$25 million in Bonuses for a UFC Executive, Who's Probably Dana White White

I used it generically. My point was there are far more marketers and people who can be promoters than top tier fight talent who can be a star. The point is the same.

Yeah, how many of those champs are stars? I can count on one hand, maybe 2, how many stars the UFC has ever had. I can count on a couple fingers what it is at any given time.

He's had a few good decisions and ideas, but he's not exactly great with his gut instincts (Zuffa boxing, Paige and Sage, Greg Hardy, being against TUF and women's mma, etc.) Not to mention shitting on your stars all the time is the opposite of promoting, unless you're setting up an anti authority star. Which is too creative for UFC marketing historically.


My parents don't know what MMA is. They know what the UFC is.

Think like a casual.


Nobody know the Bellatour
 
This part is utter bullshit. Fedor made millions despite never setting foot in the UFC. Chandler and Alvarez were likely millionaires pre-UFC.

You’re not addressing what you quoted.
Making millions in total over a career is not the same as “making millions per fight today”.

Back to the point. What mma is today is mostly thanks to Dana. Fighters earn more in all organizations thanks to what Dana succeeded with (making mma big by making the UFC big). Bellator would not be what it is today had the UFC just folded in 2001. Mma as a hole would most likely have looked similar to K1 or something like that.
 
My parents don't know what MMA is. They know what the UFC is.

Think like a casual.


Nobody know the Bellatour
Sure, but your parents aren't buying PPVs. People buy PPVs for the stars, not the UFC brand name. If people brought PPVs for the brand, all PPVs would do the same amount of buys, and that's wildly different from reality.
Making millions in total over a career is not the same as “making millions per fight today”.
Fedor's payout for Affliction was almost certainly over a million. Disclosed purse off $300k with Tim Sylvia making $800k. So unless you think Sylvia was the A side, Fedor broke a million that night. And that's in 2008.
Fighters earn more in all organizations thanks to what Dana succeeded with (making mma big by making the UFC big)
Dana was important, but again, not more important than the actual stars who raked in money for the UFC. Again, the talent pool for promoters and executives is vastly larger than the one for elite fighters, let alone elite fighters with star power.
 
Guy runs a highly successful business and gets a large bonus.

What’s the issue??
None really from a purely business perspective. Just an interesting fact for people who insist the UFC is only scraping by and can't afford to pay fighters and revenue generating fighters a larger cut of revenue. Or interesting for those who claim to be fans of the sport, rather than the UFC as a promotion.
 
The UFC's parent company filed for another IPO a few weeks ago, so there are some interesting tidbits in its S-1. One of those is equity-based compensation in WME and Zuffa for a "senior executive" who's current employment agreement is through Dec. 31, 2028. Odds are, that's Dana White as he was given a contract in 2019 for 7 years, and most WME executives who got bonuses are listed by name. So unless there is a senior VP at the UFC/Zuffa who is getting a bigger bonus than the president, that senior executive is Dana.

For hitting various UFC equity thresholds, Dana would receive $12.5 million ($14 million if it was after an IPO) for each instance. These aren't lump sums, they're vested over 2 years. Dana hit thresholds in June 2019 and December 2020, so he received 2 payments totaling $25 million (What's known in Dana White speak as "Deontay Wilder money")

Further, Dana was in line for a $25 million bonus based on the value of WME as a whole ($28 million if post-IPO). But the Writer's Guild Strike, first IPO attempt that failed, and Covid seriously dropped WME's value. Depending on how their 2nd IPO attempt goes, WME may very well hit that threshold and Dana might collect another cool $28 million (again, Deontay Wilder money).

As far as the rest of the bonuses related to UFC management, they are below. I'm not sure if they include Dana's payouts or not. They include several other UFC executives based on the holding companies those awards go to. And those figures are budget totals, so there is some overhead baked in.

