Collective bargaining would be untenable in the UFC

I just think the application of the Ali act to mma would probably be illegal. I don’t see a strong basis for government infringement on these promotions ability to do business.
I mean ... the system is almost the same as boxing. The only difference is the UFC is now acting as one massive Don King, holding a monopoly over almost all of the top athletes in the sport.

The UFC are trying to have it both ways. When it comes to the Ali Act they claim they're a league, not a promoter -- so long contracts like the NHL are okay. But then when it comes to collective bargaining they claim they're not a league, they're a promoter -- so the athletes are independent contractors.

You cannot make both arguments to suit your position on an individual issue. One of the two is inevitable. In fact, the UFC are really a league and a promoter -- the worst case scenario for them. The two are not mutually exclusive. The legal grounds are met for both the formation of a union and the application of the Ali Act.

They do become mutually exclusive once one resolution is met, though. Once a union is formed, the Ali Act would be off the table -- and vice-versa.

It hasn’t happened yet so I don’t see why its inevitable.
Because the change has to come from MMA megastars. Either a group of MMA stars would need to organize and lead fighters to form a union, or MMA star(s) would need to take the UFC to court in a contract dispute and have the Ali Act applied to MMA.

These issues take decades to build and resolve. The UFC has really only been "mainstream" for about a decade, so it wouldn't be shocking to see these issues take another 10 years to resolve.
 
The thing is, unions in the United States have very specific rules. With 50% revenue sharing, a Union would eliminate private backroom bonuses. All fighter bonuses would be legally required to be publicly disclosed and counted towards the revenue sharing. If the UFC gave Jon Jones a $500k car, that would have to count towards revenue sharing.

And the UFC would have the power (and in fact be legally obligated) to hold certain fighter pay in escrow. If they then decided to pay Conor McGregor $100 million and the UFC's revenue share went under 50% revenue sharing, all of the other fighters would end up paying for Conor's bonus pay.

This may sound crazy, but this is actually how the system would work according to the law. As a result, the fighters would demand 1) minimum salaries for low and mid tier fighters, and 2) maximum salaries relative to the lowest paid fighters. If the UFC fighters actually formed a union, every fighter gets an equal "vote" in the union. There's no way the average fighter is going to vote to allow guys like Conor to make $50 million, while their minimum salaries are only 25k.
That’s why it can be an association and not a union. Unions do not have to negotiate revenue sharing they can negotiate minimum conditions. If I am part of a labour union like plumbers or other trades the min rate might be $20/hr. I can hire a union tradesman and pay him $40/hr if I want but I can’t pay him $10/hr.

Leagues have a max salary that was negotiated collectively along with the min. Not sure why Conor or any other fighters level of pay is the issue.
 
You take away the right to cut and guarantee a certain number of fights and I think you would see a much smaller pool of talent make it to the UFC as the selection process would become much tighter since they would have to commit 3 fights and not want to get stuck with an underperformer, or someone they deem "boring."
That’s fine with me.
 
That’s why it can be an association and not a union. Unions do not have to negotiate revenue sharing they can negotiate minimum conditions. If I am part of a labour union like plumbers or other trades the min rate might be $20/hr. I can hire a union tradesman and pay him $40/hr if I want but I can’t pay him $10/hr.

Leagues have a max salary that was negotiated collectively along with the min. Not sure why Conor or any other fighters level of pay is the issue.
I mean, employee unions and athlete unions are slightly different. One major difference is that virtually all major sports unions end up with a 50/50 split of profits with the owners -- employees of a company don't end up in the same situation.

Because of the 50/50 split, part of athletes salary is put into Escrow. If the athletes make $500 million, but profits were only $800 million, then $100 million is paid from the athlete salaries to the league owner. In that case, all of the athletes end up with a 20% pay cut.

So if the UFC are set to make $500 million profit, and pay the athletes $250 million, but then they decide to pay Conor McGregor $100 million for a PPV that bombs, the profits might only be $550 million. Now the athletes are getting $275 million with Conor taking up over 30% of that number. They end up taking a massive paycut because the UFC overpaid another fighter.

This is why maximum salaries are so important for athlete unions in leauges with revenue sharing.
 
I mean ... the system is almost the same as boxing. The only difference is the UFC is now acting as one massive Don King, holding a monopoly over almost all of the top athletes in the sport.

They don’t hold a monopoly, as we have seen. And certainly not for the majority of the roster.

Don king used to have fighters sign lifetime contracts.

