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Alexander Gustafsson Vs. Phil Davis UFC
The UFC is one of the fastest growing and most popular sports organizations in the United States, and in the world. In fact, the UFC has probably been one of the fastest growing businesses of any kind, exponentially growing their fan base and revenue over the last half decade. This has been under the stewardship of President Dana White, who has been at the helm since the UFC was purchased by Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta in 2001. Dana White also has a 10% ownership share in Zuffa, LLC, the parent company of the UFC, making it very much in his own interests to raise revenues and profits. With the new ownership group, the UFC has worked hard to improve their image and clean up their act. Rules were revised and they have been sanctioned to stage events in the majority of states across the country. The UFC launched their own reality show on Spike TV in 2005, The Ultimate Fighter, which helped the organization reach the masses. However you feel about the sport of MMA and the UFC itself, this all seems fairly mundane. New ownership, updated standards and popular TV show leads to huge successes and huge profits. So what is the dirty little secret behind the success of UFC?
The UFC Money Distribution Dilemma - Shortchanging the Fighters
The dirty little secret is that Dana White and Zuffa are hording all of the massive profits, while their fighters are seeing only tiny fractions of the revenue generated. In 2007, the UFC sold approximately 4.9 million Pay-Per-Views. With 11 PPV events in that year, each UFC PPV averaged approximately 445,000 buys. Prices vary, but taking $39.95/PPV as the minimum, that's over $17.5 million generated on average from a UFC PPV. That's not even getting started with the live gate, generally in the range of several million dollars for a big event, the endorsement deals and sponsorships that line their Octagon (fighting cage) canvas and site fees that arenas pay out for the privilege of hosting an event and bringing all those people through the doors and into their casinos or concession booths.
Cha-ching doesn't begin to do that justice. With that much money generated, how much would you think the fighters in the UFC would get paid? Dana White seems like a very astute businessman, and you would think that with the fighters being the sole draw for an event like the UFC, they would get a lion's share of the revenues generated. But that's just not the case. Dana White and the UFC look at their fighter's as disposable and replaceable. They figure there are enough guys out there begging for the chance to fight in the UFC, so why bother paying huge sums of money to any of them?
Plus, the purses UFC fighters are getting are huge-in comparison to what they are used to. The sport has grown so much in popularity that the money received by the fighters dwarfs the money they would have been receiving even 5 years ago. But that doesn't mean it represents a tiny fraction of the revenues generated. Why should Dana White and Zuffa rake in hundreds of millions of dollars each and every year, while fighters are scrambling and begging for the scraps at the table?
Let's look at a specific example of a UFC PPV event, the money generated and the purses that were paid to the fighters. UFC 74 was held on August 25, 2007 and MMApayout.com reports that it sold 520,000 PPV telecasts. At $39.95 each for a PPV, that's over $20.5 million. There was also a reported gate of over $3 million. Let's forget the sponsorships and site fees and call that $23.5 million as the revenue generated for this particular UFC event.
The main event of UFC 74 was Randy Couture versus Gabriel Gonzaga, a heavyweight championship fight. The disclosed purses, released to the Nevada State Athletic Commission, were $250,000 for Randy Couture and $45,000 for Gabriel Gonzaga. Their names and their fight is the sole reason the UFC generated $23.5 million on August 25, 2007, so why should they combined receive less than $300,000? (The select few fighters who truly have established their name, like Randy Couture, do receive additional signing bonuses, but for the rest? Nada.)
Now, I'm not going to cry for guys who make more in a night than most everybody else makes in a year. However, these guys are putting their bodies on the line in a dangerous and rigorous competition while generating tens of millions of dollars for Dana White and Zuffa. Training for a fight and fighting at the top level of the UFC is a full time job that takes several months of preparation. Out of their purse fighters have to pay training expenses, their trainers, training partners and so on. And while Randy Couture takes home $250,000, the majority of fighters in the UFC - even good ones - make between $4,000 and $20,000 for a fight. On the same fight card, Josh Kocheck, a top contender in his division and well known name made $10,000; Kendall Grove, a past winner of The Ultimate Fighter with a big fan base, made $12,000
The combined purse for Randy Couture and Gabriel Gonzaga is approximately 1.3% of the money the UFC made on with its PPV and gate revenue that night. The total disclosed figures for all of the fighters for this UFC PPV, (including the above named there were 18 fighters on the card that night) was $730,000, which includes all fighter win bonuses (the amount they get paid extra if they win their bout). That equals 3.1% of the money the UFC generated for their PPV event being paid out to the fighters who actually went out there and fought for it.
