the " boxing has been around longer " excuse for low pay in ufc

[T Hab]

Originally Posted by panamaican

The problem is that while there is reason to believe that the result of a union will be lower employment and that the total pay for fighters wouldn't be higher than if they was no union at all.

As per your source, that's only if the UFC is overemployed (ie they have too many fights on each card).

I'm not sure if that is the case, but if it were, then yes, increases in pay could lead to a fight or two less on each undercard.

[panamaican]

Originally Posted by T Hab

Here is a sample of Bellator salaries:

Bellator 35 salaries: Welterweight tourney winners each bank $20K | MMAjunkie.com

(On a side note, poor Mr. Castro... only made $500).

The top paid fighters made $20,000. Now, I don't pretend to know locker room bonuses, but there is a massive scale difference here. GSP, in one fight, makes more than all Bellator fighters across two events. (This is using published paydays, again, I'm not pretending to have insider knowledge).

By published paydays, Bellator actually pays quite a bit more than the others on your list. This is a bit dated, but here is a comparison of KOTC, K1, and a UFC Fight night. The total fighter payroll for KOTC was less than 12% of the payroll for the UFC fight night. In 3 Fight nights (or one PPV show), the UFC more than covers all of KOTC's annual payroll.

- UFC, KOTC, AND K-1 SALARY BREAKDOWN | MMAWeekly.com

So, instead of completely flying in the face of "how many events there are," I am objectively looking at what matters. At a quick glance, it would seem like Zuffa is paying 60-80% of salaries in professional MMA. This doesn't include the long-rumoured lock-room bonuses, which are also probably much bigger in Zuffa than outside Zuffa (pure speculation, but I doubt you will argue this).

UFC is definitely a brand leader too, there is no doubt about that, but Zuffa, with UFC and Strikeforce, is clearly a monopsony.

I can't take this much further without access to payroll.

Regarding the 2005 numbers. The UFC event had a 90% share of payroll with only one other event on record, the KOTC event. Given the numbe of other events that take place during the same period. It would only require 6 additional events of similar payroll to the KOTC event to reduce the UFC payroll to under 60% and only 2 additional events to get under 80%. I've already established that just 6 organzitions already produce 3 times the events that the UFC does. While I'm sure it doesn't scale directly, when you factor in the remaining global MMA organizations it doesn't require a leap of logic to see that the UFC is unlikely to be providing more than 60% of the payroll in the MMA industry.

Unfortunately, the majority of organization payroll figures are hard to find so I'm going to drop this since I can't substantiate my claims or further and neither can you. Of course, I stand by my position that we're dealing with several large employers and low replacement wages. You're welcome to stand by yours that there is a monopsony.

...of course, you would be wrong. j/k

[panamaican]

Originally Posted by T Hab

As per your source, that's only if the UFC is overemployed (ie they have too many fights on each card).

I'm not sure if that is the case, but if it were, then yes, increases in pay could lead to a fight or two less on each undercard.

Per my source, overemployment, under individual bargaining, is a natural occurrence relative to the most efficient employment figure. Underemployment via collective bargaining.

The way I read that is that whenever you switch from individual bargaining to collective margaining you're going to see a decrease in total employment numbers. The wage issue seems more complicated.

[T Hab]

Originally Posted by panamaican

Regarding the 2005 numbers. The UFC event had a 90% share of payroll with only one other event on record, the KOTC event. Given the numbe of other events that take place during the same period. It would only require 6 additional events of similar payroll to the KOTC event to reduce the UFC payroll to under 60% and only 2 additional events to get under 80%.

One small event (fight night, not PPV) had 8 times the payroll of one typical KOTC event. So, if KOTC had 5 times as many events, then the UFC would have more than 60% of the payroll AT UFC FIGHT NIGHT PAYROLLS!

That means, with only 17% of the total amount of events it could have over 60% of the payroll.

