Does Ufc Make More Money Than Boxing

Why practice boxers make more than MMA fighters? Is it even true that they practise? It seems to be the common perception, based on the enormous purses reported by the likes of a Floyd Mayweather or Manny Pacquiao. At the same time, i can just as easily point to the $10,000 to show and $ten,000 to win minimums that a fighter on a UFC prelim volition earn and compare it to the $1,500 purse of a boxer on a HBO prelim and inquire if information technology isn't mayhap battle that pays less overall.

The bragging rights that fans seek when they make these comparisons are silly, to exist sure, just comparing the ii sports does make sense when considering the fact that there is zippo else to compare them to. Unlike major league sports which involve multiple (unionized) athletes employed by an individually endemic team which competes in a league confronting other individually endemic teams, prizefighting is conducted between ii individuals contracted for a contest to exist presented by a promoter.

The trouble with the comparisons we see made between boxing and MMA is that they involve merely the smallest pct of bodily prizefighters. The fact that Floyd Mayweather made a guaranteed $100 million for a unmarried tour tells u.s. only that Floyd Mayweather is doing very well and zippo nigh how the residue of the professional person boxers are compensated. The fact that a UFC prelim fighter makes more than a boxer on the prelims ways very little if there are more main card opportunities that pay better for boxers.

In an attempt to come up with a more consummate moving-picture show of the current pay distribution in both boxing and MMA, I requested from the Athletic Commissions of Nevada, Florida, and California all of the payouts for professional boxing and MMA events held in their states in 2015. While Nevada and Florida were able to meet my request, due to the number of events California held, they were unable to supply me with the full year. Narrowing my request, and collecting several payouts on my own, I did cease upwardly with six months worth of payouts for California.

The upshot was the payout info for 148 professional events (58 MMA and 90 boxing) which gave us 2,146 total purses (826 MMA and 1,320 boxing), which ranged from $0 all the manner upwardly to Mayweather's $100 one thousand thousand. This represents roughly 10% of all MMA events and 15% of all battle events held under the Association of Boxing Commissions last year.

Some of the bag info is obviously incomplete, since we could only use what was reported. Several MMA fighters and boxers at the highest levels of the sport receive pay-per-view points, while some at the very bottom are simply paid on consignment with tickets. In both cases I went with the reported purse amount, since neither amount is guaranteed. (A future article volition delve into the amount of money UFC fighters actually make when we include non-disclosed pay, both contractual and discretionary.)

For boxing, the combined full corporeality paid from the ane,320 boxing purses was $228,291,452 with an individual purse average of $172,948. This is skewed more than a fiddling past the enormous payouts Floyd Mayweather (who's reported purses were $100 million and $32 1000000 for his two bouts in 2015) and Manny Pacquiao (who'southward reported purse was $25 million for his match against Mayweather) received. If yous remove their 3 reported purses from terminal year (which totaled $157 meg) then the combined total for the other i,317 battle purses was $71,291,452 which averages out to $54,132.

A more telling statistic than the hateful average for what most boxers earn is the median boilerplate. The median average in 2015 for a boxer in our three states was $three,250.

For mixed martial arts the combined total of the 826 purses was $17,936,216 for a mean average of $21,714 per pocketbook. The median average for MMA fighters was even lower than that of boxers, a meager $i,250.

When looking specifically at only UFC fighters, the average was much higher with the mean being $63,651 and the median $28,000.

The median average for all 2,146 prizefighters purses was $2500.

While it is readily apparent that about athletes from both sports brand very little, with the mode existence merely $one,000, information technology appears as if MMA fighters on average are worse off than their boxing counterparts. Of the one,320 boxing purses nosotros looked at, 299 (or 23%) of them were for $1,000 or less, while of the 826 MMA fighter purses 400 (48%) were for $one,000 or less. Fifty-fifty though MMA fighters payouts fabricated upwards only 38% of the full collected they were 57% of all prizefighters that were paid $one,000 or less on a tour.

The reverse was mostly true every bit well, with a much higher number of boxers occupying the very acme of the pay ladder. Of the top 100 purses, those making $116,000 or more, 68 were paid to boxers. Of the nineteen biggest purses, all were paid to boxers. The highest reported MMA purse was Anderson Silva and his $800,000 from UFC 183, which was tied with three boxers for 20th place on our list of highest paid handbag.

"While it is readily apparent that most athletes from both sports make very little, it appears as if MMA fighters on average are worse off than their battle counterparts"

These numbers are undoubtedly distorted by the fact that much of what the elevation MMA fighters make is non reported to athletic commissions. While boxers payouts are also underreported (Mayweather, Pacquiao, Alvarez, and Cotto were all thought to take fabricated much more than than what was reported publicly thank you to foreign television and shares in the pay-per-view revenue) it seems to exist an fifty-fifty bigger event with the very top UFC fighters. According to several sources with intimate knowledge of the contracts of top MMA fighters, after combining reported pay with PPV bonuses and side agreements, Anderson Silva, Jon Jones, and Conor McGregor each earned between $4 one thousand thousand to $5 1000000 for three of their matches held in Nevada terminal year. This would be enough to put those three purses on the list of elevation 10 payouts in California, Florida, and Nevada terminal twelvemonth (simply not plenty for any of them to make the acme five).

Where MMA does much better is when one looked at that upper centre class of prizefighters. If nosotros use the UFC's current minimum of $10,000 as the threshold for entry into the upper middle class, then of the 826 MMA fighter payouts, 255 (31%) reached this class compared to 345 of the one,320 for boxing (26%). Merely every bit noteworthy was the fact that approximately 90% of those $10,000 or more purses in MMA belonged to fighters in the UFC.

