News Dustin Poirier: 'Dana, send me the right contract. Stop playing games!'

[Roljo]

ufc is the only sports where fans bickering about money and contract this hard

Because it affects us a lot, we have been robbed how many times of great fights because the ufc was cheap ?!!

 

[Bend NvR Break]

One of my favorite fighters an anywhere, anytime savage has ruined him vs Ferguson and Chandler and maybe McGregor over money trying to renegotiate his contract again.

Damn it. Watch the UFC throw Ferguson or Gaethje the fight now.

 

[Bend NvR Break]

Dana will give Dustin just one million dollars. Just like he gave company shill Cowboy.

Cowboy and Cowboy's wife have repeatedly said they got no extra money for fighting McGregor. Cowboy got his contract pay and whatever bonuses it has in it.

 

[LittleSmokey]

Why pay DP a million plus when they can get Gilbert Burns to fight for 40k/40k

 

[campbecc]

Cowboy got 1 million? I thought he said he received his normal pay with a small bump. Hopefully he did. The card sold well.

Cowboy got $200K like any other fight. The higher numbers were rumors, Cerrone said he didn't get more than his contracted amount which was reported as $200,000.

 

[Travis Alexander]

Conor is 1-1 at LW since his meet with Dustin..? Ok, ok... sounds accurate.

He is 1-1 at LW he beat Alvarez and lost to Khabib. His other fights were at 145 or 170.

 

[Jabbathehook]

These guys either need appropriate and effective management representing them, or to unionise in an organised fashion.
I empathise with them wanting to achieve better pay rates, but half of them sign multiple fight deals and then have the audacity to try and re-negotiate because they feel underpaid.

Either negotiate a fee for each bout independently, don't tie yourself in, or unionised and strike as a group for improved conditions.

Ridiculous.

 

[Magooglie]

Dustin's going to Bellator at this rate.

 

[Mike]

ufc is the only sports where fans bickering about money and contract this hard

If fighters accept lowball contracts because they have no leverage fans shit on them. Then later on when fighters try to renegotiate for more, fans shit on them. Seems reasonable

 

[IsNormal]

It has nothing to do with how many fights he's contracted for imo... it has to do with how much he's demanding.

I think the problem is that he's going to want 10 million per fight minimum... which is usually covered by his gate. without an audience, the UFC starts 10 mill in the hole & who knows if a Portier fight can get the UFC that much money to make up the difference after paying the rest of the card & the cost of running an event. If the UFC's going to possibly lose money, then it doesn't make sense to put on the fight.

Good point,
I've imagined that the profit from a Conor event was so high that it wouldn't matter if they lost a big chunk of it, it would still be the year's most profitable event.

Hadn't really considered how much the gate is out of total sales but now I looked into it.
For UFC 246(Conor vs Cowboy)
* mma junkie says there were 19040 fans totalling a gate revenue of $11.089 million (Wow, the ticket prices are steep - that's an average ticket price of $582)
* tapology says there were 1 million PPV buys sold, if the average price is $60 then that's a revenue of $60 million.

So the gate sales were about 10% of the PPV sales.
That's more than I expected, but still :
a) it's not pure profit - there are extra costs with having a big crowd
b) Wouldn't a $60 million dollar PPV event be a huge profit even if Conor takes 1/6 ?

Or has the ESPN+ deal turned PPV buys into such an uncertain market that they are scared of relying on PPV alone?

 

[spannered]

Pay this man. Everyone knows this fight will be fucking fireworks bell to bell. Has foty written all over it.

Or Conor will just wipe him out in a minute like last time. I'm a big fan of Dustin, and he's now doubt better than he was when they first fought, but he matches up badly with Conor imo. Conor and Tony interests me more.

Let's be honest, Dustin isn't getting a rematch with Khabib, but Conor definitely will if he wins, and it would be criminal if Tony doesn't get the next contender shot. It just makes more sense and is a more interesting fight.

 

[Myrddin Wild]

Good point,
I've imagined that the profit from a Conor event was so high that it wouldn't matter if they lost a big chunk of it, it would still be the year's most profitable event.

Hadn't really considered how much the gate is out of total sales but now I looked into it.
For UFC 246(Conor vs Cowboy)
* mma junkie says there were 19040 fans totalling a gate revenue of $11.089 million (Wow, the ticket prices are steep - that's an average ticket price of $582)
* tapology says there were 1 million PPV buys sold, if the average price is $60 then that's a revenue of $60 million.

So the gate sales were about 10% of the PPV sales.
That's more than I expected, but still :
a) it's not pure profit - there are extra costs with having a big crowd
b) Wouldn't a $60 million dollar PPV event be a huge profit even if Conor takes 1/6 ?

Or has the ESPN+ deal turned PPV buys into such an uncertain market that they are scared of relying on PPV alone?