That's not including PPV numbers, and those typically have more than double the payrolls of Fight Nights when there are no big draws fighting and up to six times the payroll when there are big draws fighting (Silva, GSP, Lesnar, etc) since those big draws distort the payroll significantly. Once you factor in those events, the UFC could have 60% of the payroll with only about 8% of total major events.

That of course doesn't even include locker room bonuses, which I highly doubt are significant in other organizations relative to Zuffa nor does it include Strikeforce events.

Anyway, once you go beyond the list of organizations that you provided, there will be select few that pay anything that would have an impact on market share.

Of course, once you start talking about low-level shows, I'm not even sure that you can consider it the same market. Those fights are for people doing MMA as a sport, not as a profession. They typically pay in the hundreds.

Long story short, monopsony.

[T Hab]

Originally Posted by panamaican

Per my source, overemployment, under individual bargaining, is a natural occurrence relative to the most efficient employment figure. Underemployment via collective bargaining.

The way I read that is that whenever you switch from individual bargaining to collective margaining you're going to see a decrease in total employment numbers. The wage issue seems more complicated.

I interpreted that article a bit differently, and even so it's just one article, but ah well... Not important. Even so, think about what over-employment means in the UFC. They pay per fight, not a fixed salary, so over-employment looks like one of two things:

Too many fights per card or too many cards.

I'm not convinced that the UFC is over-employed, but your article wasn't relevant to monopsonies anyway ;)

[straight6]

Originally Posted by Tarantula152

It's starting to change now, but the reason fighters get paid smaller in UFC is because MMA in general has 100x more sponsorship contracts behind it compared to boxing. When a boxer trains for a fight, that's it for him. He needs to win to take everything, very few boxers get sponsorship contracts. Almost every UFC fighter has a sponsorship contract of some sort, some fighters carrying more than one.

Take Anderson Silva for example...

Silver Star contract - $210,000 a year
Sinister Brand contract - $150,000 a year
TapouT contract - $350,000 a year
RVCA contract - $150,000 a year

And that's just some of his CLOTHING sponsorships, I'm leaving out all the sports drinks and the MMA commercials, etc.

Thats actually not really the case. More sponsorship money will go to the more mainstream sports. Ex. NBA stars sometime make more money outside of playing ball/salary contracts. MMA sponsorship so far has been very early stage and cant compare to other sports

MMA sponsorship usually is quite low and none mainstream brand/products, no where near NBA, NFL, boxing, etc. Pacquiao gets sponsorship from NIKE (millions a yr) along with other top brand of mainstream products.....

[Tis BOOLsheet]

just saying dana and the fertitas pocket all the money is retarded. obviously since zuffa is private, no one knows what the company looks like, but you can still tell they put a LOT of that money back into marketing. ufc is a marketing machine. and unlike in boxing, we actually have cohesive marketing thanks to UFC.

its possible that if fighters get big enough, they could say "i dont need dana white anymore" and do their own fights, which is pretty much whats happened in boxing.

[sfsy1]

Dana White and the Fertittas deserves that amount of money if the UFC is only made up of fighters, Dana White and the Fertittas.

Too bad a company is much more than it's owners and CEO.

[Demonix***]

Originally Posted by paypayvay

when we start comparing boxing salaries vs mma salaries , lot of people , for some reason think that the ufc keeping the lion's share of the profit has something to do with mma being a recent sport .........i don't buy that shit ...i know it's been said before , but fighters are getting fucking robbed man

example ? shane carwin = 40 k , he fought in the main event of a card that did more than one million buys . ( fight vs brock lesnar )


nonito donaire = got 350 K for a unification fight in the bantamweight division ( 118 pounds ) , the fight was not even a PPV , it was on HBO boxing after dark , aka the lowest HBO boxing program . HBO BAD often does some horrible ratings

it's not fair , dana white and the fertittas are taking all the money

boxing is that sport where fighters fight once every 2 years because you idiots pay them 20 mil a fight...

[Tis BOOLsheet]

Originally Posted by Demonix

boxing is that sport where fighters fight once every 2 years because you idiots pay them 20 mil a fight...

this.