For payouts of $200,000, the amount Lorenzo Fertitta described as belonging to a mid tier UFC fighter, commission reports showed that 21 MMA fighters received this amount or more than. This represents 2.5% of the total MMA fighter purses examined. All 21 of them were as well UFC fighters. (One Bellator fighter, Tito Ortiz, did report a purse of over $200,000 concluding year but information technology fell exterior the 6 calendar month range used for California.) In comparison, reported purses for boxing showed that 50 boxers, representing about iii.8% of our full boxing purses, were paid $200,000 or more terminal year.

And so what can we brand of all these numbers? The most obvious is that boxers, on average, appear to make more. Or at least they do in these three states (and at that place is little suggest this wouldn't be the aforementioned throughout the rest of the United States). What is also apparent is that almost all the high paying purses in MMA are full-bodied in the UFC (with the few outside the UFC in Bellator and to a lesser extent WSOF). These ii statistics are likely connected.

When I asked managers, promoters, and attorneys from both industries why MMA fighters seemed to brand less the same answers were offered again and again: lack of contest, the power of the UFC brand, and the presence of federal law covering boxing.

One reason not given just which you see in raised in annotate threads often was the idea that boxers made more considering boxing generated more than money. This was shot down past the promoters I spoke to who pointed out that, with the exception of the Mayweather-Pacquiao megafight, over the last few years the UFC has seen higher revenues than boxing in the United States. The UFC's FOX deal pays virtually twice every bit much as that of the HBO and Commencement's current boxing budgets combined. The UFC regularly sells more payperviews and generates more revenue per year than boxing does. The UFC also collect revenue from sources that most boxing promoters do not, such as video games, merchandise, and gyms.

Amongst MMA managers the word "monopoly" was used repeatedly to depict the current MMA marketplace. While people tin can argue if the term monopoly is apt or not, and in that location is a lawsuit currently under way to decide if the UFC has and abuses market power, information technology is very difficult to underestimate how much the UFC dominates the market of mixed martial arts. While competitors like World Series of Fighting and Bellator do exist, the competition they offer seems very limited. Estimates for the WSOF and Bellator'due south combined yearly revenue is roughly 1/20th that of the UFC. Somewhat understandable when one realizes that, according to the Fight Matrix rankings, every male fighter in the height iii of their partition and roughly 85% of all top 10 fighters in the 10 divisions that the UFC promotes are under contract with the UFC.

As the Deutsche Banking concern Memorandum to potential lenders clearly explained "[B]ased on all comparable metrics, UFC is clearly the '800 pounds gorilla' in the MMA industry."

I of the reasons for the UFC's market domination is the strength of their brand - a brand partly built on its legendary early on tournament days and its identity as the outset MMA promotion. Lorenzo explained this specific point in a March, 2009 interview to Fighters Only mag:

"I had my attorneys tell me that I was crazy because I wasn't buying anything. I was paying $ii meg and they were proverb 'What are you lot getting?' And I said 'What you don't sympathize is I'1000 getting the most valuable thing that I could possibly accept, which is those three letters: UFC. That is what's going to make this thing work. Everybody knows that brand, whether they like it or they don't like it, they react to it.'"

The 2007 Deutsche Bank Memorandum detailed the importance of this brand strength when information technology came to negotiating with their fighters:

Q: How does UFC remainder the retention of the best MMA fighters without overpaying?

A: In summary, the UFC make is more recognizable than the sum of its individual fighters, every bit evidenced by its ability to nearly sell out venues even before the announcing the main carte to the public. As such, given the power of the make, fighters are relatively interchangeable at events without affecting the market demand. When no individual fighter can dramatically affect the economics of the event, the UFC believes that it retains the leverage to contain costs when needed.

The forcefulness of the UFC'south brand has only grown since 2007. Looking at the Google Trends search that Phil McKenzie has posted one can see that while "MMA" has long lagged behind "UFC" as a search term, it nevertheless rose from 2004 until effectually 2011, roughly the fourth dimension of Strikeforce'due south sale to Zuffa. Since and then searches for "MMA" has decreased while those for "UFC" accept only grown. This decrease in involvement in "MMA" and increase in "UFC" may too explain why the number of ABC MMA events has also decreased every year since 2011.

Make forcefulness is not the only advantage the UFC has over boxing promoters. The business organization model for MMA, based partly on the pro wrestling model, is one that benefits them as promoters.

"Non fifty-fifty a promoter," Warriors Boxing executive Leon Margules explained to me. "They are a promoter, regulator, sanctioning torso, everything."

Co-ordinate to long time battle promoter (and brief MMA promoter) Gary Shaw, "Boxing purses are higher considering we don't have a league. UFC is their own league and they engage their own champion who is going to fight for the title. Everything is done within while in boxing nosotros have different sanctioning bodies."

"The UFC owns their fighters. And I judge Bellator owns their fighters. So they tin pay whatever they want considering if you don't fight for the UFC, which is the king of mixed martial arts in the U.s. and maybe effectually the world, who exercise you lot fight for? If I don't want you lot, yous go to Arum, or you go to K2 or you got to Golden Boy. You lot go somewhere else."

If yous are the only gas station in boondocks yous can charge whatever yous desire. -Gary Shaw, on the UFC.

When 1 looks at boxing it becomes obvious that no single promoter dominates the landscape (no thing how hard PBC is trying) to the degree that the UFC does MMA. Top Rank, