How much did UFC pay fighters in 2016 ... (details inside) !

tithas said:
Most big companies pay under 20% of revenue to it's employees. Some are as low as 10%. Granted these are the MDdonalds, walmarts and apples of the world but that is basically the target for major companies. Also increasing minimum pay to 100k might be obtainable but it will drive up cost dramatically. In 2016 an average of 3-5 fighters on each event were at the minimum of 10k/10k. To increase that to 100k flat would cost the UFC 13.94M (41 events * 4 fighters * 85k(15k average)). That is just bottom tier fighters. Increasing minimums to 100k could potentially cost 100M in a single year unless they increased prices or dropped all higher tier fighters to around the same. People like to throw random numbers around but have zero clue what those numbers mean to a profit oriented business's bottom line.
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The investors at WME and Dana are taking home the vast majority of the UFC's profits. The UFC can afford to increase fighter pay without driving up costs, they just have to take a pay cut, which surprise surprise, they're not going to do
 
WWE is not really a fair comparison as they have writers and more production people. They are more actors in a show than prize fighters.
 
rubberneck41 said:
Nor should it be spread evently. Long story short life is not fair. For Christ sakes ask your boss for a raise and stop complaining about your pay by proxy.
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Personally I think it should scale by rank. Uniform: non rank pay, top 15 pay, top 10 pay, top 5 pay, p4p top 15 pay, champ pay. Then add in sponsers, bonuses, and ppv points as necessary.

100% sure that wouldn't work for some buisness reason that I don't understand (I'm a scientist not a businessman!) but I think that would be fair. Everything should be merit based if possible.
 
welcometohavoc said:
in 2016, Lorenzo said the company did about earned 600m in 2015. 2016 was a much better year according to Dana. So let's say 700m for 2016. which is a pretty conservative number.
17% of 700m is 119m. Divided equally among the 500 or so fighters, that would roughly translate to almost 400k per fighter.

So even with their current profit sharing model, they could EASILY afford to pay everyone at least 100k minimum.

Now factoring in not all fighters make the UFC the same amount of money, even if you raised the profit sharing to 25% you'd not only be able to pay every UFC fighter 150k minimum but still have over 100m to give to bigger draws.
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Revenue IS NOT PROFIT so your numbers are nowhere near accurate. With that mindset Apple could pay each of its employees 1.6M since they make 200B a year in revenue (123k employees). The UFC makes a profit 14% in a bad year and 25% in a good year. Before you can make any arguments about pay whatsoever you need to understand the difference between revenue and profits and how operating cost get factored into all this.
 
@FrankieNYC , if one were hypothetically super busy and important but still wanted to show support to your work, what's the single most effective way to do so? I'm assuming a 'like' on Sherdog doesn't quite cut it.





(No, I am not super busy and important. Just time poor and wishing to economise.)
 
FrankieNYC said:
A fair number is 25%
UFC is still a growing organization that spends a lot to sustain or grow.
Major sports did not pay a lot in the first few decades either
25% is about an equal split of profit between fighters & UFC & that is fair IMO
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IngaVovchanchyn said:
Needs to be much higher imo, but it is increasing at a healthy rate.

In most of the more established league sports in the US, athlete pay is about 50% of total revenue. That number might be misleadingly low as well compared to the UFC because NBA players are employees, and all their doctors, trainers, coaches are part of league expenses. In the UFC, those significant expenses are all on the fighters and don't show in the UFC's numbers at all.
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both of you make fair points

obviously I'd like to see pay on the level of boxing but i understand that may be a process and will take some time
 
Is that % profit? If so that's fucking shit tbh should be at least 20%
 
Codpiece said:
@FrankieNYC , if one were hypothetically super busy and important but still wanted to show support to your work, what's the single most effective way to do so? I'm assuming a 'like' on Sherdog doesn't quite cut it.





(No, I am not super busy and important. Just time poor and wishing to economise.)
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Twitter & the website clicks/comments

Much appreciated buddy
I mean it
 
So $700 million revenue what does that roughly equate to as profit?

And it's from the profit that everyone is paid from? I think I saw you say likely 40-45%? Let'a highball and say 45% is profit so they have $315 million profit and they paid $119 million from that to the fighters?

Even if it is from the $700 million that they pay the wages I don't see how anything will change.. Let's say they go to 25% which you stated is a very fair number, the bottom end guys are not going from 10k 10k to 100k 100k they are going to 15k 15k at best and no one is crying for the top guys as it is now making 500k - 2 million per fight, it's the lower end guys who are underpaid.

The UFC will never make it so at minimum you are making 100k just to show because alot of guys return nowhere near that to the company in 1-2 years so why would they pay that for one fight?

I think MMA will never get to the point where it's a money maker for fighter only the top 10% of all fighters will see the pot of gold like it is in most circumstances of life.
 
whoiselijah said:
So $700 million revenue what does that roughly equate to as profit?
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I think it was about $210-220 profit for 2016 - don't quote me as I do not have that handy

So lets go with $215m
You add the $120m fighter pay & get $325m
That is roughly 37% after expenses

In 2015, it was about 33% after expenses

As I said many times, going to 50% after expenses at this point in UFC's growth is fair
 
Just saying 'paid X% to fighters' doesn't mean much, it could be even worse than it looks, for example: if they paid the majority of the money to Conor and a few other big names, and only a small % of that to the rest of the roster combined, that's a raw deal for the average UFC fighter.
 
FrankieNYC said:
As I said many times, going to 50% after expenses at this point in UFC's growth is fair
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Re: the above
Imagine the good will & positive vibes UFC would get if a fighter opens up an envelope & see's a bonus check every March (for the year prior) to make up the roughly 37% difference to 50%
An extra $5-25k depending on fights & tiers

they should also do that with the extra Reebok $$$
 
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