The UFC are trying to have it both ways. When it comes to the Ali Act they claim they're a league, not a promoter -- so long contracts like the NHL are okay. But then when it comes to collective bargaining they claim they're not a league, they're a promoter -- so the athletes are independent contractors.

I never heard them claim to be a league. Do you have a quote? And I’ve never heard them comment about collective bargaining.

You cannot make both arguments to suit your position on an individual issue. One of the two is inevitable. In fact, the UFC are really a league and a promoter -- the worst case scenario for them. The two are not mutually exclusive. The legal grounds are met for both the formation of a union and the application of the Ali Act.

They are not a league. Again, I’ve never seen them make that reference (other than compare themselves to the premier league in soccer in terms of their positioning).

They do become mutually exclusive once one resolution is met, though. Once a union is formed, the Ali Act would be off the table -- and vice-versa.

Ali act already seems far away though and again the issues that lead to the Ali act are not present in nearly the same way.

Because the change has to come from MMA megastars. Either a group of MMA stars would need to organize and lead fighters to form a union, or MMA star(s) would need to take the UFC to court in a contract dispute and have the Ali Act applied to MMA.

And we know the megastars won’t want to organize and they also would know that the Ali act would be bad for them.

These issues take decades to build and resolve. The UFC has really only been "mainstream" for about a decade, so it wouldn't be shocking to see these issues take another 10 years to resolve.

I guess we’ll see.

Again, I think the right move for them from a PR standpoint would be to do more for the long term well being of the fighters who have fought for them.
 
I mean, employee unions and athlete unions are slightly different. One major difference is that virtually all major sports unions end up with a 50/50 split of profits with the owners -- employees of a company don't end up in the same situation.

Because of the 50/50 split, part of athletes salary is put into Escrow. If the athletes make $500 million, but profits were only $800 million, then $100 million is paid from the athlete salaries to the league owner. In that case, all of the athletes end up with a 20% pay cut.

So if the UFC are set to make $500 million profit, and pay the athletes $250 million, but then they decide to pay Conor McGregor $100 million for a PPV that bombs, the profits might only be $550 million. Now the athletes are getting $275 million with Conor taking up over 30% of that number. They end up taking a massive paycut because the UFC overpaid another fighter.

This is why maximum salaries are so important for athlete unions in leauges with revenue sharing.
The only athletes that have revenue sharing are in team sports leagues with 30+ franchises competing for talent. There’s no revenue sharing I’m aware of for any individual sport. And none of a “profit sharing” that I’m aware of.

These league have long term fixed contracts in place with a long track record of revenues that guarantees they will hit a certain level and they collectively bargain to stay within a range. Part of it is protecting them from not overspending in a competitive landscape. It not only sets a floor but a ceiling which of course is to their benefit.

Well we seem to agree that a union isn’t really practical for mma.
 
I didn't hear about that? Did they really take half his money?

I agree that Conor isn't willing to fight without be paid his worth. And certainly if they took half his money, he probably won't even consider fighting again until they pay him that money back.

If I was in his position, as a matter of principle I wouldn't fight with them again until they paid me the money they owed me.
No, they didn’t “take half his money”.

They make money as the promoter and pay conor his purse and ppv money .
 
They don’t hold a monopoly, as we have seen. And certainly not for the majority of the roster.
They certainly meet the legal requirements for a monopoly. They've sabotaged and bought out competition.

Don king used to have fighters sign lifetime contracts.
The UFC are doing similar things. They keep athletes under contract for life if they don't fight out their contracts. And those contracts mean the UFC retains all rights to their image, likeness, and all associated marketing rights. So until GSP fights out his contract, the UFC own all of his rights forever.

I never heard them claim to be a league. Do you have a quote? And I’ve never heard them comment about collective bargaining.
You're right that they've said very little in public official channels. Their lawyers have likely told them to simply never address the topic or make any statements.

There was an article a few years back about extending the Ali Act to MMA, and the UFC had taken steps to pre-emptively oppose it without "officially" addressing the issue. There were rumors that they were claiming they were more "like" a league than a promoter. And when Randy Couture went to Congress, a Congressman told the UFC and Bellator to "move towards a real league model" or risk the Ali Act being applied to MMA.

So unofficially the UFC were working on a "league" defense against the Ali Act, but that would require them to admit that athletes are not independent contractors.

https://www.foxsports.com/ufc/story...protections-to-mma-hires-lobbying-firm-061316
 
No, they didn’t “take half his money”.

