UFC Salaries

[VictorCharlie]

Ok VD and I had a back and forth on this topic in the boxing section and I thought I'd bring it to its proper forum


Potential Pay Per View Bonus:

Fighter shall receive $1.00 for each ppv buy excess of 100k buys up to 175k buys,
Fighter shall receive $1.50 for each ppv buy from 175k buys to 300k buys,
Fighter shall receive $2.00 for each ppv buy from 300k buys to 330k buys,
Fighter shall receive $3.00 for for each ppv buy in excess of 330k buys.

Incidentals:
-3 round trip plane tickets
[COLOR=#c59f9f !important][FONT=verdana, geneva, lucida, 'lucida grande', arial, helvetica, sans-serif][/font][/color]-3 hotel or motel rooms for fighter + 2 affiliates
-10 floorseat tickets, and 10 upper area tickets
- $50 per day each for 3 people for food.

A fighter like Couture on that contract for the Lesnar fight which was 1 mill or 1.2 mill buys, whatever it was we'll use 1 mill for simplicity.

Under that current contract Couture walked away with 2.33 mill + his 250k base salary. So his total was 2.58 mill.

Assuming Lesnar has a similar ppv contract, he would have made 4.9 million off of UFC 100's ppv buys. However it is quite possible that the ppv contracts could be juicier since Randy's 2007 contract.

Lesnar made at least 4.9 mill off UFC 100 (not including money from sponsors), GSP cashed in big as well.

Source on Randy's Contract

Now regarding people complaining and complaining about low level fighters, saying oh Junie Browning only made 8k + 8k win bonus, or Jardine only made 55k + 55k win bonus.

Sponsorship money:

Frank Mir:

Frank Mir a year and a half ago, was at a very low value point, he he hadn't beaten Brock yet, and he was completely abandoned as a fighter, everyone thought he would never recover from that Motorcycle accident considering his horrible performances after it.

"Fighting in the UFC makes an athlete significantly more attractive to a sponsor. Frank Mir made $85,000 for the logos he wore into the cage for his fight with Brock Lesnar that night. Had he been fighting in another organization, there’s zero chance he would have earned half that in sponsorship money and he likely wouldn’t have gotten 20 percent as much."

Joe Lauzon:

“The UFC will pay you if you perform,” said fighter agent Dean Albrecht, Mir’s agent. “It’s like in the NFL. They’re not going to rip up your contract after one great game, but if you perform over a period of time, they’ll pay you and pay you extremely well. In the UFC, if you go out and fight and put on a great show, believe me, they pay extremely well and they can make some of these kids rich.”

Albrecht said another of his clients, Joe Lauzon, earned $8,000 for his bout with Kenny Florian earlier this month on Ultimate Fight Night 13. He would have gotten an $8,000 bonus had he won. Albrecht conceded the pay was low, but it was mitigated by a $20,000 fight of the night bonus and $52,000 in sponsorship money Albrecht negotiated.

He said if Lauzon had been fighting in a regional promotion, he would have made $2,000 to show, gotten $2,000 had he won and may have picked up another $500 in sponsorship. Even in the best case scenario, then, he would have made less than $5,000."

Chuck Liddell:

"A fighter like Chuck Liddell is making around $6 million a year between his salary and his sponsorships and was making at least $9 million little more than a year ago. He was getting $75,000 a month from Xyience and received $1 million for just two weekends of promoting the movie, “300.”

Source for sponsorship money

Now two final subnotes for the section, the UFC introduced a 100k (I think?) requirement charge on sponsors at UFC events, so that could reduce some of the smaller companies that would be willing to do it, and therefore reduce some of the sponsor money that the guys would get.

UFC gives out KO/FoTN/Sub bonuses each card, which is usually 60k for ppv cards, and 25k for Fight Nights.

There are usually 20 fighters on a card, and 4 bonuses given out, so statistically a fighter has a 20% each card to get a bonus.

Pacquiao made $3 million and Marquez $1 million for their epic rematch, but there were five fighters of the 14 on that show who made $3,500 or less.

According to state records, for Hopkins-Calzaghe, outside of the main event, the next highest-paid fighter on that card was Audley Harrison, who made $20,000. There were nine fighters who made $5,000 or less, including two men, Marcos Mendias and Jermell Charlo, who made but $1,500.

Look at UFC 102, 19 of 22 fighters made at least 10 000 (without money from sponsors). 9 guys on the card made at least 50k in base salary (without money from sponsors).

All in all it seems the UFC is doing pretty well by its fighters. Sure if you are an unknown called up for your first fight in the UFC and especially if you are a late addition the money isn't that great but I think taking into account the relative youth of MMA and the UFC we can expect all these things to increase.

I'm no fan of White, but it can't be denied that he is a very shrewd businessman and has taken the UFC to unforseen heights. This can't be said for many of his rival MMA org owners/presidents. Sorry for the length and not getting some of my links working. Much of this post was taken from a post on a different site and I couldn't seem to get it to work right.