After Randy Couture’s retirement from the UFC , and his comments on the amount of money he was getting paid, there has been much made again on internet forums all over about the amount of money fighters make, and why some fighters make more than other.
The problem with everyone’s complaints is that they make the big mistake of comparing MMA fighter’s pay to NFL and MLB pay rates. There is and always will be a large disparity in pay between a long established national past time like the NFL and MMA. I will attempt to go into it in more detail here.
Problem #1: Comparing NFL money to MMA money.
The NFL in 2004 signed an extensionto their television broadcast rights for 8 billion dollars over 6 years. The NFL on average earns 1.3 billion dollars from television right alone. Along with the hundreds of millions of dollars paid each year for exclusive deals with Reebok, Coke/Pepsi and other revenue streams, before ticket sales the NFL should be making around 2 billion dollars a year. This money is divided among the teams meaning each team would get around 62.5 million a year from NFL related contracts not including their own deals for the team.
The UFC is currently looking to extend its current TV contract with SpikeTV at an estimated 100 million dollars and is likely to cover 3-4 years of programming. This deal would bring an estimated 25-33million a year to the UFC. A whopping 30 million less than each NFL team earns, and 1/80th of the NFL
Problem #2: Comparing NFL salaries to UFC salaries
The highest paid player in the NFL in 2006 was Richard Seymour at 24.7 million. The lowest player salary in the NFL was around 300,000. This means that Seymour made around 82 times the amount of the lowest paid professional football player for the year.
The highest paid fighter in the UFC is Chuck Liddell earning approximately 500,000 per fight . The lowest paid fighter in the UFC (using UFC 76 as basis for both pay-scales ) was Diego Saraiva at 3,000 dollars. Saraiva earned a paltry 1/166th of what Liddell earned.
When you look at it as 1 NFL team, we will use the New England Patriots as an example, makes 286 million in total revenue and operating income a year. They have their stars who make tons of money, Richard Seymour and their guys who are roster fillers and third string guys needed in case an injury or a personal matter makes a player ineligible for play.
This is not unlike two fighters in the UFC fighting in the main event and getting paid many times over what the fighters on the non-televised uner card are making. Would you pay a fighter that 95% of your fan base has never heard of 100,000$ to fight in a bout that would not even air on your pay-per-view? Not likely. The same as the NFL doesn’t pay its practice squad players millions of dollars a year.
When it comes to the matter of fighters being brought in from other organizations and being paid more than their own home grown stars it is all about star power, and if the organization feels that this one person can put them over the top. When the Patriots looked to upgrade their defense this off-season they went out and signed highly touted Linebacker Adalius Thomas to a speculated 10 million dollars a year.
Did the Patriots have players currently on their roster capable of playing the position making a lot less? Yes they did. They have stars like Mike Vrabel, Roosevelt Colvin and others, but Thomas had that “X-Factor” and they believed he could put them over the top. Much the same as the UFC obviously felt that guys like CroCop, Fedor and Noguiera would put their roster over the top.
When you have a shortage of quality personnel to fill a position, whether it be a fight card or a football team, you tend to overpay for one person. The UFC was in bad need of heavyweights and went out and made very high offers to the best prospects for them. In the process they potentially paid a lot more money to these prospects than they do to their homegrown talent, like Couture.
While we all agree that fighters should be paid more for what they do, we can all probably agree that football players get paid too much for what they do.
What it all comes down to is how well the fighter (or his agent/manager) can negotiate with the UFC for his pay, just like the players in the NFL do. If you are a hot commodity ( see Mirko “CroCop” Filopovic ) you are likely to be paid higher and offered more money than Joe blow with an unproven record and not a recognizable name, the same as Terrell Owens will get millions while some undrafted rookie would get the minimum.
The name of the game is all self promotion. How well can you sell yourself to the fans, the UFC and the media will all influence how much you make. How much character can you display that will make fans want to be around you and want to be like you. The more fans that want you, the better you off you will be.
And remember people, if the fighters didn’t like the deal they got, they always had the option of not signing. |
