As he prepares for what is being advertised as his last fight in the organization at UFC 84, Tito Ortiz is, as he so often has, talking about his belief that UFC fighters should make more money.
Ortiz told MMA Mania that he thinks fighters should make about 30% of revenues, and Michael Rome of Bloody Elbow crunches some numbers and says that would be a significant pay raise from where they are now.
But while it would be significantly more than they make now, it would be nowhere near as much as athletes in other sports make. Liz Mullen of Sports Business Journal reports that baseball players make 51% to 55% of MLB revenues, football players make 59% of NFL revenues, basketball players make 57% of NBA revenues and hockey players make 55.6% of NHL revenues.
That's not an apples-to-apples comparison, though, because UFC pays a lot more of its own costs for things like TV broadcasts than other sports leagues do. No one would suggest that UFC should pay more than half of its revenue to its fighters.
So what would be fair? Ultimately, as MMA continues to grow as a sport, fighters and promoters will figure out what constitutes fair pay. And I think Ortiz's proposal of 30% of revenues will turn out to be about right.
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Reader Comments ( Page 1 of 1)
1. MMA is growing by leaps and bounds as we all know. IF the UFC Wont Pay the $$$$, then some other MMA league will !!!
Posted at 10:47AM on May 11th 2008 by aaorn W
2. I've been saying they should get paid 40-50% of the revenue for months. Ever since I learned that UFC is making 30-40 million per PPV, and the fighters total compensation for the event (not counting sponsors) is around 1 million.
However, it's also unfair to say that there should be a flat increase across the board. I think the salaries of undercard fighters should stay relatively the same - under 40,000$ per fight. However, if a fighter is on the main card, he is part of the PPV, he is part of the reason people are buying the PPV, so he should get a cut. The main event fighters should get millions per fight, and the major undercard fighters should get what the main-eventers are getting right now - 250,000-500,000$.
And there is a problem in the sport, and the primary reason there is a problem is that there is no fighters union. A fighters union is vitally important for the sport, it can act as a second barrier in protecting the fighters, along with the state commissions. The fighters need to have mandatory health insurance, their fight earnings have to be insured, because right now, if a fighter is injured, he has just lost the money for the fight as well as the money he spent training for it. There needs to be a fighters pension fund, because looking at the state of boxing right now, and the amount of former champions that are now poor and destitute is staggering. MMA needs to evolve fast to avoid the pitfalls that boxing suffered in the last 30 years.
Posted at 12:57AM on May 12th 2008 by willmore2000
3. Willmore,
The UFC does not make 30-40 million per card, 10-20 million is accurate.
As far as actual payroll goes, it is likely somewhere between 1.5-3 million per card.
There is the stated payroll (that which is contractually required) and there is the bonuses. The UFC pays publicized bonuses of between 120-280K per card for Fight of the Night, Sub of the Night and KO/TKO of the Night. But they also regularly pay the top fighters bonuses based on the success of the card as well as how their fight goes.
Randy Couture has talked of main event fighters picking up 500k and Kalib Starnes recently pointed out that he earned an extra 25k for his fight with Leben.
Let us look at UFC 79. Liddell gets a cut of the ppv buys, like Randy did. Based on the equation that Randy had in his contract, Chuck would have ended up making somewhere between 1-1.5 million extra for his fight. Wandy Silva, GSP and Matt Hughes all picked up bonuses that were reportedly each a solid six figures. Adding those numbers to the stated 1.39 (including fight, sub and Ko bonuses) million makes the total almost certainly over 3 million.
The card had a gate of 4.9 million and with them making around $20 per buy, and the card doing a rumored 650k buys, they would have ended up around 20 million. So the overall pay would have been around 15-20% of the revenue.
Posted at 2:01AM on May 12th 2008 by Lynchman
4. I can see that MMA fighters need to be paid more, but remember that the fights are short. Unlike boxing that can go 12 rounds or the NFL or NBA, which last hours. Sure boxing has knockouts in the first round, but on average most fights last substantially longer, I don't think thats true with MMA. IMHO
Posted at 11:19AM on May 12th 2008 by Otis
5. Totally agree with you. A union is what's needed. I can't believe that most of the fighters make so little money in the UFC (and put so much at risk). The UFC is supposed to be the pinnacle of a fighter's career and when they get there they have to settle only for being on a televised show because there's not going to be any money for them. I remember being amazed of what little money Monson made when he fought Tim Sylvia that was ridiculous money for a headliner (the difference in pay was huge between the two). I mean .....if when you fight for a title you make so little imagine what a fighter in the undertcard makes (well.. unles your Brock Lesnar).
Diablo Orozco
Juarez, Mexico
Posted at 4:55PM on May 12th 2008 by Diablo Orozco
6. unions are the pits. work hard u dont need a union. unions are for democrats, they want something for nothing
Posted at 1:24AM on May 16th 2008 by MARTY HILL