UFC Pay: A Closer Look At ESPN's Story

some of the figures on that piece were so out of wack it was ridiculous. The 5% of total revenue figure was ridiculous. Say the Ufc brings home 400 million that would mean 20 million. Brock and Reem made 5 million combined(at least and maybe much more) at Ufc 141. Add Gsp who makes at least 3 and they are saying combined the rest of the roster made less than 12 million. Metzler put the revenue percent at something like 25 %. Which sounds more reasonable.

Also their statement that more than half the roster makes less than 40,000 is crazy. Most of these fighters we don’t have any idea how much they are making because tons of AC don’t release salary data.

Basically the entire article was filled with falsehoods and stats that were so awful they come off as bold faced lies. Gross is going to come out looking like an idiot for this piece.

The guy is clearly, heavily anti-Zuffa. It’s just a pity that he’s been given this voice by ESPN. I mean shit, look at the garbage fucking Lindland documentary he was involved with. The idiotic article on Sherdog a year or so back about Dana cleaning up steroids in the sport and stuff. The guy is a fucking retard.

My personal issue has always been that fighters at the top of the card are deeply undervalued compared to the amount of money they bring in. But that’s not a sexy story. No one’s going to stump for fighters making $3-5 million dollars who should be making $12-20 million. And so we get nonsense about how club fighters that no one watches should make $100K a year with guaranteed contracts and lots of bad posts and opinions on the internet about this.

and gross’ piece was seriously terrible, i’m stunned ESPN let him publish it, frontpaged it, and attached OTL to it.

When people believe that fighters who go 0-1, 0-2 or 1-2 and end up out of the UFC are entitled to some kind of awesome compensation. 40K/40K plus health insurance and a pension for every fighter!

How does that make a shred of sense?

What is the minimum amount a fighter should be paid for in a single fight in the UFC? is there a number anyone can agree upon?

The UFC is a privately-owned company, the owners shouldn’t bother to comment on their company’s pay roll, they don’t owe us any justification. The UFC should do like 99.9% of business do and say: “no comment”.

We all know that these two have been whizzing and whining for years.
One seems to want to make his name by being “Anti-UFC” as in the concept that anyone or anything hugle sucdessful must be bad in some way.
the other seems to be looking for a lifetime job “representing the fighters”, as in they fight, he gets a cut of their pay for “standing up for them” against the people that pay their wages.
While both have axes to grind and feeble points to be badly made, they have both shown to use shaky logic, faulty facts and worse often.
As a former “VFW-level” quote/unquote pro boxer & wrestler that was lucky to beat minimum wage 40 years ago when it was one dollar an hour
I feel that the UFC wages are pretty decnet and apparently so do most of the winning fighters.
Anonymous critics’ opinions are worthless in the real world
If they are too afraid to put their name to their words then the words are not worth one cent.
Also as a former labor organizer I will assure you that any worker who is afraid to name his name and show his face is not someone that will ever, EVER stand up to his employer.
In the world of fighting the key to a healthy bank account is putting “Wins” on your record.
No one, not managers, not trainers, not coaches not “representatives”, not anyone from the media can assure a loser that he will be paid handsomely for losing.
Should there be a baseline similar to the $6K to show & $6K to win established and stuck to?
sure that is only fair and fair is the true American way.
Are thse two going to make that happen?
Not likely for neither has the savvy or the clout or the finesse or the heart to do so.
they are like the one & outers mentioned in the article.
To establish a real fighters organization or union you need a skill set that neither of these guys has.
To be able to do so a person has to not benefit personally from the effort. You cannot tie your own income to their theirs or you will be tainted and cripple your own effort.
You cannot be the “enemy” of the very ones you are trying to get more money from.
You cannot be helpless against them.
You cannot deal in heavyhanded ways in every negotiation.
You cannot just work on their behalf when it suits you or benfits you.
and you can’t just slink off to whine around the corner every time you are rebuffed or fail.
You have to keep looking for the KO or Sub that will give you the win.

This is a great article and expresses the issues I have with Gross’ article. It really made some crazy stretches in its logic.

Every time fighter pay comes up people talk about how expensive it is to bring in sparring partners, if it’s so expensive, why doesn’t everyone become professional sparring partners?

Who wrote this story?

Holy biased point of view.

Journalism 101 – remain objective. Sounds like a UFC butt kissing like never before courtesy of the author.

Note: it’s OK to be critical of the UFC when warranted. Lame rebuttal.

