With news of the UFC’s new television and streaming deal with Paramount being valued at $7.7 billion for seven years, questions about fighter pay are back in the news cycle. The UFC has been flush with enormous amounts of cash for years, but this level of wealth is so extreme that many inside MMA, including fighters, have wondered whether this means a pay bump for them.
The answer is yes, but not like you might expect.
I spoke to a former MMA manager who had some insight on what might happen next. This manager represented clients at the highest level: champions who earned points from pay-per-view bouts. UFC President Dana White has already promised a bump in bonuses, although it remains to be seen how much and the going rate of $50,000 is itself a decline from original highs. Nevertheless, as I explain in this video, what the manager told me was the UFC is likely to increase pay, but crucially, without ever explaining how the raise fits into the overall revenue picture.
As a bonus, here’s another video I made after news broke stemming from Ariel Helwani’s appearance on Logan Paul’s podcast that the UFC got the Saudis to help make a $30 million purse available to Jon Jones to fight Tom Aspinall only for him to ultimately decline it. Quite the revealing moment about who Jones actually is and what his real priorities are:
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