They make money as the promoter and pay conor his purse and ppv money .
Ya I was confused. I thought the guy meant they took half of his money for the Khabib fight. As in some kind of dispute that they just never paid him the other half.

But I guess he was talking about half of his money from the Floyd Mayweather fight. And as you said, they were Conor's promoter for that fight, so they were entitled to half of the money.
 
I agree that the lowest level MMA fighters will always be "underpaid". Without a union, whether you follow the current UFC model or the boxing model, the top end always benefit the most. This is just simple free market, scale free economics. The distributions of salaries will follow power laws.

I also agree that MMA as a whole might suffer from the Ali Act. If you break up the UFC monopoly, then MMA might become more diluted, alienating casual fans.

However, if the UFC continue down their current path, the Ali Act is inevitable. This would literally kill UFC stocks, and the company might implode from the devaluation. I'm not exactly sure what the UFC should do to avoid this. Their strategy of playing hardball and then giving in when megastars threaten to go to court won't work forever.

I honestly think that the UFC would be smart to slowly work towards a 50% profit sharing model with the fighters, of their own accord. If they voluntarily did that, the fighters would be much less likely to unionize. And in doing so, they could control the implementation of such a system and do it gradually. I mean, they're only paying the fighters like 20-25% of the profits right now. You could increase that by 2-3% per year, and slowly work up to the 50% mark over a 10-15 year period. You could even stop short at 45% and probably get not too many complaints.

But ya, if the UFC keep on their current path, they're gonna get fucked. It's just a question of when.
I disagree. Giving in due to unwarranted fear of total loss didnt work pretty WW2 for the Allies and is a poor path to take.
 
They certainly meet the legal requirements for a monopoly. They've sabotaged and bought out competition.
they bought competition that was looking to sell and / or about to go bankrupt.

they don’t meet the legal requirements.

The UFC are doing similar things. They keep athletes under contract for life if they don't fight out their contracts. And those contracts mean the UFC retains all rights to their image, likeness, and all associated marketing rights. So until GSP fights out his contract, the UFC own all of his rights forever.

gsp is under contract because he didn’t fulfill his end of the contract yet, not because he’s obligated in perpetuity.

You're right that they've said very little in public official channels. Their lawyers have likely told them to simply never address the topic or make any statements.

but you are saying they treat themselves as a league. which they don’t.

There was an article a few years back about extending the Ali Act to MMA, and the UFC had taken steps to pre-emptively oppose it without "officially" addressing the issue. There were rumors that they were claiming they were more "like" a league than a promoter. And when Randy Couture went to Congress, a Congressman told the UFC and Bellator to "move towards a real league model" or risk the Ali Act being applied to MMA.

Well they aren’t moving towards a league and there doesn’t seem to be any serious risk of the Ali act. But again, of course the ufc opposes it. I don’t know what rumors you’re referring to.

So unofficially the UFC were working on a "league" defense against the Ali Act, but that would require them to admit that athletes are not independent contractors.

https://www.foxsports.com/ufc/story...protections-to-mma-hires-lobbying-firm-061316
of course they oppose the Ali act. it is destructive to their business. the “league” defense is made up and is not in your article.
 
With the recent thread(s) about the UFC's negotiation tactics with fighters, I once again see people suggesting that fighters should unionize. There are a litany of reasons why this wouldn't work, but the biggest reason is as follows:

Any UFC union would require the biggest PPV stars to sign on. Although a union would absolutely increase fighter pay overall -- earning fighters 50% revenue sharing -- the highest paid athletes would likely lose money from unionization.

But why would unionization cost PPV stars money? When you look at leagues like the NHL, NFL, NBA, and MLB, basketball has the largest ratio of highest to lowest paid athletes at roughly 100-fold. Any UFC union would almost certainly not exceed this ratio.

In short, there would be a maximum athlete salary.

This means that guys like Conor McGregor would legally not be allowed to earn more than $10 million per fight if the lowest paid UFC athlete was making $100k per fight. Even if you do revenue sharing per event, the UFC would have to pay the lowest paid athlete on the PPV card $500k for Conor to make $50 million. That's never going to work.

The best hope for MMA athletes to earn more money is to extend Boxing's Ali Act to MMA, which creates a maximum contract length of 1 year. This gives athletes more freedom to work with other organizations, fostering competition.

In theory your right.

But your looking at it from a percentage stand point when it comes to pay. An association or union, could though set minimum guidelines for pay based on the amount of fights and still leave a free market for stars to negotiate better deals. This would benefit all fighters. They could also help guarantee other revenue sharing streams like video game revenue, merch, media, appearances, etc. They would also help how contracts are written and enforced.

