UFC 84 Salaries

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21

[quote]CaliforniaLaw wrote:
balljack8 wrote:So that leaves 99,99% of us here who don`t do that speculating on something we know shit about.
Come to think of it not even the fighters seem to know how much they are paid.

There’s no need to speculate, and quite frankly, it’s none of your business how much fighters make.

That has always been Dana White’s point. He and fighters don’t think you or 99.99% of people are entitled to know how much money they bring home. So they come up with some numbers so as to comply with athletic commission regulations.

But they leave people who (like you) really have no reason to stick their big noses under the tent, in the dark.[/quote]

Quite frankly i`m not impressed at all by your fake know it all on this subject,unless your one of the regular UFC fighters accountant i doubt that you even have a slight idea how much a fighter makes in one fight combining all the sponsors etc per year.

Even then you would only know your fighters salary.

Speculating on how much a fighter makes is not to be taken too seriously,something you complectly missed.

We speculate constantly on different things here but none of us is a UFC fighter and that includes you also so you might want to drop your “insider” attitude as it`s not impressing anyone.

But at least your bringing the entertainment value on this thread lol

22

[quote]Typical moron from Sherdog. There’s a reason I can’t read yet alone post at those sites.

You don’t get paid for 30 seconds. You get paid for months leading to the fight - and the years before that in “research and development.”

Oh, and a concussion is a very bad thing.

These are not complicated concepts. Go back to Sherdog and leave people with IQs over 100 alone over here.[/quote]

So you dont read the site but know everything. Sherdog IS full of Morons so I am surprised you dont fit in…

  1. Nobody forces these fighters to fight… They chose do so. Nobody wants to be concussed yet fighters all over the world accept this as a possible consequence.

  2. The fighters can chose to fight else where but many chose not to? Why?

For example Sean Sherk was dropped by the UFC a few years ago and basically walked away from the sport(his words) because the money wasnt enough to live on outside the UFC in the smaller orgs.

A few of these smaller orgs are now being bankrolled by Billionarie Backers who are throwing money to try to attract the biggest names they can - Kimbo is a prime example.

I am not their accountant but either 1) Their lower tier fighters are being screwed 2) As a business they will fail unless they succeed pretty quickly as their finance wont stand up on their own.

The UFC also negotiates with its top fighters %PPV figures not in basic salary figures because these numbers take time to filter back (Watch Randy’s press conference and even he will tell you that).

Fighters also have sponsorship deals outside the UFC which are not included. How much sponsorship would a fighter earn if he wasnt in the UFC on International Television but fighting in some local promotion…

Very few fighters complain about their pay and conditions. In fact they are being paid better than a lot of people for doing something they love, which is more than 90% of people do.

Every time a UFC payday comes out, everyone starts debating fighter pay. Like it hasn’t been discussed before?

Which is what I basically meant with my first line

The truth is in the middle. Lots of guys are making lots of money. No need to shed any tears for any of the people involved.
Which is what I also said

There’s no need to speculate, and quite frankly, it’s none of your business how much fighters make.

I dont care about what they actually make I care about repeated accusations based on small available details of fighters being screwed

But at least your bringing the entertainment value on this thread lol

Theres nothing quite like Internet indignation

23

I don’t have any inside knowledge whatsoever on the financial workings of the sport or what it costs to put on a top-level show, and therefore how much a show has to bring in to turn enough of a profit for it to be worthwhile.

BUT – and this is just a pure hunch, so don’t flame me – Dana White and Company make it sound like it’s REALLY hard, and my intuition just tells me that’s probably not true.

Putting aside the UFC itself for a second, take the upcoming Affliction show, which has one of the most stacked cards EVER put together, at least with regard to heavyweights, and also one of the biggest payout guarantees to go along with it.

http://www.afflictionbanned.com

I think I read somewhere that the payout (combined pay that they’re paying all the fighters) for the Affliction card is somewhere around $6 million, and a lot of people have been screaming, “They’ll NEVER turn a profit with $6 million in fighter payouts!!”

