Does the relative easiness of making it into the UFC result in low fighter pay?

[Big Tuppy Hole]

1) You can do both, most people fight on the side with a job (also plenty of Plumbers don't make anywhere close to 100k a year).

2) Some people fight for free as a hobby, I've seen backyard mma fights done for free, there are peope who don't think of it as work.

3) Some people don't put much time into training camps, and just want to go fight someone for 15 minutes to make 10k.

4) Also some people would take a quick 12K over a slow 100k.

5) Also, 100K is pretty much the ceiling for a plumber, potentially the ceiling as a MMA fighter is much much higher, even at 500k a fight, that's a much higher ceiling.

100k Ceiling for a plumber? At the moment down here where being offered up $60 with penalties.

 

[Fight Professor]

For sure. MMA is much easier to get into (at the high level) than mainstream sports and you only compete 2-3 times a year.

 

[bubbleboyjones]

There's been a lot of comparisons I've seen on this forum that compares fighter % of revenue to total revenue generated to other major sporting leagues.

I think it is absurd to compare other major fighting organizations to the UFC, considering the odds of making it in the UFC are achievable for your average person where as organizations such as the NBA, NFL, MLB, ect, is essentially almost like winning a lottery.

Let's take the NBA for example, at the high school level, a good portion of the population will be cut out of being even able to play basketball competitively at a high school level. Then, about 1% of high school basketball athletes go on to play D1, and then about another 1% of people good enough to play D1 in college, end up being drafted by the NBA.

Assuming, you are genetically tall enough, and can play basketball competitively at a high school level, you are still looking at 0.001% of making it into the NBA. Not to mention, your odds go exponentially lower if you aren't born in the USA (look at how many people from other countries can make it into the UFC and become champion).

At the heart of it, fighting competitively against another human being that is the approximately the same height and weight as you are, doesn't require absurd genetics to be able to do it. I don't mean that is easier than other sports in terms of the amount of hard work that you have to put in, but there are certain genetic barriers in other sports that most people will never over-come with any amount of hard work or training.

Perhaps the UFC will pay more, if only 0.0001% of the population can fight competitively.

Essentially, in the world of sports:

A UFC fighter is a tyical white collar job because it's a job most people can do if they choose it.
A NBA, NFL, or MLB position is more like the CEO of a company.

It's because historically promoting MMA is not that profitable and its hard to stay afloat long term. The UFC promoting MMA is very profitable(since '06) but outside of that it's very hard. The UFC was able to make it through a combination of building a brand name like pro wresting with a TV deal and using very strict contracts to allow them to foster divisions. The smartly ran their ship tight like the WWE and they were eventually able to turn profit and sky rocket.


So because promoting MMA itself is not that profitable then that means there are few competitors to drive up fighter pay. In other words to date you can't just get a bunch of high level fighters on a card and expect to sell it on PPV. To date for MMA, there has not been a single non-UFC PPV that was done over 200,000 PPV buys and this has nothing to do with "the UFC has all the talent".

• Affliction had two stacked cards during the height of MMA bubble back in 2008-2009 and they were under 200,000 buys and could not turn a profit. Lets put it this way, the UFC were doing 350,000 buys for a card airing live on a Saturday afternoon with no title fights and someone like Affliction had the best HW roster and couldn't sell anywhere near that with a primetime Saturday night slot.
• Bellator's PPV numbers are also bad hence they stopped doing it.
• Pride tried making money in the U.S. as a last attempt when MMA was hot and same thing.....they couldn't do shit because again people didn't tune in because it was MMA, they were tuning in because it was the UFC promoting MMA. It's the pro wresting model 101.

If we get to a point where someone can constantly promote MMA fights and make really good money to start creating legit bidding wars then we will see prices increase. These 1 off circus boxing fights will fade and thats not the path.

 

[Game_Bred_Irish]

The fighters / their skills are the fundamental source of viewership / value of the product..

As high skilled workers they should be able to receive a high price for their skills, in a market where their skills are highly sought after and rare.. the UFC is actually stifling a free market for fighters with harsh price controls..

That right there is in turn a capitalistic view..

Well, I do agree that UFC is essentially just fighters, I disagree about the rarity of the skill. I think the ability to fight is too common which has allowed fight promoters to dictate the price due to a large supply of fighters.

I don't think the UFC really has that much price control, they are priced fairly close or slightly better than their closest competition. Even if the UFC doesn't have exclusive contracts with a lot of their stars for a certain amount of fights, I don't think you'd have other organizations shoving down big money to steal them away.

Of course, you have the exceptions with big potential bouts (Ngannou vs Tyson) but that's pretty much impossible for your 12k/12k fighter. It's hard to argue that the UFC has implemented price controls when no one really pays better than them or if they do, not by much. You'd have to show other organizations would be willing to pay a lot more if UFC didn't lock them in exclusive contracts, and that's not really the case I think.

 

[wildchild88]

Well, I do agree that UFC is essentially just fighters, I disagree about the rarity of the skill. I think the ability to fight is too common which has allowed fight promoters to dictate the price due to a large supply of fighters.

I don't think the UFC really has that much price control, they are priced fairly close or slightly better than their closest competition. Even if the UFC doesn't have exclusive contracts with a lot of their stars for a certain amount of fights, I don't think you'd have other organizations shoving down big money to steal them away.

Of course, you have the exceptions with big potential bouts (Ngannou vs Tyson) but that's pretty much impossible for your 12k/12k fighter. It's hard to argue that the UFC has implemented price controls when no one really pays better than them or if they do, not by much. You'd have to show other organizations would be willing to pay a lot more if UFC didn't lock them in exclusive contracts, and that's not really the case I think.

Part of the reason other organisations can afford to pay less, is because the UFC pays less.. it's a cross organisational monopoly, these organisations gobble up all the profits..

When it comes to bigger name fighters, the UFC pays enough that other smaller organisations can't compete to take fighters away, plus fighters get a better promotional spotlight via the UFC..

Regardless of this there's no justification for paying guys 10 - 30k to fight on a global paper view.. that's not counting the revenue from other international TV deals they have, an event watched by millions..

 

[mangokush]

Yes

The UFC is apparently supposed to be the elite premier MMA org which it needs to be very hard to get into

But now they are signing up too many no name boring cans whose level of skill is equivalent to bum fights on the street which results to low pay and a lower standard of MMA

The UFC should trim its roster by half to fix this possibly only 20-30 fighters per division

 

[Kryptt]

Too many fighters and too few contracts that pay even close to what the UFC does (overall). Near everyone pines for a UFC contract... Across so so many orgs (not jus Fight Pass Feeders).

Anyhow keep trying to break the pyramid down and MMA (not jus the UFC) will keep chewing through bodies...