Ben Askren On Reebok Pay: 'It's Pretty Terrible'

[Rebel_LioN]

The UFC signed a six-year agreement with Reebok in 2015. That deal made Reebok the official provider of fight week apparel for all fighters on the UFC roster. What that meant for the fighters was that they could no longer advertise sponsors on their attire during fight week or on fight night. The current pay structure under the deal sees fighters with one to three UFC fights earning $3,500. Fighters four to ten UFC fights on their record make $5,000. If a fighter has 11 to 15 bouts, they receive $10,000, while those with 16 to 20 bouts make $15,000. The top tier, for those fighters who have more than 21 UFC contests pays $20,000. Title challengers make $30,000 and champions receive $40,000.

Askren pointed out that the $3,500 represents a significant drop in earnings for him.

“Sponsorship’s been all over the place,” he said. “Even when I was a nobody in Bellator, I made $20,000 on a fight. Those were the wild days. Back then, guys in the UFC were making six figures on sponsorship stuff.”

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.fo...tfitting-program-pay-its-pretty-terrible/amp/

 

[DarkneT]

In other news

Water is wet

 

[ZxxRnn]

The reebox coupons are priceless tho

 

[OzoneX]

Askren was never my friend.

 

[Klaavical]

Walmart gift cards > Reebok pay

 

[Rebel_LioN]

Conor only has 11 fights in the UFC which means he gets 10k!!! If he fights 5 more times they’ll bump it up to 15k lmfao..

Askren will probably facing the elite of WW very soon, and he’ll still get paid only 3,500 in sponsor money.

The reebork deal ends in 2021, we’ve got 2 more years of this shit.

 

[Kvothe_the_kingkiller]

If his manager didn't work the low Reebok pay into contract negotiations, then Askren should consider new management.

 

[Blayt7hh]

Yeah we know, it’s been a running joke on these boards Ben

 

[surgeyou1]

Conor only has 11 fights in the UFC which means he gets 10k!!! If he fights 5 more times they’ll bump it up to 15k lmfao..

Askren will probably facing the elite of WW very soon, and he’ll still get paid only 3,500 in sponsor money.

The reebork deal ends in 2021, we’ve got 2 more years of this shit.

Conor has an exclusive deal with Reebok so he's not being paid in that structure.

 

[Rebel_LioN]

It takes 21 fights to earn 20k.

If a fighter is lucky enough to have 3 fights a year, that’s 7-10 years in the business in order to go from 3,500 to 20,000 lol.

 

[L.T.]

He's on the lowest tier of that payscale. It's a Joke at that level. Like 2,500 a fight. Lol. Nik Lentz makes like 100k on that scale.

 

[FireKidWS]

Doing it by UFC fights doesn’t even make sense.

It’s a terrible deal either way, but they should tier it by how high on the card you are.

 

[SleepyBoy]

Can he even fit a Reebok hat on his giant Ferrell-fro?

 

[awymore]

Walmart gift cards > Reebok pay

Oh man, laughing just imaging Dana sliding Wal-Mart gift cards into fighters' pockets before walkout telling them, "Got get em stud." Priceless.

 

[Phisher]

If his manager didn't work the low Reebok pay into contract negotiations, then Askren should consider new management.

This assumes that there's anything resembling a real "market" for fighters and that "negotiations" at present are anything other than the UFC dictating terms.

They knew that Askren was only interested in fighting if it was for the UFC, so what leverage did his management have?

 

[svmVR2097]

The sooner the fighters on the active roster bring a case against the UFC to be classified as employees, the better

 

[Satan's Daddy.]

Sorry, Askren but nobody buys reebok, or addidas clothing these days... Unless they're 50 year old golfers, that want to be "stylin"

 

[Taric]

Well, yeah.

 

[Kvothe_the_kingkiller]

This assumes that there's anything resembling a real "market" for fighters and that "negotiations" at present are anything other than the UFC dictating terms.

They knew that Askren was only interested in fighting if it was for the UFC, so what leverage did his management have?

Askren was retired. They 'traded' for him. He had plenty. I seriously doubt he accepted their first offer (but of course I don't know for sure because, to quote Hamilton, no one else was in the room where it happened).

He made $200k + $150k against Lawler (source). That is substantially more than they offered Alvarez (source = https://canadianmmalawblog.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/eddie-alvarez-contract.pdf, Article VI) who we know for a fact negotiated hard, and substantially more than most fighters with 20 fights.

But my real point was this: I felt bad for existing UFC fighters when UFC started taxing sponsors, and I felt bad for existing UFC fighters when UFC replaced all sponsors with Reebok. I even feel bad for new fightings signing $10k/$10k and getting $2500 in Reebok money. But I don't feel bad for a fighter with some negotiation leverage who - after signing the contract with all the information available to him - suddenly realized that Reebok is paying him 10% of what they're paying Derek Brunson or Ed Herman.

 

[Mr. Jamie Cee]

He won’t be saying that when they release his new fight kit, emblazoned with, ‘Bill Askren’.