When the UFC announced its new Athlete Outfitting Policy earlier this year, all we could do was take a “wait and see” approach.
We knew it was a seismic shift for the UFC. It would clean up the UFC from a visual perspective; instead of looking like NASCAR drivers, broadcasts would now have a clean, uniform look. That was a good thing.
We knew it would mean something for the fighters and their pocketbooks, but we weren’t exactly sure what that something would be. When the deal was first announced, it was going to be based off the UFC’s official rankings. That was never going to work, as those official rankings are determined by a panel of alleged media members that nobody has ever heard of.
That was eventually changed, because it had to be. The UFC recently announced that it would divvy up the Reebok money based on seniority in the UFC; the longer you’ve been fighting for Zuffa, the more money you’ll make. What we didn’t know, however, was the pay structure.
And that, of course, was the single most important detail.
On Wednesday, the pay tiers were released during a UFC conference call with their favorite media outlets. Fighters with 0 to 5 fights in the UFC will receive $2,500 per fight on top of their contracted pay. The numbers run all the way up to $30,000 for title challengers and $40,000 for champions.
The reaction was swift, with fighters taking to social media to express the positives and negatives of the deal.
Here’s heavyweight Matt Mitrione, never one to mince words.
Roger Narvaez, who has three fights in the UFC, also appears to not be a fan.
And Brendan Schaub notes that he’ll be taking a significant pay cut:
Tim Kennedy also appears to have some issues with the new system.
On the other side, you have fighters like the veteran Scott Jorgensen, who appears to be thrilled with the extra $20,000 per fight he’ll be pocketing going forward. Jorgensen has 21 fights under the Zuffa banner.
It is no secret that the sponsorship market for mixed martial arts, once a thriving business that could net even a mid-card fighter good money, has dried up. The UFC’s policy on charging a sponsorship tax is largely to blame; the sponsorship tax drove many companies who would have been interested in sponsoring fighters to other promotions or out of the sport completely.
No longer could a debuting fighter find a local car dealership or law firm to throw him $5,000 in return for a spot on his shorts; with the sponsor tax in effect, those companies would have to pay the UFC for the right to pay the fighters. Many of them passed.
So the UFC (and the waning popularity of MMA in general) killed the sponsor market, and the solution is to create a uniform and pay the fighters for wearing the uniform. And according to Wednesday’s conference call, they also retain the option of putting other logos and branding on those uniforms and not paying the fighters out of that money. If Monster or Bud Light wants to pay the UFC an extra $1,500,000 for an event, the fighters will parade around wearing that logo and not get paid a dime for it. And if they’re upset about being forced to promote a company without being paid to do so, well, that’s tough, and they’ll be fined if they elect to not wear the clothing forced upon them by the UFC.
And let’s take a look at the tiers. $2,500 in sponsorship money for a fighter with two fights in the UFC probably isn’t such a terrible thing. More often than not, we see those fighters sporting zero sponsorships for their bouts buried deep on Fight Pass or the undercard of a Fox Sports 1 show. To those fighters, the extra $2,500 will likely come in handy. It’ll help them pay off the credit card bills they accumulated while training.
But if you get to five fights in the UFC, there’s a pretty good chance you’d be able to do much better than just $2,500. Five fights in the UFC means you’ve won a couple, and you’re starting to make something of a name for yourself, even among the hundreds and hundreds of nearly-anonymous fighters on the UFC roster.
And if you get to 10 fights in the UFC, you’re doing something right. You’re winning here and there, and you’re doing enough to impress the brass. And still, you’ll only get $10,000 extra on top of your contracted win and show money. Yeah, you won’t have to chase down derelict t-shirt companies to try and collect your money; that’s a nice benefit, I suppose. But still, $10,000 seems like not very much money for a fighter with 10 bouts in the UFC.
But the fighters this deal is really going to hurt are ones like Urijah Faber, who is marketable and a veteran and not a champion. The idea of Faber pulling in just $20,000 in sponsorship money for a single fight is laughable. In the past, Faber was at least able to advertise companies he had a stake in; now, he can’t even do that.
And in reality, it is extraordinarily difficult for a fighter to put together enough fights in the Zuffa banner to qualify for the higher levels of tenure.
Take a look at the upcoming UFC Fight Night card from Australia. If the Reebok deal were in effect right now, headliners Stipe Miocic and Mark Hunt would each make $5,000 in sponsorship money. That’s right: two main event fighters would make a mere $5,000 extra. In fact, per MMAjunkie’s Mike Bohn, the entire total of the hypothetical Reebok money for Fight Night 65 would be just $87,500.
According to statistical wizard Reed Kuhn, 61% of the UFC’s current roster falls into the lowest pay tier. With the amount of planned non-title and title fights for 2015, the total numbers add up to about $7 million per year in Reebok money; that’s far less than the roughly $11.6 million per year the deal was originally reported to be worth. Some of that money will be used to pay for administration costs. Still, there are questions about how much money, exactly, the UFC is receiving from this deal and how much money, exactly, they are actually distributing to the athletes.
The announcement of the sponsorship numbers answered some of the questions we had, but it created new ones. It is fine for us to want to know the details, but the people actually being affected by this deal are the fighters.
If they have questions, this is the time for them to stand up and ask those questions.
If they are dissatisfied, now is the time for them to say so.
The UFC does listen to concerns. They are not heartless. The fighters may not have a union and they may not have a collective voice, but they have the power to effect change when they wish to do so. Social media is a powerful thing, and the UFC is attuned to it perhaps more than any other major sporting league.
If enough fighters side with Schaub and Mitrione and others in expressing their dissatisfaction, I’d wager the UFC will take a second look at the numbers they released today.
And if they don’t, they might have a large contingent of unhappy “independent” contractors on their hands.
Jeremy Botter covers mixed martial arts for Bleacher Report
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