it made. McFarland wants to keep telling that story through 2027, because "those funds are going to change people's lives".
For Inspired, the return is harder to measure. "It's a tough one to quantify," Osborne admits. Inspired will ask customers whether they were aware of its involvement and review the internal culture impact; she says their goal is "about raising our profile in a different way".
Inspired-branded boxing gloves and a Team Robin supporter sign for Robin Hutchison, the fighter Inspired sponsors at Midnight Mayhem. Image courtesy of Behind The Gloves
After the bell
Asked what has surprised them, nobody pointed to money. Osborne named the fighters' sheer effort. For McFarland, it is their willingness to face fear; in the ring, "that job title absolutely means nothing". "There is a natural fear when you do it," he says. Overcoming it "comes back to the transformation and the impact on the individual, them understanding they can achieve anything". He adds: "That for me is what I'm really proud of: just seeing people really show a side of themselves that you probably never see."
Hutchison, who is 50, knows that fear. The first time he sparred, he says, "I was hyperventilating with fear". Getting past it has been the surprise: "I've surprised myself … just what I'm capable of." As people get older, he says, stepping out of their comfort zone is one way to stay relevant.
McFarland argues the industry does more good than it shows: "We have so many great things that we do as an industry, and yet we're really bad at communicating it."
The fight night is only the most visible part. At its core, Behind The Gloves is another way for the industry to come together at its trade shows: training body and mind early in the morning, building teams, and connecting in a way, as McFarland puts it, that "you wouldn't get" at a networking event. Someone once told him that Behind The Gloves is "creating ripples that are going to be felt for years to come", and he wants those ripples to reach individuals, teams and the communities its charities serve. The impact report, through 2027, will show how far they travel.
Article written by Elisabet Johansson
Further Reading & Key Sources
Inspired Entertainment, August 2026: Inspired sponsors Midnight Mayhem at ICE Barcelona 2027, backing Robin Hutchison in charity boxing event
England Boxing, Welsh Boxing, Boxing Scotland and British Boxing Board of Control, with Sheffield Hallam University, November 2025: The Case for Regulation of White Collar Boxing
HM Revenue & Customs, November 2025: Gambling duty changes