To be honest the fighter pay is probably the lowest on the list of things that a fighters association could help with the fighters overall.


P.S.: The Ali Act won't help the sport as whole. It would be a mess at best and the athletes probably would be worse off overall.
 
In theory your right.

But your looking at it from a percentage stand point when it comes to pay. An association or union, could though set minimum guidelines for pay based on the amount of fights and still leave a free market for stars to negotiate better deals. This would benefit all fighters. They could also help guarantee other revenue sharing streams like video game revenue, merch, media, appearances, etc. They would also help how contracts are written and enforced.
Completely agree. In theory, a fighter union could agree to very reasonable terms with the UFC. The problem is, once athletes go through that hassle of unionizing and fighting to get a CBA signed, they're so frustrated that they refuse to be reasonable. They end up taking as much as they can get.

So yes, a fighters union could in theory be "reasonable" and just guarantee minimum "show" money per fight, negotiate better health care, better rights to sponsorship and "likeness" rights for the fighters, and then contract terms (no extensions, finite limits, no more champions clause, etc.). But in reality, they will go full socialist as all humans do in that situation.

To be honest the fighter pay is probably the lowest on the list of things that a fighters association could help with the fighters overall.
Absolutely true. But it would be difficult to avoid that issue if a union formed. Even just better contract terms, no more contract extensions, no more champions clause, and guaranteed medical care for fighters would be a huge step forward. Fighter pay wouldn't need touching to benefit the fighters greatly.

P.S.: The Ali Act won't help the sport as whole. It would be a mess at best.
For sure. It will "benefit the fighters" in the sense that fighters will get closer to 50% profits with more transparency, shorter contracts, and more competition. However, the lower and mid tier MMA fighters would continue to be underpaid. It would be a very top heavy benefit for the fighters.

And the sport as a whole would definitely suffer. We'd probably get more "stacked" MMA PPV cards, but the rest of the sport would be fragmented with watered down events. And we might never see certain matchups if fighters can't come to terms on co-promotion.
 
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as a communist wouldn't I be into collective bargaining because it's a form of wealth redistribution?
The whole theme of this threat is how management must preemptively give in to labor.
 
I feel like I have written about this before, but since the topic was broached:

The MMA game is simply too narrow anything resembling a union, the Ali Act, or any other number of pro-labor solutions. The promoter has only recently emerged as a main-stream "sport", and the market share is not large enough to spread anywhere near 50% to the fighters.

If the Ali Act is modified to affect MMA fighters (it will not, thankfully the GOP will block that, Mulvaney aside), MMA will collapse. Period. Boxing has a theatrical and generational interest in the boxers themselves. MMA is about the belt, the UFC itself. By destroying the monopoly the UFC has, and forcing promoters and sanctioning bodies to be separate, you will kill the UFC.

If you want to improve the long-term lives of fighters, pray for rain; pray for the UFC to grow until there is enough money. The Ali Act would cause me to stop watching as it has made me lose interest in boxing. There are no real belts and no real champions in boxing. The Ali Act is a disgrace.
 
Every player in the NHL, NFL, NBA, and MLB are way better paid than 99% of UFC fighters, the system works pretty well in those leagues, plus all the players get a pension for life after meeting certain amount of time in the league, I can't see how you think that the actual system in the UFC is better with athletes taking second jobs to survive
 
Every player in the NHL, NFL, NBA, and MLB are way better paid than 99% of UFC fighters, the system works pretty well in those leagues, plus all the players get a pension for life after meeting certain amount of time in the league, I can't see how you think that the actual system in the UFC is better with athletes taking second jobs to survive
In the long run it would be better.

But in the short term it would be an absolute mess. And without the financial support and public approval of MMA's biggest stars, getting there would be nigh impossible. And with PPV stars standing to potentially lose earning potential, why would they help build a fighters' union?

But you're right, if by some means a fighters' union formed and signed a CBA with the UFC, and if the UFC managed to survive the short term chaos, it would be much, much better for the fighters in the long run.

It's a tricky situation. But I feel like either a fighters' union or the Ali Act are inevitable. Perhaps we might see some 3rd, not-yet-seen option for a middle ground between the UFC and the fighters.
 
IMO there are too many unchecked egos and they generally dislike one another other too much. There is not the same camaraderie as a team sport. Just the way uncle Dana likes it.
 
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