Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) recently began its exclusive global outfitting and apparel partnership with Venum, which took over for Reebok in producing UFC Fight Kits and performance gear.
Not just for athletes during fight week, but also for combat sports fans looking to rep their favorite fighters. Like its predecessor, Venum will award promotional compliance payouts following each event.
Their formula is fairly simple: Wear our shit and we’ll pay you for it. That said, fighters must adhere to the outfitting policy, satisfy their promotional duties, and honor the UFC code of conduct to receive their earnings, paid in addition to their “show” purse.
How much?
See how those numbers compare to the original Reebok payouts here.
“This is not a profit center for us,” UFC senior executive vice president and chief operating officer Lawrence Epstein told ESPN. “Whether it’s cash out the door or where it’s product, we’re delivering it to the athletes. All the value is essentially going to them. We’re not really making anything on this. We do feel the look and feel of the product itself is great for the UFC brand, but when it comes to cash it’s all going to the athletes, whether in actual cash or product.”
Reviews were … not good.
The Venum sponsorship money is public and while it looks like a slight increase it’s actually a drop in pay when you factor in inflation. pic.twitter.com/3Rjymhdieq
— Chris Rini (@RiniMMA) April 1, 2021
. @donkinglv with the scoop again this time on Venum pay… Laughable increases.. UFC has seen incr in revenues in the hundreds of millions since pay scale was set up… I doubt this incr even covered cost of inflation….
— Robert Joyner (@robnashville) April 1, 2021
venum to fighters with less than six ufc fights pic.twitter.com/r2PF1ajVk2
— Hektic_One (@hektic_one) April 1, 2021
I guess they’re called Venum cause their pay structure is toxic pic.twitter.com/EsD7dUMXbU
— Ryan (@Ryan_Headley7) April 1, 2021
Venum essentially pulled the classic Price is Right move bidding $1 more for the spotlight lmao
— Jordan Buckels (@Buckels_Jordan) April 1, 2021
A UFC history lesson.
Was a time, not that long ago before fighters got screwed by UFC / Reebok, that Venum would pay $5K+ just to wear their shorts on fight night as one of many sponsors.
In 2021 as title sponsor their paying guys w/ 9 UFC fights a measly $6k for ENTIRE week! pic.twitter.com/GtyfOJ2O0h
— Jordan McCreery (@MMAAdvertising) April 1, 2021
Hopefully we can avoid another “Giblert” fiasco.
“Venum has been a part of the MMA landscape for a long time,” Epstein told MMA Junkie. “They’ve been a sponsor of many of our iconic fighters. They are an MMA brand, so they build product for the mixed martial arts athlete, and they do a great job at it, so when we went out and were looking for a a partner in the outfitting pace, we had a great relationship with Reebok, but one of the things that was key to us was that the product had to be designed for mixed martial arts athletes. This couldn’t be a logo slap of a compression product or some other short. It had to be a product that was specifically designed for our athletes.”
Venum will make its outfitting debut at the upcoming UFC event on April 10.