Unsealed docs: UFC once commissioned its own fighter pay study 

In 2012, then-UFC Chairman Lorenzo Fertitta told ESPN.com the percentage of UFC revenue that went to fighters was “not far off what the other sports leagues pay as a percentage of revenue.”

When asked if the split was similar to sports such as NFL, NBA and MLB, where athletes get around 50 percent, Fertitta said it was “in that neighborhood.”

The story sparked backlash from fight fans who suspected UFC was short-changing its fighters, and from then-UFC President Dana White, who said the promotion’s now-broadcasting partner had done a hatchet job on its business.

But one year later, Fertitta commissioned a study on athlete pay to see how UFC stacked up, hiring a global consulting firm, Mercer, to gather salary info from a variety of sporting leagues – including his own – to see whether the percentages were in line. The price tag was between $45,000 and $50,000, plus expenses.

The result of one study, unsealed as part of the ongoing anti-trust lawsuit against the UFC, made clear this fact: they weren’t. UFC paid 18.6 percent of its total revenue to fighters, four times less than Major League Soccer, which at 76 percent topped the list of revenue share paid to athletes.

The closest comparison to UFC fighters, according to a one-sheet document believed to be the Mercer study, was men’s tennis, which paid 23.5 percent of its revenue to athletes.

Boxing, the only example drawn from combat sports, paid 62.5 percent of revenue, a reflection of a decentralized business model centered more on stars such as Floyd Mayweather.

Internal figures on UFC fighters’ revenue share first came to light in 2019, when attorneys for a group of fighters suing the promotion showed a chart that purportedly showed “fighter comp as percentage of UFC event revenue” and “fighter comp as percentage of pay-per-view event revenues.” In 2012, the former percentage was 18.64, while the latter was 15.93.

The charts were some of the first indications that Fertitta’s claim to ESPN was not accurate, and the Mercer study reinforced the notion that UFC lagged behind other major sports in pay for its athletes. Yet it also indicated that, at least on some level, the promotion sought to address the issue.

The study “will not only help test the alignment of current fighter compensation and benefits practices against UFC’s strategies and market practices, but also identify potential opportunities for change,” a statement of work for the Mercer study described.

Attorneys for the fighters claimed UFC was obstructing their efforts to obtain the full study. The one-sheet entered into evidence was not identified as part of the Mercer study, so it’s impossible to know the full context surrounding it.

When pressing UFC attorneys for more info, however, the fighters’ attorneys did reveal at least one take on the study from UFC executive Lawrence Epstein, whose texts messages were subpoenaed as part of the lawsuit.

Epstein saw the study as “really good for us.”

“We need to stop comparing ourselves to team sports and focus on individual athletes,” he wrote. “[Georges St-Pierre] in 2013 made $7.5 million. Tiger Woods 8.5 from tour winnings.”

As MMA Fighting previously reported, St-Pierre is estimated to have made $4,116,690 from his title defense vs. Nick Diaz at UFC 158 and $3,555,344 for his defense vs. Johny Hendricks at UFC 167.

Woods did earn $8,553,439 in prize money on the 2013 PGA Tour. He was also estimated to have made $12 million when his post-season wins were factored in. According to Forbes, he also made $71 million in endorsements, appearance fees and other work.

The UFC would nonetheless continue to emphasize the in-the-octagon earnings of its biggest stars to counter claims of low pay. But an investor presentation created before the promotion’s sale for $4.025 billion to entertainment giant Endeavor promised attractive profit margins, in part, by keeping the revenue paid to fighters at around 20 percent.

Fertitta would later answer for the discrepancy in his ESPN interview by distancing UFC from most leagues when comparing revenue shares. The best comparison, according to the revenue split breakdown, would have been men’s golf. But for some reason, he had a different choice.

“My recollection of that is that I said that we felt like we compared favorably to other sports,” he said in a 2017 deposition for the anti-trust lawsuit. “I know a lot of other sports throw out these terms like, you know, we pay 50 percent to our athletes. And what I tried to explain to the reporter who was asking me questions was something similar to what we talked about, that it’s very hard to compare the UFC with those other established leagues, because the business models are different from that standpoint, we have to bear more overall costs for the event.

“Unfortunately, what I failed to point out was that it really is completely unfair for anybody to be comparing UFC’s financials to that of the NFL or Major League Baseball or the NBA. It’s really not a comparison, and really, a more comparable sports league would have been something more like Major League Soccer, which had about the same — been around for almost the same period of time, whereas, you know, I think baseball has been around for over a hundred years and the NFL has been around for a very long time and basketball since the ‘40s or ‘50s.

“I recall saying this isn’t a very good comparison, because the NFL generates roughly $12 or $13 billion a year, and at the time, we were probably generating $4 to $500 million a year, so it’s a completely irrelevant comparison. Let’s find something that’s more comparable, and that’s when we started thinking about things like Major League Soccer.”