What can be done about UFC fighter pay

[rorschach51]

I am not so sure they have more money to spend. 4 billion is a lot of money, And I am sure the celebrity investors also demand some yearly return on their investment.

We all wish the fighters would earn more, but higher salaries usually means that they need to have fewer employees, and fewer fighters. Is that better?

The only solution is the growth of One FC, Bellator And other orgs. Then the fighters can go after the best deal. It has already started.

Good post, but yes I would totally like to see the UFC trim the roster down. Doing away with Flyweight and cutting around 150 fighters or so would be good. The roster is too bloated with either guys who aren't UFC caliber or never fight. Remember Erik Koch? One time big time prospect, well he's 30 now and has had 9 fights in his 8 years on the roster. He's 4-5 and has lost 5 of his last 7. I was a fan of Erik but he doesn't fight & barely wins, he's a decent candidate to be cut imo.

 

[thobra]

Good post, but yes I would totally like to see the UFC trim the roster down. Doing away with Flyweight and cutting around 150 fighters or so would be good. The roster is too bloated with either guys who aren't UFC caliber or never fight. Remember Erik Koch? One time big time prospect, well he's 30 now and has had 9 fights in his 8 years on the roster. He's 4-5 and has lost 5 of his last 7. I was a fan of Erik but he doesn't fight & barely wins, he's a decent candidate to be cut imo.

I agree that they should get rid of a few weightclasses and fighters. The issue is normally that the same guys that campaign the most for higher salaries are the same guys that complain the most if the company has to do do downsizing. They rarely see the coherence.

 

[brackis1]

As the sport is getting more exposure by ESPN, the negative side of the UFC will also get more exposure. It may get to a point where UFC's hand may be forced once it becomes known by the casual public that most UFC fighters have to struggle to make ends meet.

This is naive and the average person is an asshole who wants entertainment and doesn't care about big picture thinking, so it won't just magically happen unless you can get power and publicity for the cause to convince dumb lemmings to support change.
ESPN is part of Disney, a ruthless massive company that runs amusement parks where fulltime employees are living out of their cars lol.
ESPN has an interest in keeping the sport as popular and focused on bullshit fake beef controversies rather than a legitimate social class and power structure issue.
Just like they do when they spend huge chunks of their shows like Sportscenter using kids with cancer for ratings but wouldn't ever dare utter a word about closing corporate tax loopholes to allocate more government funds to the NHS for cancer research, which would do more for fighting cancer than 100 years of pink ribbon walks combined.

 

[Paynebringer]

I feel you but just the pay structure and formula used almost by nature keeps it low. It's like the UFC is a travelling circus when in the states they use fighters from within that region to a one time contract with a open option if you perform real well especially for card abroad where they putting cash for travel & hotel or solid fighters that have multiple fight contracts to fill spots. Then the pay goes up depending where on the card you're slotted, higher the slot the higher the pay.

Locking the guys out from individual sponsorship especially during fight week is costly for those lucky to have sponsorship..Better pay and profit sharing can help the Reebok deal works for the richer fighters or those in long standing fighters the newer guys not so much...

 

[Vegesus44]

Start buying PPVs?

Spoiler

/s

 

[julmma]

Tate was one of the first to really work at it
She had a lot of sponsors and after Reebok she was pissed & voiced it
but being smart, she talked with them & worked out other ways to make money & you seen a lot of IG & Twitter & FB post all of a sudden with certain bottled water or exercise gear.
She then started repping fighters to help them do it & that grew into her ONE position

An IG post alone by Tate is worth about $11k according to charts.
Lets say she only gets $5k
1 post every 3 days = $600k a year ... just on IG

That was made on past times of her.
Now she failed on everything she did; her fitness programs, her food shows and some failed endorsements. We’ll see how all this VP job works out for her.
We all know One had failed compromises and contracts in the past...


And we all know she messed up with UFC, that’s why She ended up in bad terms with Dana and the organization; because she doesn’t have the person that managed all her career anymore.

 

[Huligani]

Not my fucking problem

 

[kflo]

Fans can pay for more mma....

 

[ferrisjso]

It's tough because the UFC was very smart in the way they went about robbing the fighters. They pay the cheaper guys far more than boxing and start robbing people when they go up the ladder and trust the UFC. You'll notice the type of person hurt by the UFC's cost cutting measures tend to be the most expensive guys who aren't in main events(Michael McDonald is the one I was listening to an interview where he couldn't afford to a training camp). Now the champs are the one's hurt by the UFC not needing high PPV sales(for now) because that's how they make or made their biggest money. This is important because in a belt centered sport the main leverage the UFC has is replacing stars. By taking the cheaper move of paying the nobody's pretty well(something which does keeps the overall percentage of revenue going to fighters so low) rather than the stars, the UFC has a wide pool to choose from and have built a report with the replacements.

They also have made it so the people most likely to go broke(in the short term) will be fine and screw over those who won't suffer the financial consequences for a while. Stars will be okay in the short term being screwed, but in a few years they'll start to feel the effects by which time it's too late for people to start screaming "why aren't you being paid more for what you're doing"? The one's on the bottom are the one's who'll grab the headline as "fighter underpaid" rather than "ex fighter lost all his money by being "irresponsible"".

Most company's can't efficiently use this exploitation tactic because normally you can't just swap out white collar for blue collar workers especially rinse and repeat, different skill sets. In combat sports you most certainly can do that and can do it over and over again as long as the lower tier guys are talented. This is also why a union would be so hard to form in MMA because the UFC is making it so the fighters interests are not aligned and quite fragmented into different groups. What's good for the champs might not be good for the contenders and what's good for the contenders might not be good for the people lower down the ladder. A union requires unified economic interest and the UFC maybe intentionally had made it so that doesn't exist.

 

[Knuckledragger]

Why do you spend time worrying about another mans paycheq?

 

[MadHouse]

i feel more sorry for the people that work 9-5 every day of the week for barely $2500 a month

even a no name fighter that has literally nothing going for him can make $25k in 1 night, i know a shit ton of people that would kill for that opportunity