Okay, 1st on the Gate... I said 18 mill, but to your point, Conor's last gate was lower:
$11,087,629 UFC 246 vs Cowboy
$17,188,895 UFC 229 vs Khabib
$17,700,000 UFC 205 vs Alvarez

PPV sales aren't known anymore like they used to be. So Tapology numbers are an estimate that people have deducted through social media hits & google searches n stuff like that. Dave Meltzer became quite good at it but would sometimes be off by 100k or 200k here & there on the bigger PPV's until he could get his hands on their public dept record 3 or 4 months later. He used to issue his "pre-liminary numbers" right after a fight, but make a point to say that they are not his "official numbers." Right now all we have are the equal of what he used to call his "Preliminary Numbers."

You hit on another thing in your last sentence where the ESPN+ deal has changed things. Here's how it works. For every non-PPV event... ESPN payz the UFC 7 - 10 million. For every PPV it's more uncertain but there's a few things we know & we'll have to guess about the rest.

I couldn't imagine the 7 - 10 million base pay being any less & it might actually be the same... but ESPN gets 100% of the buys "UP TO A CERTAIN POINT." After that certain point... they start splitting it with the UFC. There's 2 things we don't know.

1. At what number of sales do they start splitting it.
2. What is the percentage of that split.

So I see you doing lots of figures there based on the cost of a PPV... but without knowing those 2 things... there's really no way we can even begin to run the numbers. We can hypothesize though just for fun

We do know for sure that the UFC used to pay half of their PPV buys to the streaming provider. Wrap your head around that for a moment. I don't know if the new Disney owned ESPN+ has new technology or if the price is more or less. But if you wanted to guess, then I'd say 50% is your most logical guess.

Okay, so now lets do a hypothesis about where the split might be. I just so happened to had kept up with Dave meltzerz numbers throughout the yearz through our brother @FrankieNYC & those numbers were almost spot on the numbers the UFC presented publicly at their investors event... so we can consider them pretty sound.

In watching the numbers for a standard PPV the rock bottom snoozer PPV's (which was only breached lower a couple of times in modern days) is 100k buys. A normal and interesting PPV was 200k - 250k, & a PPV with some hype behind it without really killing it was around 350 (tree fiddy ) For example" Miocic vs DC 1 & Miocic vs Ngannou were both tree fiddy. Super fights that near a mill are very rare & probably have only been a couple dozen in the history of the UFC. Up around 700 - 800k buys are probably just as rare.

So I'm just going to go out on a limb here & say that they make the ESPN+/UFC split line in the sand here at 250... so that the UFC can get a piece of the pie for an exceptional night.

So if we're doing the math at the mystical 1 million buys that Tapology has accepted for the Cowboy/Conor fight. A quarter of that is gone right off the bat.
60M is now 45M

Then we got the hypothisized 50/50 split after that... which leaves the UFC with 22.5M + the 7 - 10M base pay so that leaves the UFC with 29.5 - 32.5M but they owe Conor 10M... & so that leaves the UFC with 19.5M - 22.5M left to pay the salaries for the rest of the card plus whatever expenses they will have. and that's if they even sold 1M. The Cowboy fight was Conor's second smallest payday to date, so maybe the UFC's worried about that since it could get worse if the casuals are getting bored with him.

07/11/15 UFC 189 McGregor vs Mendes 825,000
12/12/15 UFC 194 Aldo vs McGregor 1,025,000
03/05/16 UFC 196 McGregor vs Diaz 1,317,000
08/20/16 UFC 202 McGregor vs. Diaz two 1,500,000
11/12/16 UFC 205 McGreor vs. Alverez 1,300,000
10/06/18 UFC 229 McGregor vs. Khabib 2,400,000

You have to understand that these kinds of numbers are very very rare. In fact you're looking at most of the top selling records right here. Brock's UFC 100 was 1.3M Buys & most of his other fights were around a mill. Ronda & Spider were 900k - 1.1 mill... & GSP never even quite made it to a mill but he was up in the neighborhood. There's a few other anomalies in there, but you get the point about the rarity.

Anywayz, maybe all that helps

Tweek the numbers how you like, but this is how I'd model the equations. If anyone has heard anything different, let me know... I've pretty much had my head out of the game since ESPN+ came along & stole our information so maybe things have changed & I haven't heard about it.

 

[IsNormal]

PPV sales aren't known anymore like they used to be.

Wow. What an infromative post. I knew the gist of PPV numbers not being reliable at all but didn't know the specific history, and didn't know Meltzer's predictions

etc. This is why i like Sherdog. Super informative. Big props.