I agree with a lot of points made in the article on pay. Although the UFC brings in a lot of revenue, you can’t really compare it to an organization like the NFL. Comparing the UFC to an NFL team makes much more sense. I’ve collected 2 years worth of pay data and analyzed it in depth here. http://fightbonus.blogspot.com/

we are going to lose a lot of fighters if they go ahead and do this. In my opinion the UFC will end up cutting a lot of prospects at the lower pay rate if the minimum is now say 20k per fight. which means less fights for us. I think you have to make a name for yourself by winning fights to start getting payed what you are worth.

a free market economy. Zuffa fighters choose to fight on their own free will. This is not a slave labor camp where the fighters are forced into the profession. The amount of pay, high or low is totally irregardless. Anyone in America working a normal job whether it be at Mcdonalds or for a high paying law firm is paid totally at the discretion of the employer. If they want to make more and feel they could, their free to leave for another position. The other ridiculous part of this whole argument is that Zuffa runs everybody else out of the business in some sort of gangster or mafia fashion. As far as I know Dana White has never gone to a rival promotion with a gun and a group of thugs and said sell me your company. These businesses entered into the MMA market on their own free will, couldn’t make the business work, and folded. Zuffa actually did them a favor by purchasing the left overs. These companies could have walked away with nothing. Every business in the world has to stand on their own two feet and deal with competition. The idea that Zuffa should make poor business decisions in order to try and help the competition is insane. Instead of criticizing the UFC people who work and follow MMA should be singing their praises. They are the only company to date who has been able to keep the doors open and paychecks in their employees hands. Had they done things differently there is a good chance MMA wouldn’t even exist, thus fighters would have no jobs at all. Zuffa has single handedly taken MMA from being an illegal sport to being regulated around the world. This article doesn’t take into account the millions and millions of dollars the UFC has spent to get the sport legalized around the country and world. The NFL didn’t have to take it upon themselves to go state to state fighting to get the sport of football legalized. MMA is an infant sport, the UFC is an infant company and they are paying plenty of their fighters huge amounts of money. The pay scale is totally determined by the amount of revenue the individual fighter brings in. The fighters who draw eyeballs and revenue to the company are paid accordingly. Fighters who don’t are also paid accordingly. The UFC gives these fighters the spotlight to fight under. What the fighters do with that spotlight is up to them. That is what fight promotion is all about. They promote the fight and it’s up to the fighter to run with the opportunity by winning fights in exciting fashion. This is a witch hunt based on inaccurate information and little to no understanding of how business works.

prompts thought
isn’t transparently biased
isn’t purposely trying to garner attention

But

It has gained a huge readership and is discussion worthy

It’s the best piece I have ever read on Bloodyelbow

to start off with. And having shows virtually every weekend (seeming what will happen in the short term) is killing them. People can’t afford to buy that many PPVs.

Oh, and Dana is worth $150 mil, the Fertita bros at about $1 bil a piece.

They still have their loans and all to pay off though. Plus, the bigger they get, likely that fighters will get paid more and a larger roster. Plus they can cut people like Anthony “Jumbo” Johnson who don’t seem to take their jobs seriously.

This is completely wrong. Fighter pay has been increasing very quickly over the last several years in the UFC. And during this period, the annual revenue grew from a very small base to its current state. Fighter pay increased at a rate faster than the UFC’s revenue increased. I don’t have the analysis on me, but previous fanposts etc have proved this beyond doubt.

Is that the guys earning 6/6 are probably not even unhappy about that deal, and don’t feel that they are entitled to more. It’s only keyboard warriors getting their soiled panties in a knot over this.

Yes Unions can be good and bad, but as a member of a union who is a part time worker= low level fighter, I consistently see my union do things that only directly benefit the full time workers = high level fighter which has on more then one occasion negatively affected the part time workers, as someone mentioned earlier unions come with both good and bad

This $175 million accounts for roughly 75% of the UFC’s net yearly revenue. The other 25% is comprised of TV licenses, site fees, gate revenue and merchandise meaning the UFC makes roughly $218 million in net revenue each year.

From what I can gather, you took 25% of 175 million (43.75 million) and added it to that number to get 218.75 million, rounded down to 218 million. You took 25% of the figure that was supposed to represent 75% of the number you are looking for. Try doing that with the number 75. You get 93.75, not 100.

Correct formula: 75% of X = $175 million | X = $175,000,000 / 0.75 = $233,333,333.33⅓ ≈ $233 million. Yes that is a significant difference. Also the percentage of gross revenue (you shouldn’t use the term “net revenue” since that’s supposed to be pure profit; it’s still gross revenue if the UFC doesn’t even see a dime of it before the PPV distributors take their share) that the UFC gets from PPV that I’d heard wasn’t 75%, it was lower than that, but I could be wrong. That would also raise the final figure here if true.