ESPN's Outside The Lines Tackles UFC Fighter Pay and Monopoly Concerns

the only way any boxer makes alot of money is if theyre lucky enough to fight paq or mayweather, or at least last on one of their undercards. it costs money to have a legitimate company hosting the fights. and doing things correctly. of course the guys are gonna make money when its just 2 greedy promoters and 2 boxers and a venue.

but let me ask you this…besides for the like 5 biggest name boxers in the sport, i would guarantee you that the rest of the boxing community wish they were in a ufc scenario. 20 ppvs a year, network tv, better sponsers, health insurance!!!!

the way they charge sponsor’s, directly taking money out of the fighters pocket

I feel sorry for Ken Shamrock. He was my hero in high school, and he should be sitting at the front row of every UFC signing autographs and getting a big pop when they show him on the screen next to Chuck.

That having been said, he made his own mistakes.

I don’t see how that’s a problem. If anything, I think it’s a good thing, because it keeps them hungry. I don’t see why anybody would be clamoring for GSP or Jones or whoever to make 5 mil a fight, even if that were the equivalent of what e.g. Manny makes.
Where I think the real problem is is at the bottom of the payscale. I find it ridiculous that a significant percentage of fighters, fighting in by far the biggest MMA league of the world, literally are not able to make a living off of the sport. And I’m not talking a luxurious living or anything, just a regular lifestyle with all the expenses that come along with it, plus of course the cost of training (which can be significant). That, to me, is much more scandalous than Dos Santos taking home 100k…

UFC is smart in the way they run things. They are definitely a monopoly, there’s no doubt about that, but what’s most interesting is how they handle pay.

They’ll bring a guy in and tell him, “We’re going to sign you to a paltry 5 fight sum, but when you go 5-0, and you will, because you’re awesome, you’ll start making the big bucks!”

But the problem is, UFC relies on a lot of smoke and mirrors and favorable match making in order to make and break guys and it’s a sport where there are so many ways to win and lose that nobody really ever goes 5-0 unless they’re really lucky, so they go 3-2 and when it’s time to reup their contract, they are told, “Well, you went 3-2 so we can’t pay you very much more money. You can take it or leave it.”

Their basically one big giant hype machine and if you obey them and do what they say and they think you’re marketable, they will put that hype machine behind you and make you a star by using clever editing, favorable match making and hyperbole by Dana and Rogan, but the second you step out of line or don’t do what they say, you’re toast.

Look at Roger Huerta. UFC gave him everything, they put their hype machine behind him, gave him favorable match ups and were poised to make him a star but then he decided he wanted to take a break from UFC and that didn’t fly well with them. All of a sudden he’s getting match ups against guys he had no business being matched up with at that point in his career and he’s getting blasted in the press by Dana and he’s losing fights. Now he’s a nobody.

UFC can make you as long as you do it on their terms but they can just as easily break you if you step even a little but out of line.

And nobody is going to say anything because if they do, they get on UFC’s bad side and have nowhere else to go, so that’s why you see a lot of these younger and lower-tier fighters kissing Dana’s pinkie ring and apologizing anytime they go to decision in Dana’s self promoting video blogs, “I’m so sorry! I’ll try harder next time! I want to finish for you!”

UFC also likes to throw around the “secret locker room bonus” thing while never giving any indication of who gets it and how much. It allows them to stiff fighters on reported pay because everyone assumes they’re making tons more in secret bonuses, when if that was the case, I’m sure Dana would be running his mouth about it since he loves to toot his own horn.

And they have sponsorship, so that helps, but I remember reading a story here about how the sponsors now have to pay the UFC just for the chance to sponsor a fighter, and it’s not worth paying $500K to the UFC just to sponsor a fighter for $10K. UFC makes money every time the fighter makes money.

A lot of smoke and mirrors. But the UFC has been very good at keeping the fans on the brands side and not the fighters side, so if a fighter asks for more money, Dana is easily able to put them on blast and turn public perception against them. He’s done it time and time again.

from my understanding, ufc pay is on the rise. we should just let that continue. it wouldnt be smart for the ufc to just up fighter pay by 50% out of no where. The biggest problem i have with what the narrator said was his comments about certain fighters only making “a few thousand dollars”. That statement obviously sounds terrible and i obviously want these guys to be able to make a living in the sport, but those guys are not making any money for the ufc. The lowest guy on the card is being payed 8/8, but he is clearly not making the ufc 16k. In reality, the top level guys are subsidizing the lowers guys. The lower tier guys in the ufc make more that the same type of guys in boxing, plus the ufc gives them an opportunity to make double or triple their purse by performing well. I think the ufc treats these guys very well.

From a fan perspective, i dont see what is wrong with the ufc continuing in the place they are now as a “monopoly”. If mma had 500,000 big promoters like boxing i would just stop watching. Soccer is the only sport i watch that is not a monopoly. Sports just work better when there is one dominant organization.

Go see what a Top Rank undercarder gets.

