posted November 24, 2009 at 12:15 EST in UFC / MMA Articles
UFC Salaries Article - Are Fighters Getting Screwed?
by Charles Jay
December 5 - Memphis
UFC Lightweight Title
BJ PENN -300
DIEGO SANCHEZ +220
Lightweights
KENNY FLORIAN -200
CLAY GUIDA +160
Late last week, HBO, which is not only a premium channel on your cable dial but also a major distributor of pay-per-view programming, announced that it had attained at least 1.25 million pay-per-view buys for the Manny Pacquiao-Miguel Cotto fight, generating about $70 million in gross revenue.
For Floyd Mayweather's "comeback" fight against Juan Manuel Marquez a couple of months ago, they declared a little over a million buys, producing roughly $52 million. The fight between Mayweather and Ricky Hatton did 920,000 buys. When Pacquiao fought Oscar De La Hoya, there were 1.2 million buyers announced.
HBO makes these announcements with a certain degree of merriment. Yet, the UFC keeps its own pay-per-view figures as guarded a secret as possible. Have you ever asked yourself why that is?
Well, one of the reasons, to be honest, is that HBO, as part of a public company (Time-Warner) ultimately has to be forthcoming about its revenues (The UFC is a private enterprise and is under no such obligation), but another reason is that it wants to trumpet its successes. The UFC is successful too, but doesn't want anyone to know.
Why? Well, it would be embarrassing. Not because its figures are so low in comparison with boxing; indeed, they are more than competitive in that regard. It's because what they pay the fighters, relative to the revenue generated, is so incredibly low that it would be a source of shame for them and outrage on the part of the contestants, and there is no reason not to look toward boxing as a frame of reference in making that value judgment.
Pacquiao and Cotto, in doing battle last week, are reported to have made a total of $34 million between them - $22 million for Pacquiao and $12 million for Cotto. Of course, we understand that there are other revenue sources involved, including foreign rights, but that total main event purse (which would appear to include their percentages) represents 48.5% of the pay-per-view take: 31.4% for Pacquiao and 17.1% for Cotto.
Mayweather had a guarantee of $10 million for his September 19 fight, with Marquez clocking in with a $2 million guarantee, and both of them shared in the PPV sales. Even before any back-end arrangement, that's 23% of eventual gross revenues.
With the retirement of De La Hoya, Mayweather and Pacquiao are probably the two biggest PPV draws in boxing today.
By comparison, Brock Lesnar, who is arguably the UFC's biggest draw, was paid a base figure of $400,000 for his fight againnt Frank Mir at UFC 100, while Mir got just $45,000. This comes by way of figures that are public record through the Nevada State Athletic Commission, which is derived from the fight contracts themselves.
There may be separate agreements governing the appearance of these fighters and others, but those agreements would have to contain a lot of money to make their deals equitable.
Because it doesn't just involve the mixed martial arts industry but the television industry as well, some word manages to get out about these pay-per-view numbers, which are still difficult to ascertain exactly since the purchases (or "subs" if you will) tend to trickle in over a period of time, and over several 30-day cycles, with receipts constantly being collected from all of the affiliates of the MSO's (major systems operators) involved.
The pay-per-view figures for UFC 100 are said to have been in the neighborhood of 1.5 million. The lowball on this was more like a million.
Let's split the difference, using 1.25 million as our number. That would come out to an estimated $56.2 million in gross revenue for UFC 100 (acknowledging that distribution deals with HBO and the carriers would probably cut that figure in half for "net revenue" purposes). That would mean Lesnar, at $400,000, got a hideously poor percentage of that, certainly suggesting a favorable back-end deal. However, even if his take after sponsorship money came to about $3 million, as has been rumored, he would have to have made about $14.4 million on the back end alone to be compensated at the same rate as Manny Pacquiao was for his boxing event this past weekend. He'd have to get $6.55 million to reach the same amount, relatively speaking, as Cotto did.
There were figures uncovered through contact with the Nevada commission that revealed Forrest Griffin and Tito Ortiz to have made $250,000 each from their fight at UFC 106. Once again, we don't know the pay-per-view figures, but considering Ortiz has been a pretty good draw for the UFC in the past, a number of 400,000 would not be an unreasonable estimate.
That would constitute about $18 million in gross revenue, which means the fight that ultimately drove the promotion would have taken up about 2.8% of the gross revenue (which translates to about 5%-6% of the net). That is unconscionable, if there wasn't a very healthy back-end attached to it; something Ortiz's girlfriend Jenna Jameson undoubtedly negotiated in her deals (OK, we apologize for the double entendre).
On that same show, Anthony Johnson, who was a semi-main event for his fight with Josh Koscheck, got $17,000. I have paid more money than that to mediocre fighters (boxers) for main events on basic cable. I have booked fighters overseas, where there was NO U.S. television money, for more than that. I have seen fighters going into non-title bouts get paid more than that in training expenses alone (It should be noted that Johnson received $70,000 in a bonus for “Fight of the Night,” although that was nothing pre-arranged or guaranteed to him going into the fight, or at least I don’t think it was).
I'll guarantee you that the actual paid gate at these UFC events, whether they take place in Las Vegas or elsewhere, is on a par with what boxing events get, even those that obtain a casino "site fee." I think it's also safe to say that there are more merchandise sales in connection to these events on the UFC side as well as more sponsorship dollars.
The point of all this is to say that, no matter hoe you slice it, the money that is being paid to the main event-level UFC competitors pales in comparison to what they get in boxing, in terms of what they get for performing on the “field of play.”
All the while I'm writing this I'm thinking about what Mickey Goldmill said to Rocky Balboa time and again in the first "Rocky" movie:
"You need a manager!!!"
If you're in the UFC, yes you do.
