Bloody Elbow seems ablaze lately with discussions of UFC monopolies, Fighter Unions, and Zuffa Finances. One question pertinent to all these debates, and which hasn't been answered yet, is how are the fighters doing? Are they making more under a Zuffa monoply? Could they and should they be making more? While I doubt we can definitively answer those questions, how about we try, just for the hell of it.

First off, lets see how much, if any, better paid fighters are today than they were back in 2004 before the TUF explosion. This should be fairly easy. If we compare the payouts for the four UFC events that were released by the NSAC back in 2004 to the four most recently released UFC cards (which would be UFC 116, UFC 117, UFC 118, and UFC 121) we should get a quick answer to the question "are fighters making more?"

Total released payouts for UFC 46, UFC 47, UFC 48, UFC 49: $1,994,500

Average fighter pay for these four events: $31,164

Median fighter pay for these four events: $8,000

Total released payout (including fight, submission, and knockout of the night bonuses) for UFC 116, 117,118, 121: $5,836,000

Average fighter pay for these four events: $68,900

Median fighter pay for these four events $23,000

Wow. Fighter pay has gone up a whopping 221% and the median pay has almost tripled since 2004. Well, that answers that, there can be no doubt that fighters make a lot more now than they did 6 years ago.

Of course, it doesn't tell us everything. The other question, besides are they making more today, is "are they getting their fair share?"  Lets compare those events again, but this time lets compare payout as percentage of revenue.

UFC 46, 47, 48, and 49 sold a grand total of 375,000 payperview buys at $34.95 a ppv, while UFC 116, 117, 118, and 121 sold a grand total of 3,380,000 payperviews at either $44.95 (for standard def) or $54.95 (for HD). To make it easier to calculate let's split the difference and say it's $49.95 for every payperview buy. I think this is fair, considering that we aren't even counting bar license fees which have risen tremendously since 2004. Also, we got to keep in mind that back then Zuffa probably made somewhere around 40% of all payperview sales as part of their agreement with the providers. That has since risen to above 50%, but in trying to make it easier on myself and to be conservative in our calculations lets say it's 50% for both those sold in 2004 and 2010. What's that give us:

UFC 46, 47, 48, and 49 total payperview sales (375,000) x $34.95 x 50% (split with provider) = $6,553,125

UFC 116, 117, 118, and 121 total payperview sales (3,380,000) x $49.95 x 50% (split with provider) = $84,415,000

Now if we divide the payroll of those payperviews by the sales we get what the percentage of payroll to revenue is:

UFC 46, 47, 48, and 49  total reported payout ($1,994,500) / total payperview revenue ($6,553,125) =  30.4%

UFC 116, 117, 118, and 121 total reported payout ($5,836,000)/ total payperview revenue ($84,415,000) = 6.9%

Now I know this doesn't include locker room bonuses nor payperview cuts, so lets take a quick look at a recent event where we have a much clearer picture of the payout: UFC 114. For UFC 114 Dave Meltzer reported that when payperview bonuses were included Rampage made S2 million dollars, while Evans made $1 million. If we include their pay with the rest of the card, we get a total of $3,821,00 for an event that sold 1,050,000 payperviews buys.

UFC 114 total payperview sales (1,050) x $49.95 x 50% (split with provider) = $26,223,750

UFC 114  total reported payout ($3,821,000) / total payperview revenue ($26,223,750) =  14.6%

Well, that's a lot better. Of course, if one were to remember that it doesn't include the many additional sources of revenue that Zuffa has gained since 2004 from Spike, media licensing, or foreign sales, that percentage would drop again. In fact, payperview is now only 60% of all revenue, where back in 2004 payperview and gate were almost the only source of revenue. But of course, to be fair again, Zuffa was losing money back then.

The only thing I can definitively declare is that the dramatic increase in pay that fighters have seen since 2004 is matched by an equally dramatic decrease in their share of the percentage of revenue.  Now if this is "good" or "bad" I'll leave that to you to judge.