What does UFC’s global ambitions for its brand (not the sport) have to with the treatment of fighters?

While not spoken about at all, Zuffa’s lobbying is on behalf of Zuffa, and its global aims again, are for the benefit of Zuffa.

As to litigation, a large percentage of that litigation is aimed at stifling the progress of any entity and/or person not Zuffa or contracted to Zuffa–not for the benefit of the sport at all.

A small, and unspoken about change to the database requirements–to be considered an official stat, bouts must be undertaken under the auspices of an ABC commission. This has not yet become a public issue, but think about that for a moment.

Were I Zuffa, I’d use that little change to install commissions to my liking in every jurisdiction I enter. You don’t agree, you will become irrelevant as fighter stats will not be “official.”

That’s not even talking about internationally, where they had to pay lawyers in Canada and Germany just recently!

Yeah, they’re probably banking most of their cash, but right now, that’s probably wise. They’ve probably set aside a percentage each month to spend on lobbyists, and they have to be prepared to pay a bunch of lawyers in the future (given how many legal battles they’ve been in, it’s a safe bet they’ll be in more). And once the UFC grows a little bigger, there will be legal battles about the sport’s safety, the possibility of having to make more extensive medical coverage available to the fighters, etc.

I mean, just look at the NBA. It’s grown, it’s a mature sport. And its expenses are huge. Every team needs political lobbyists because they need deals with the cities for the stadiums, they have press teams, merchandising staff, advertising staff, legal, trainers, coaches, referee school… If an NBA player just sprains his knee he gets an MRI! You know how much an MRI costs???

This is a future they need to prepare for (hopefully they are, if they’re not, it’s foolish). Boxing is a bad comparison – there isn’t a single dominant organization in boxing. Boxers are almost individual companies… I don’t want mma to head towards the direction that boxing has matured into, with rival organizations, multiple championships, and a diluted talent pool with a ridiculous number of weight classes.

UFC is investing in their gyms, staff for those gyms, etc.

They could be paying the fighters more, sure… no argument from me about that. But I’d rather have them be paid what they’re currently paid, (at some of them have managed to make millions off of this) and the company grow than have their salaries inflate prematurely. Once they go up, they aren’t coming back down, and money going towards expansion will be proportionately much less.

The biggest excuse they have given is the need to “expand UFC internationally.” Okay, where are tens of millions of dollars going to do that, then?

Basically, all we’ve seen is they show up and run a show. They’re not establishing a the German office branch of the International UFC Bureau. They have some guys do a little press (no different than they do when they run American shows) that costs nothing, and then show up and make lots of money off of the gate that at least helps them break even, if not profit.

In the other sports, the revenue is from national tv–there is no PPV. Not so for the UFC. The UFC gets revenue from PPV, and from SpiktTV, which while not “national” is in something like 92 million households. My point remains–the UFC already has the revenue now–not waiting for it to arrive at a later date–it exists right now.

Salaries have increased from an incredibly low amount, the just a generally low amount. Compare the splits not to other sports, but to boxing. MMA pays out far less, on equal or greater revenue. It isn’t a function of what it exists–it is purely a function of leverage, as Rome alludes too.

Your third point is just inaccurate throughout. No one said pay rates the same as other sports–I think what have been said–why aren’t the “splits” of what exist similar to other sports. MMA and boxing are not that different at all–and yet, their payouts are very different.

#1 – National TV? UFC is still working on that one.

#2 – Salaries *have* increased, dramatically and rapidly. When Couture came back and fought Sylvia and Gonzaga, he made something like $3 million. You want to compare that to how much he was making 4 years earlier?

#3 – After the UFC has had two good years you want it to provide salaries rates comparable to very established and very profitable sports that have existed for decades and have a *completely* different business model. That’s a ridiculous standard.

It isn’t pointing to cosmic justice to point to the other sports, it is pointing to the leverage players in other sports are able to exert to achieve roughly the same split. Why should we believe (i) the percentages are unfair or not “just” when they are the result of negotiations, and (ii) that the percentages, given the same leverage, would be any different in MMA?

When we compare the percentage mixed martial artists make to that which baseball players and basketball players make, the assumption is that their percentage is right or just. Is it? I don’t believe in some cosmic justice that determines how revenue should be split, there’s only what fighters can achieve for themselves battling against what management can afford to keep.

The revenue split from the UFC on PPV is closer to 20% than the 10% routinely bandied about, but of course even at that rate it’s not close to the other sports. At the same time, the brand UFC obviously has incredible value right now. What does Lyoto Machida vs. Rashad Evans for Affliction draw on PPV? 80k? Less? And that’s assuming they have the name value drawn from their UFC careers at that point.

The flood gates for pay will open when fighters can leave the UFC, run an independent PPV, and draw a huge number on their names alone. The UFC is aware of that, which is why they put so much focus on the brand, and why they spent so much to keep Randy from fighting elsewhere.

Fighters need to figure out a way to turn themselves into valuable commodities independent of the UFC structure. Right now, most fighters are perfectly happy just to be stars within that structure, so I don’t see it happening anytime soon.

Salaries were low in the other sports, when revenues were low. As soon at national TV and thereby big dollars entered the fray, salaries dramatically increased, and rapidly.

Zuffa has already experienced dramatic increases in revenue, and are already reaping enormous profits. Thus, the argument of 45 Huddle is reduced to one that relies only upon the passage of time.

Fighters, it appears, should wait for a change in the payscale merely for the passage of time, another 50-60 years say, just because.