UFC Management Awards (page F-51 if anyone is curious) and other stuff
2018:
$11.1 million
2019: $38.9 million
2020: $31.7 million

Also, in 2019, 2 senior executives redeemed $33 million in stock bonuses.

Finally, if anyone is curious on overall UFC revenue and profit, Endeavor gives its revenue and EBITDA for sports properties, which consist of the UFC, PBR and EuroLeague basketball. It's not broken down by sport, but the UFC is about/more than 80 percent of those revenues.

2018: $772.7 million in revenue, 35.1 percent EBITDA
2019: $935.8 million in revenue, 44.6 percent EBITDA (UFC signed the ESPN PPV deal that year)
2020: $952.6 million in revenue, 48 percent EBITDA (despite the UFC losing out on about $100 million in gate money)

Long story short, it's been a great few years for the UFC, especially during Covid. And Dana White has made more in bonuses the last three years than almost any UFC fighter has made in their entire career. The only exception there is Conor McGregor. If we include other bonuses and dividends Dana has gotten during his tenure, he's made more than Conor without even including his base salary as UFC president.

high ranks of companies make more then the people they hire to work for them. wow who knew. what do you bet the share holders of amazon make way more money than the people who load the trucks up.

when dana sold his shares of the ufc he made more money than conor that nore breaking news.
 
high ranks of companies make more then the people they hire to work for them. wow who knew. what do you bet the share holders of amazon make way more money than the people who load the trucks up.
I don't doubt it. But Amazon is spending more than 20 percent on labor. Also not sure what relevance Amazon has to the UFC.
 
Fedor's payout for Affliction was almost certainly over a million. Disclosed purse off $300k with Tim Sylvia making $800k. So unless you think Sylvia was the A side, Fedor broke a million that night. And that's in 2008.

You are not thinking about primaries. What was needed to happen first in order for other things to be able to happen? Affliction, an org that went broke, would not have existed without the success of the UFC in the years prior making the market grow. Especially important for mma’s growth as a whole was TUF 1 and it’s finale which was back in 2005.

Dana was important, but again, not more important than the actual stars who raked in money for the UFC. Again, the talent pool for promoters and executives is vastly larger than the one for elite fighters, let alone elite fighters with star power.

UFC made their fighters into stars. Something that Bellator can’t figure out how to do to this day.

Dana is a visionary in mma. That is hard to replace. As a comparison look at what happened with Apple in the early to mid 90’s after they got rid of Jobs. They almost went under - until they got Jobs back.
 
You are not thinking about primaries. What was needed to happen first in order for other things to be able to happen? Affliction, an org that went broke, would not have existed without the success of the UFC in the years prior making the market grow. Especially important for mma’s growth as a whole was TUF 1 and it’s finale which was back in 2005.
And the UFC needed the Gracie challenge, Vale Tudo, Pancrase, Catch Wrestling or any other myriad influences. It's not like the UFC was the starting point of mma as a sport. The UFC was posting good PPV numbers pre-Zuffa. TUF was important, but not as important as people like to remember.
UFC made their fighters into stars. Something that Bellator can’t figure out how to do to this day.
If we dumped GSP, Conor and Jones in Bellator with a few other names, they would have been stars. The UFC internally was predicting 2 million buys for Fedor/Brock. All this is to say, the UFC gets behind stars. They don't make stars.
Dana is a visionary in mma.
Yes, such a visionary that he opposed TUF only to be overruled by the Fertitas. And so visionary that he was vehemently against women's mma until the last minute. You have strange definitions of visionary.
 
Paying off strippers and random affairs aint cheap
 
The amount of Dana White apologists and nut-riders in this thread is sickening.
 
And the UFC needed the Gracie challenge, Vale Tudo, Pancrase, Catch Wrestling or any other myriad influences. It's not like the UFC was the starting point of mma as a sport. The UFC was posting good PPV numbers pre-Zuffa. TUF was important, but not as important as people like to remember.