Well . . . I figure they’ll probably sell out the arena (Honda Center in Anaheim, CA), so that’s, what, 20,000 people. I just looked on Ticketmaster and the best available seats (ringside) or $1,000 each. The cheapest available are $50. I don’t know what the average ticket price is, but let’s say it’s $80. That’s $1.6 million in ticket revenue. PLUS, a lot of those people will buy merchandise (T-shirts, hats, photos, food, beverages, etc.). I have no idea what that amounts to, but maybe it’s another $500,000 (?).

Now, this is where the real money comes in: Pay Per View. Is it safe to assume at least 200,000 PPV buys (conservatively, I would think)? I know it doesn’t have the UFC’s brand name, so it won’t do typical UFC-like numbers of PPV buys, but it’s got some BIG names on that card, and they’re promoting it well. If we assume 200,000 PPV buys at $50 each, that’s $10,000,000.

So we’ve come to a (very conservative, I believe) estimated total of $12.1 million in gross revenues.

Now subtract the fighter payout of $6 million, and we’re down to $6.1 million. Now the other costs (rental of the arena, TV and arena production costs, promotion/advertising costs, legal costs, etc.) have to be subtracted out, and I have no idea what those are. But I can’t imagine they’re anywhere CLOSE to eating up the remaining $6.1 million.

BUT, I wouldn’t be surprised if the show does a lot more than 200,000 PPV buys. Hypothetically, if it does 300,000 PPV buys, that’s $15,000,000 just in PPV revenue, which brings the total to $17.1 million in gross revenue. Now they start making some serious cash off this show.

And that’s WITH the most lucrative fighter payouts ever seen.

Just thinking out loud. I have no point, really. :slight_smile:

24

[quote]Damici wrote:
BUT – and this is just a pure hunch, so don’t flame me – Dana White and Company make it sound like it’s REALLY hard, and my intuition just tells me that’s probably not true.[/quote]

I believe your intuition is misguided. First of all, none of us really know what the deal is with the behind-the-scenes business it. The only thing we can tell intuitively is what promotions have suceeded, and what have failed. And the only one that has shown the ability to be profitable has been the UFC under Dana White and the Fertitta’s managment.

The IFL has failed, the UFC under SEG failed, if EliteXC does not post brilliant ratings Sautrday they will be in serious trouble along with all of their small associated promotions like KOTC and ROTR, the HCF failed (after a promising start buying Aleks Emelianenko, Louiseau, lil Nog, etc), the WFA failed, Pride FC failed (despite having a huge audience and seen as posessing the best fighters), Battleship (LOL) never even got started, BoDog failed, M-1 Global failed before even running a card, and even the bastion of combat sports in K-1 has undergone a lot of upheaval and reorganization as their HERO’s MMA failed to capture an audience.

All of these promotions had/have TV coverage, all have marketable fighters. Based on this knowledge, it is DAMN hard to run a profitable MMA promotion on a large scale.

As for Affliction, they sound an awful lot like the WFA. They can afford this inital card, because they have a sucessful business venture to leach money off of to get up and running. I’m not surprised at all that they can pull off a first card like this. The real question here is whether or not they have any sort of long term plan to make money.

Now, I am only a few classes into getting an MBA and am an engineer by profession, but their entire scheme makes no fucking sense to my inner businessman. They plan to use their MMA cards like a big advertisement for their clothing line. Now, they were doing this before, and making HUGE profit, by sponsoring fighters in established MMA promotions all over the world. People saw Randy walk to the cage in the UFC in his Affliction shirt, and people ate that shit up.

Now, because they want to run their Afflicition promotion, they lost the ability to advertise in the UFC, lost their ability to advertise in EliteXC, lost their promotion in Strikeforce, etc. So they have substantially shrunk their captive audience, and substantially increased their advertising budget by running a double digit million dollar MMA card. Sounds like a recipie for failure. I will bet anything Affliction 2 never happens.

25

[quote]woohitter wrote:
I over estimated the pay per view event revenue. It isnt as outrageous as I believed but look at the numbers and tell me its ok.

600,000 PPV buys per event (UFC 81 was 650,000 buys) = $27,000,000

$27,000,000 X 12 events per year = $324,000,000
[/quote]

Once again, you are failing to note the fact that PPV proivders take 50% of that revnue right off the top. $324 million instantly becomes $162 million. I don’t have exact numbers, but the UFC did less than 12 PPV’s last year. They also run Fight Night cards on Spike TV, and boardcast several full events on Spike TV. Those do not generate PPV revenue, but are part of a Spike TV contract.

