Via Michael David Smith, easily the sharpest tool in the shed that is the AOL FanHouse:

We’ve discussed the coming business model battle for the future of MMA–that would be the “promoter centric” model favored by the UFC and similar to the WWE in pro wrestling vs. the “fighter centric” model that Affliction and others are banking on and similar to pro boxing. Randy Couture was a guest on the “Opie and Anthony” show this morning and had some interesting thoughts on the subject. I guess I should give you a warning that this is from their highly uncensored XM Radio show so you might hear some foul language. Deal with it:

His comparison that UFC fighters combined make less than Floyd Mayweather is a great sound bite and is probably true. Mayweather is not only the best “pound for pound” boxer in the world but has made himself into the biggest “heel” in the sport. Hardcore boxing geeks like me tune in to watch his fistic excellence, the mainstream fans tune in to watch a more likable fighter like Oscar De La Hoya, Arturo Gatti or Ricky Hatton kick his ass. Everybody makes money and everybody is happy.

While you can debate whether the UFC’s trying to keep the cost structure of the sport down is good thing or not, its hard to deny that the fighters don’t get paid in relation to their drawing power. No disrespect to the guys lower down on the UFC foodchain, but they’re not the names that sell PPVs. For example, in North America at least the overwhelming catalyst for the live ticket sales in Montreal as well as PPV sales was the GSP vs. Matt Serra main event. Yet neither of these fighters were compensated proportionately for their impact on ticket sales.

Let’s throw some numbers into the picture–the UFC 83 buyrate hasn’t been announced but based on the average PPV buyrate numbers for previous events UFC 83 will do at least 500,000 and that’s probably on the low side. At $50 a pop that’s a not-too-shabby $25 million in revenue. Of course there’s plenty of fingers in that pie, but its still a pretty damn big pie. The live event in Montreal sold out 23,000 seats which depending on ticket prices is another 2 or 3 million. There’s merchandise sales, etc. So for the sake of argument we’ll say that between live gate, PPV, merchandise sales, etc. UFC 83 generated at least 28 million in revenue. The UFC doesn’t see all of this, of course, but that’s the number we have to work with.

As far as the fighter salaries for UFC 83, we don’t have them. The Quebec Athletic Commission has ruled them confidential which some jurisdictions do. Others, like Nevada and New Jersey, report them publicly. For the sake of argument, lets consider the fighter salaries for UFC 66 which holds the PPV buy record for the company at 1.1 million. This event was headlined by Tito Ortiz vs. Chuck Liddell. Ortiz make $210, 000 while Liddell took home $250,000. Total fighter salary for the card was $729,000.

To be fair to the UFC, these numbers don’t represent the entire compensation for the fighters and some of the top names due have incentive bonuses based on PPV sales. Even so it doesn’t seem to me like the fighters are getting compensated fairly. Let’s go back to our UFC 83 example and for the sake of argument again we’ll use the UFC 66 numbers which are at least in the ballpark:

With $28 million in revenue, fighter salaries of $729,000 means that approximately 2.5% of the revenues went to fighter compensation. Compare this to the Floyd Mayweather/Oscar De La Hoya fight–DLH earned $52 million and Mayweather $25 million. The PPV earned approximately $120 million. The undercard was criticized at the time for being substandard for such a big event, so I’m guessing the rest of the fighter pay for the evening was negligible. In this case, Mayweather and De La Hoya earned in excess of 60% of the PPV revenue.

Dana White would counter that its apples and oranges–in the boxing example the public was buying the PPV based exclusively on the fighters involved; with the UFC they’re buying the “UFC brand”. There’s likely some truth to that, but not *that* much truth–no matter how strong the UFC brand if they started doing events with a full card of 2nd tier fighters no one had heard of they’d lose their audience quickly and profoundly.

It just seems to me that the fighters involved should be getting more than 2.5% of the revenue generated.

Randy Couture: All UFC Fighters combined earn less than Floyd Mayweather @ AOL Fanhouse