Ken Shamrock is wrong guy to get an neutrual point of view on this considering how Zuffa bent him over in court. Fighter Pay is on the rise for example the lowest declared pay for UFC 66 was $3,000 for 141 it was $8,000.

Zuffa also has $450 million dollars in various forms of debt. It’s very unlikely that they can drastically increase fighter pay with out the ok from Deustch Bank, Mark Cuban et all.

This always turns into a heated debate. If your a fan you should want to keep the UFC as is because we get fights we want to see. Fighters are hungrier because of the fact they don’t get a crazy figure to fight. If your’e a fighter than you would obviously want something closer to boxing were fighters get paid huge amounts. Personally i think there should be some middle ground. Fighters should get paid more but if it gets to boxing numbers than the UFC will have a tough time sustaining their business

because if so it’s an irrelevant piece.

Whenever I read articles like this that criticize the payouts for MMA fighters, I like to remind them it’s their choice. You don’t like getting $8K to fight, then go do something else. A waiter making $4 per hour can quit and do something else. Nobody is making you do this.

I’m very interested to see the full piece. E:60 usually does a good job, it will be interesting to see what information they can get their hands on.

I think the sport and UFC are still pretty young and most fighters from the early days of Zuffa’s rise (TUF era) are still fighting.

I think once these guys retire and they don’t need Zuffa anymore, a lot of dirt is going to come out.

The way I see it is if you buy up all your closest competition and absorb their best features, that’s a monopoly.

That’s basically what UFC did with PRIDE, then AFFLICTION and then STRIKEFORCE.

A. There is a legal test of whether a company is a monopoly. Unfortunately, every other sport has the same “monopoly.” NFL, MLS, MLB, etc.

B. UFC does not pay its athletes the same way that these other monopolies do, but they are still in a growth phase and have debts to pay. This shouldn’t be a difficult thing to argue. They also have tons of examples of how they treat their fighters better than any other organization (health insurance, etc.). Moreover, the examples of companies they’ve bought are not legit competitors, but competitors that were going to cave in anyways. It proves their conservative business model works and protects the fighters from not having work.

When Strikeforce was on CBS/Showtime before Zuffa bought them. It wasn’t a monopoly. With Bellator on MTV2 and moving to Spike, the UFC is not a monopoly.

They should be paying their preliminary fighters more, without a doubt.

I have a few points that I want to make on this, because as I wrote in my
fan post about a month ago, I really hate the topic of fighter pay, because
there are a lot of unknowns involved in it -

1. We don’t know exactly what fighters make. Jon Fitch said he made $169K
for fighting GSP, Jardine said he got $85K for fighting Wandy, when his
“official” pay was $10K. Bottom line is we just don’t know what most of these guys are
making, the numbers reported by the commission are a bottom dollar value.

2. NFL/NBA/MLB are not trying to get their sport sanctioned in the largest
market in the United States. This has been a costly endeavor. Along this
same line the UFC is also spending money trying to globalize their sport on
a scale that is un-matched by other organization. The NBA’s worldwide
popularity took off with the Dream Team competing in the Olympics back in
1992, and then with the surge of European players, and Yao Ming that
happened a few years later. UFC doesn’t have an Olympics to send it’s stars
to, it needs to higher experts to study the culture, and figure out how to
market it. This is why they have offices in Canada, Brazil, and China.
MLB doesn’t have much of a world market outside of Japan, and the NFL has
almost no world market. Expanding into new territories requires resources,
and money.

3. Court documents show that Ken Shamrock made over $1 million for the 2nd
Tito fight, is he really the best guy to talk about how fighters are not
getting paid? Go get Kalib Starns or someone like that, we know he is never
coming back to UFC, and complained about the money before he left.

4. Fighter pay is on the rise, as much as I hate the reported pay numbers,
it can be a gauge to look at. Just look at even the mid level guys, and see
what they are making these days compared to 3-4 years ago. Could Zuffa pay
them more? I’m sure, but it is hard to fault them when all of their major
competition has gone out of business in recent years, and all of it in a heap
of financial mess (Affliction, WFO, PRIDE)

5. As already mentioned by multiple people on here, Zuffa has some very
large operating debt. When you can wipe $450 million off the ledger against
you, I bet there will be some kind of pay bump.

the bank appraises your assets (the UFC) and then you take a loan against those assets. over time, those assets appreciate in value. you have them re-appraised and then refinance at the newly appraised value. if/when it all goes to shit, you walk away from the debt after taking every penny of value out of the asset. you basically maintain near zero equity in your business. that’s how you “make money” by owning something.

I think the UFC pays a premium over other organizations. I recently analyzed how Carlos Condit, Urijah Faber, and Nick Diaz were paid before joining the UFC, and how they were paid after signing with the UFC. They each received approximately 9%-15% increase. Check out the analysis here. http://fightbonus.blogspot.com/2012/01/ufc-pay-vs-sf-pay-vs-wec-pay-look-at.html