If you want to have a real good laugh, see what guys on the undercard of boxing fights make. The headliners make bank, but until you become one of the handful of major headliners in the sport you don’t make shit. The fact that guys with 5-7 fights are coming into the UFC and making double digit money is unheard of in the world of Combat Sports. It’s not the top guys who are bitching, it’s not the entry level guys, it’s the guys in the middle who are striving to get that top billing.

26

None of us can say what UFC makes.

How many PPVs do they REALLY sell? We only know what’s leaked from Zuffa. Maybe Zuffa leaks the wrong information - more buys than they get to make people get hyped and believe it’s mainstream; or less buys so people think they are making less money.

What is value of Spike TV deal?

Does UFC get % of ad sales?

How much money do they get from those commercials they play? From Bud-Lite? From Harley Davidson.

How much does it cost to produce TUF? Do they gain or lose money (in the short term due to network TV ratings) on TUF?

How much did they pay for Pride?

What’s their payroll? They have a lot of employees that must be paid year round.

How much does it cost setting up events? Especially events overseas? You gotta fly people out, camera crews, all sorts of stuff.

We know only a little bit of information. The rest is just guessing.

As I said earlier, I know how Dana White and many of the guys in the UFC live. It is not a bad life. Even the mid-level guys aren’t living anywhere near a life of poverty.

Lots of money is going around…

27

You make a good point, and one that I can’t really dispute. It just seems a little inexplicable to me (yet undeniable) how all the other MMA organizations seem to fail or be failing financially. Especially when I do some quick (albeit admittedly “fuzzy” math).

It looks like it can be done. Maybe we’ll learn a lot more after the first Affliction show.

[quote]Donut62 wrote:
Damici wrote:
BUT – and this is just a pure hunch, so don’t flame me – Dana White and Company make it sound like it’s REALLY hard, and my intuition just tells me that’s probably not true.

I believe your intuition is misguided. First of all, none of us really know what the deal is with the behind-the-scenes business it. The only thing we can tell intuitively is what promotions have suceeded, and what have failed. And the only one that has shown the ability to be profitable has been the UFC under Dana White and the Fertitta’s managment.

The IFL has failed, the UFC under SEG failed, if EliteXC does not post brilliant ratings Sautrday they will be in serious trouble along with all of their small associated promotions like KOTC and ROTR, the HCF failed (after a promising start buying Aleks Emelianenko, Louiseau, lil Nog, etc), the WFA failed, Pride FC failed (despite having a huge audience and seen as posessing the best fighters), Battleship (LOL) never even got started, BoDog failed, M-1 Global failed before even running a card, and even the bastion of combat sports in K-1 has undergone a lot of upheaval and reorganization as their HERO’s MMA failed to capture an audience.

All of these promotions had/have TV coverage, all have marketable fighters. Based on this knowledge, it is DAMN hard to run a profitable MMA promotion on a large scale.

As for Affliction, they sound an awful lot like the WFA. They can afford this inital card, because they have a sucessful business venture to leach money off of to get up and running. I’m not surprised at all that they can pull off a first card like this. The real question here is whether or not they have any sort of long term plan to make money.

Now, I am only a few classes into getting an MBA and am an engineer by profession, but their entire scheme makes no fucking sense to my inner businessman. They plan to use their MMA cards like a big advertisement for their clothing line. Now, they were doing this before, and making HUGE profit, by sponsoring fighters in established MMA promotions all over the world. People saw Randy walk to the cage in the UFC in his Affliction shirt, and people ate that shit up.

Now, because they want to run their Afflicition promotion, they lost the ability to advertise in the UFC, lost their ability to advertise in EliteXC, lost their promotion in Strikeforce, etc. So they have substantially shrunk their captive audience, and substantially increased their advertising budget by running a double digit million dollar MMA card. Sounds like a recipie for failure. I will bet anything Affliction 2 never happens.[/quote]

28

Fuck, for almost a quarter of a million, I’ll chase Machida around the octagon for 15 minuets and let him kick me every now and then. What does Tito have to bitch about again?