That is over $22.5 million dollars, approximately 97% of the $23.5 million generated, that goes right into the owner's pockets. Yea, cha-ching just doesn't begin to describe it for Zuffa...and for Dana White. That 10% ownership stock he has figures to $2.25 million earned that night, or more than 3 times as much as all of the fighters made combined. Boxing promoters, who are derided for their hand-grabbing ways, are giddy with excitement when they can trick some poor fighter into letting them take 1/3rd of the purse, maybe 50% on a particularly greedy day. 97%, that just brings a whole new standard to the rip-off-o-meter. Dana White, Zuffa and the UFC-- you have all officially made Don King look like a saint, congratulations.
The Fallout
Dana White and Zuffa deserve credit for reviving the UFC, which was floundering without hope - banned in many states, without television broadcasts, hemorrhaging money - when they purchased it. Zuffa also paid $10 million to produce the first season of The Ultimate Fighter out of their own pockets, just to get it on the air. So they have made a difference in terms of the sustainability of the sport, the economics of the sport and how much fighter's earnings have increased. They just didn't make a 97% difference. Ultimately, all of their effort would still amount to nothing without the fighters themselves. That's a lesson the UFC may end up learning the hard way.
Right now, the UFC can pay most of the fighters whatever they want. As mentioned, the sport is rising in popularity at extraordinary rates. Not only does that mean increased viewers and profits, it also means increased participation in the sport. So if fighter A decides to hold out for more money, Dana White knows fighter B, C, D, E, and F will all step up and take his place-and for even less.
But this won't always continue to be the case. At one point the most popular fighter in the UFC, Tito Ortiz, held out of his contract. The UFC kept right on ticking, and Dana White lambasted him for being a whiner, being selfish and being unreasonable. After coming back to the UFC for several years, Tito Ortiz just fought his last fight under his contract and is moving to other MMA organizations.
As more fighters learn the economics of the sport, this will be the trend rather than the exception. The money distribution in the UFC is absurdly out of proportion, and now rival organizations are upping the ante. Marc Cuban and his HDNet Fights are trying to lure away fighters with bigger paychecks, while on Showtime, EliteXC has been successful. EliteXC has even worked out a deal with CBS and has already aired the first MMA card ever on network television. However, despite all of this, the UFC owns two of the other major organizations the WEC and Pride, so they maintain a stranglehold of the MMA world. If the UFC isn't paying you big bucks, do you think little brother WEC will? Not likely.
What the UFC does offer the fighters right now is the best competition on the planet. These guys are athletes, and they want to prove themselves against the best. But already that is changing as well, with Randy Couture, the big earner from above, leaving the UFC because they couldn't sign the other best heavyweight in the world for him to fight against. The money split clearly isn't right (even telemarketers take home a 10% commission of their profits earned) and the UFC is no longer the exclusive spot for top competition. Sounds like a recipe for disaster. The UFC hasn't even reached the apex of their popularity and they are already steering themselves straight into disaster.
The UFC can only continue blatantly ripping off their fighters for so much longer until it explodes in their faces. Some big names have already made moves, leaving the UFC for rival organizations and many young stars never step into the UFC cage, opting for other lucrative deals. As the rest of the fighters in the sport learn of other opportunities, they will make the same moves, as would any of you and as would I.
Just because the UFC is the best financial offer out there right now and it has improved in the last half decade, doesn't mean it's a fair deal either. 97% of the profits from a UFC PPV go directly into the hands of Dana White and Zuffa, does that sound like a fair arrangement anybody?
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Fighting_Championship
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana_White
http://www.mmapayout.com/2008/12/ufc-pay-per-view-business-in-2007.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFC_74
The Ultimate Fighter TV Show
UFC PPV Telecasts
