Retired heavyweight, and one of the UFC’s biggest critics, Brendan Schaub shares his thoughts on the new UFC-ESPN deal.
The beginning of 2019 marked the start of a monumental partnership between the UFC and sports broadcast giant ESPN. With this new deal in place, the UFC also announced the move of all its pay-per-view broadcasts to ESPN+, making the network its exclusive PPV distributor in the United States.
This deal also gives the UFC a guaranteed amount on PPV sales, which in turn, massively boosts their contracted revenue. Ultimately, they won’t be relying too much on the likes of marquee superstars like Conor McGregor to pull in the numbers and sell out events to make money.
Outside observers like Brendan Schaub sees this change as a dawn of a new era that kills the UFC’s long-time business model.
“The power has left the fighters, all the fighters,” Schaub said on his Below the Belt podcast (transcript by BJPenn.com). “Because now that they have this guaranteed nut, they’re covered, they’re balling, there’s no more pay-per-view stars. The pay-per-view star model is over.
“It was a business model that was predicated on huge pay-per-view stars. Brock Lesnar, Ronda Rousey, you know, obviously Conor McGregor, Anderson Silva, these guys, these bigger than life names and they put all the resources into them and they had the marketing machine behind them. You’re never going to see that anymore.
“That’s over with,” he continued. “So if you didn’t think your fighter got huge kind of push before, it’s going to get way worse. They don’t have to. They’re set. They’re in cruise control in America. They just went cruise control. Cool. We don’t have to bank on stars.”
Schaub expects a major change in promotional landscape and how fighters market themselves, which also shifted upon the entry of a brash-talking fighter like McGregor in the early 2010’s.
“Now that they’re sitting pretty, they have this guaranteed money,” he said. “They don’t have to make stars. You’re just going to get fights now. Good fights, great fights. That’s all you’re going to get.
“So if you’re sick of the entertainment era, it’s officially over. That ESPN deal to me went, ‘oh, it was fun. And like all that sh-t talking and stuff like that. It was fun. It’s over,’ The entertainment era is officially over.”
But if there’s one thing that’s constant in Schaub’s perspective is the UFC’s business-oriented approach.
“It’s always been what’s best for the UFC, never the fighters,” he said. “And with this, it’s never been more true now. If you’re Conor McGregor, if you’re Nate Diaz, Nick Diaz, if you’re those guys, even Brock Lesnar, if you’re those guys on the outside who the UFC’s like, ‘dude, please come fight for us please,’ They don’t give a f—k anymore. They have these guarantees.
“So those guys who were like, ‘ah, I’m just going to wait and get this big payday,’ … That’s gone. The UFC doesn’t give a f—k about Conor-Nate Diaz 3. They don’t care if Brock Lesnar-Daniel Cormier [happens], they don’t care about any of that. They have these guarantees now. Cool, man, don’t fight.
“Think about that, they did that to Conor McGregor,” he added. “Dana went, ‘yeah, cool, man. Make a ton of money [with your] whiskey. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don’t care. Yeah, we know, no. We just, we have all these guarantees. We cover our nut and then some. Don’t fight. We don’t give a f—k,’ Then he (McGregor) goes, ‘I need this. I need, if I’m going to fight…’ Hmm. Don’t give a f—k.”
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