29

[quote]analog_kid wrote:
Fuck, for almost a quarter of a million, I’ll chase Machida around the octagon for 15 minuets and let him kick me every now and then. What does Tito have to bitch about again? [/quote]

His broken ribs and bleeding liver. When has anyone other than Chuck ever flat out put Tito on his ass with a strike? The Machida hate is ridiculous. I hope he becomes the champion forever.

30

[quote]Damici wrote:
You make a good point, and one that I can’t really dispute. It just seems a little inexplicable to me (yet undeniable) how all the other MMA organizations seem to fail or be failing financially. Especially when I do some quick (albeit admittedly “fuzzy” math).

[/quote]

I don’t quite understand why they tank so bad either. Maybe if we scrape together our money Damici…

31

I didn’t know that I lot of people hate Machida or anything. His style just makes for kind of non-exciting fights. They’re IMPRESSIVE, don’t get me wrong, but he’s impressive mainly by being elusive for 95% of the fight – the opponent will be attempting to engage and he just slithers away or blocks their attempts. That makes for a much less fun fight to watch than, say, Wandy vs. Chuck.

But the guy’s style and skill set (and record) are clearly impressive; no one can deny him that.

[quote]Donut62 wrote:
analog_kid wrote:
Fuck, for almost a quarter of a million, I’ll chase Machida around the octagon for 15 minuets and let him kick me every now and then. What does Tito have to bitch about again?

His broken ribs and bleeding liver. When has anyone other than Chuck ever flat out put Tito on his ass with a strike? The Machida hate is ridiculous. I hope he becomes the champion forever.[/quote]

32

I’d throw in several G’s if we can get MsM and AmandaSC to jello wrestle! We’ll fill some seats, sell a little popcorn . . .

:slight_smile:

[quote]Donut62 wrote:
Damici wrote:
You make a good point, and one that I can’t really dispute. It just seems a little inexplicable to me (yet undeniable) how all the other MMA organizations seem to fail or be failing financially. Especially when I do some quick (albeit admittedly “fuzzy” math).

I don’t quite understand why they tank so bad either. Maybe if we scrape together our money Damici…[/quote]

33

[quote]Donut62 wrote:
analog_kid wrote:
Fuck, for almost a quarter of a million, I’ll chase Machida around the octagon for 15 minuets and let him kick me every now and then. What does Tito have to bitch about again?

His broken ribs and bleeding liver. When has anyone other than Chuck ever flat out put Tito on his ass with a strike? The Machida hate is ridiculous. I hope he becomes the champion forever.[/quote]

I really don’t remember Tito taking that much damage in the fight, not that you can really tell by watching.

I don’t hate Machida, I’ve already said twice in this thread that he is a really talented fighter. But if he is champion forever, I will save a lot of money not buying the PPVs he headlines.

I also heard that Rogan got $10 for every time he said “elusive”.

34

Machida’s fights are boring. All too many people think it’s sophisticated to say how great he is. It’s almost like the in thing to do.

Yes, I know what he’s doing. I can see what’s going on from a technical standpoint. It’s boring.

I know what a BJJ guy is doing if he has you in his guard for 30 minutes. He’s stalling and waiting for you to make some mistake. Great, I get it. In my first tourney match I held a guy in my guard, swept him, after a scramble ended up on my back and then held him in my guard for a win on points. Shit was boring, even if “technical.”

I know what Rulon Gardner did in order to “beat” Alexander Karelin.

I don’t want to watch those types of fight.

I’m also not a fan who just wants to see Griffin-Bonnar slug fests.

What do I want to see? I want to see someone using his skills to ACTIVELY attempt to knock out or submit his opponent. I want to see action, not paint dry.

Machida doesn’t try to finish fights. He floats in, scores a point like he would in point Karate, and floats out.

Again, I know what he’s doing. But that’s not why I watch MMA.

Shit is boring, period.

35

SHOTOKAN KARATE IS THE STRONGEST!

36

Late to the conversation but who cares? Nobody forces them to fight. THey are presented with an opportunity and they decide to take it.

37

The thing that I think is funny is that some of those main card fighters make less than those jerks on TUF show…

Other than that, why does anyone care what they make?