In watching the numbers for a standard PPV the rock bottom snoozer PPV's (which was only breached lower a couple of times in modern days) is 100k buys. A normal and interesting PPV was 200k - 250k, & a PPV with some hype behind it without really killing it was around 350 (tree fiddy ) For example" Miocic vs DC 1 & Miocic vs Ngannou were both tree fiddy. Super fights that near a mill are very rare & probably have only been a couple dozen in the history of the UFC. Up around 700 - 800k buys are probably just as rare.

Those tiers look pretty spot on to me. I've also thought that 350k looks to be some kind of significant threshold

they owe Conor 10M... & so that leaves the UFC with 19.5M - 22.5M left to pay the salaries for the rest of the card plus whatever expenses they will have.

I agree. My calculations without considering the potential revenue sharing with broadcasters were that Conor's take was 1/6. With your calculations it's more like 1/3 - which changes things quite a bit.

You have to understand that these kinds of numbers are very very rare. In fact you're looking at most of the top selling records right here. Brock's UFC 100 was 1.3M Buys & most of his other fights were around a mill. Ronda & Spider were 900k - 1.1 mill... & GSP never even quite made it to a mill

You're right. It might seem like a given that any Conor fight will automatically do at least 1 million PPV buys, but since it's so rare - and since markets can change quickly - it might be dangerous to assume that. If for some reason the buys were halved, the might lose money

 

[wisdom blows]

one thing ill never understand is how so many consider mcgregor a duck. ok, cowboy was past his prime and all of that, but do people not remember the amount of people who thought cowboy would beat mcgregor? mcgregor literally plowed through everyone in the fw division and then skyrocketed to heights unknown by boxing the best boxer of all time lol and then came back to fight the best mma lw of all time. hate mcgregor for many reasons, but i dont get this duck business

This x10000

There are reasons to dislike Conor, but level of competition is not one of them lmao

 

[BjPenn2017]

They should just fucking cut him if he keeps playing games where’s Joe Silva when you need him

 

[IsNormal]

one thing ill never understand is how so many consider mcgregor a duck. ok, cowboy was past his prime and all of that, but do people not remember the amount of people who thought cowboy would beat mcgregor? mcgregor literally plowed through everyone in the fw division and then skyrocketed to heights unknown by boxing the best boxer of all time lol and then came back to fight the best mma lw of all time. hate mcgregor for many reasons, but i dont get this duck business

I agree. He's not ducking.

Conor never backed down from hard fights either. Fought Khabib for god's sake.He could've stuck around fighting the likes of Cowboy, winning, and then he would be a clear candidate for the next title shot. Instead he went for it and lost. So he's not a duck.

At least I don't see how people can call Conor a duck in the past.
But since he leaked the messages with Dana I can see it a bit more. Asking for Diego Sanchez, even if it was just "to get more fights in" is insane<45>
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eix5DXFX0AAfJjh?format=jpg&name=large

 

[Goober stoober]

I personally think it's not fair that the UFC won't pay a Mcg opponent more than their standard rate as it's a special circumstance that needs to be compensated correctl. At the bare minimum, it should be your championship pay OR a cut of PPV buys.

 

[Doughie99]

I honestly thought you were taking the piss, if nothing is clouding your judgement, then perhaps your judgement just isn't very good if you really believe Conor loses to all those fighters.

To focus on one fighter, ......There is ZERO chance that Conor McGregor beats Dan Hooker.

No chance, not on the ground, not on the feet, not on cardio, not on power, not on endurance, not on cardio, not on power strikes, none of that.

You are failing to separate (IMHO) the POLITICS and BUSINESS of UFC from the realities of technique / skills / experience / power / endurance in the 155lbs division of UFC in 2020/2021.

If you cannot see this, then you are simply lost as far as (in any, even tiny way) as an analyst / valid opinion / credible judge in any way, or able to form any analytical & credible opinion of UFC fights in 2020/2021.
In this instance, you are likely blinded by the UFC marketing / promotion machine and whilst I do have a modicum of sympathy for your gullibility on that, I had hoped that someone of your longevity, and, therefore, one would hope, some absence of naivete, as regards MMA fighting regarding the afore-mentioned UFC fighters, might have have shown itself

But........alas.....alack.....it seems my hope on that was substantially misplaced and my faith in your basic knowledge & integrity & ability to separate Zuffa Inc. business-policies from fighting ability and general intelligence to not-be-deluded by the UFC machine that surrounds certain fighters was, in the end, was somewhat without foundation and for that, I have to say I am sorry I had such high aspirations for your ability to make critical reasoning and deduce intelligent judgment and rational deductions on certain things.

Best.

 

[12ga.]

He just wants payday. He cant win this fight and I dont like conor but Dustin will fold under barrage of criticism. Shoulda taken Tony fight not like Tony/Justn sold bad 700K is millions in his pocker

 

[Bob Sapp]

Has he deleted this tweet? Cannot find it.

Does that mean UFC finally sent him the contract or threatened him?