The two champions and their opponents got six figures, while several on the card are on minimum contracts.
Payouts for UFC events are rarely made public these days, ever since Las Vegas and Florida started catering to the promotion’s desire to keep purses hidden. UFC 270 was hosted in California though, so for this event, we do get a glimpse of the fighters’ disclosed salaries.
Heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou recently went on record to express dissatisfaction with his contract, vowing that after UFC 270, he “will not fight for $500K, $600K anymore.” This is exactly what he and his opponent Ciryl Gane had disclosed.
Topping the bill is Ngannou who took a base pay of $600,000, while Gane, who came into the event with the interim UFC belt, had a purse of $500,000.
The flyweight title bout had significantly smaller purses compared to their heavyweight counterparts. The new champion in Deiveson Figueiredo had a disclosed pay of $150,000 and the now former title holder in Brandon Moreno was at $200,000.
It’s also worth pointing out that there were several fighters with minimum purses on the card.
Four fighters — including one on the main card — are on the standard “minimum” contracts for directly signed UFC fighters at $12,000.
That wasn’t the lowest pay on the card though. Five other fighters had even smaller contracts of just $10,000, as they were veterans of Dana White’s Contender Series, which produces cheaper content for the promotion.
Bloody Elbow’s business analyst, John Nash did some quick napkin math with the figures that were released. Even factoring the typical PPV cuts and possible discretionary bonuses, it seems like once again, fighters didn’t make much compared to the money that the event will generate for the UFC:
We can see from estimates from Morgan Stanley, other financial releases that they get an extra $20m or so from all the contracted sources for PPV events. Throw in gate and they made maybe $26m or so for this. So fighter pay (not total expenses) maybe 14% of revenue.
— John S. Nash (@heynottheface) January 23, 2022
Here’s the full list of UFC 270 disclosed purses and payouts, courtesy of MMA Fighting.
Francis Ngannou: $600,000 (no win bonus)
Ciryl Gane: $500,000
Deiveson Figueiredo: $150,000 (no win bonus)
Brandon Moreno: $200,000
Michel Pereira: $100,000 ($50,000 win bonus)
Andre Fialho: $12,000
Said Nurmagomedov: $50,000 ($25,000 win bonus)
Cody Stamann: $65,000
Michael Morales: $20,000 ($10,000 win bonus)
Trevin Giles: $45,000
Victor Henry: $40,000 ($20,000 win bonus)
Raoni Barcelos: $29,000
Jack Della Maddalena: $20,000 ($10,000 win bonus)
Pete Rodriguez: $12,000
Tony Gravely: $44,000 ($22,000 win bonus)
Saimon Oliveira: $10,000
Matt Frevola: $46,000 ($23,000 win bonus)
Genaro Valdez: $10,000
Vanessa Demopoulos: $24,000 ($12,000 win bonus)
Silvana Gomez Juarez: $12,000
Jasmine Jasudavicius: $20,000 ($10,000 win bonus)
Kay Hansen: $17,000