Yes the UFC needed that. The difference is that Dana and the Fertitta’s made something largely profitable out of all of this.

If we dumped GSP, Conor and Jones in Bellator with a few other names, they would have been stars. The UFC internally was predicting 2 million buys for Fedor/Brock. All this is to say, the UFC gets behind stars. They don't make stars.

It helps a great deal to get marketable fighters, yes.
If you dumped all those fighters in Bellator after the fact that they were already stars, sure. But this is a fallacious argument.
A better way to approach this is to look at how many other organizations make stars out of their fighters. Not many is the answer. Not even today when mma is pretty much more popular than ever.

Yes, such a visionary that he opposed TUF only to be overruled by the Fertitas. And so visionary that he was vehemently against women's mma until the last minute. You have strange definitions of visionary.

Sure. He’s made mistakes. But on a whole he’s been crucial for the success of modern mma.
 
...............
He's had a few good decisions and ideas, but he's not exactly great with his gut instincts (Zuffa boxing, Paige and Sage, Greg Hardy, being against TUF and women's mma, etc.) Not to mention shitting on your stars all the time is the opposite of promoting, unless you're setting up an anti authority star. Which is too creative for UFC marketing historically.

Agreed. UFC lost money every year with Dana at the helm and Fertittas were looking for an exit before TUF1, so I never got why people think that Dana was such a genius unless Fertitta's idea of running a business well is to lose money continuously.

And to add to your list Dana blew Brock off repeatedly until he had to literally jump over the guardrails and push his way through security to talk to Dana. Then Dana thought he could replicate the same money making formula with CM Punk and generously offered him more money than Lesnar.
 
Who cares and why is this news? Dana is worth half a billion dollars I'm not going to fret over him making 25 million in bonuses.
 
Greedy fucks and their supporters/lackeys/boot-lickers everywhere...
 
Nigel Benn and Chris Eubank earned more for there fight in the UK in 1990, than Ngannou did when he won the UFC gold.
 
And yet, in investor meetings the most common concern from investors has been reported as "can we keep fighter pay constant." The UFC's revenue has been growing steadily, but that's not the truly remarkable bit. What's remarkable is that fighter pay has not gone over 20 percent in the past 10 or 15 years, despite revenue tripling or quadrupling and the roster exploding in size. There are very few legal businesses that can boast about spending only 20 percent of revenue on labor and production costs ( the fighter is most of the production cost).
which investor meetings are you referencing? and you put it in quotes - is that a quote from multiple investor meetings? i don't doubt that expenses are a question for any business - it's the #1 lever for managing earnings. but i'm sure revenue growth is just as important or moreso long term.

and obviously if the payout % is relatively constant, if revenue is quadrupling then pay is quadrupling as well. i know it sounds better to say revenue quadrupled and pay stayed the same......

none of this means this issue is closed. there will always be tensions and pressures in both directions for different reasons. i'd love to see the % increase, but hopefully without too much of a heavy hand from outsiders / regulatory bodies.
 
Plenty of ppl work hard. The work ethic of executives is nothing remarkable compared to say, a single parent working 2 jobs to raise their family. If you want to justify Dana's pay, it would be based on things he's done, not work ethic. And clearly his too stars are more valuable to the sport than him.

This is an absolutely ridiculous statement driven by either a naïve lack of understanding or a sick need to virtue-signal. The work Dana White does is not even remotely comparable to a single parent working 2 jobs to raise their family. Pat yourself on the back all you want, but please work as hard as the single parent to become less ignorant.
 
I don't doubt it. But Amazon is spending more than 20 percent on labor. Also not sure what relevance Amazon has to the UFC.

amazon makes what billions a month in profits so i bet the labor isnt paid billions in wages.

owners keep more of the profits cause they are the owners it not breaking news.
 
Shertards will tell you not to begrudge a man who seeks more money unless its a UFC fighter.
 
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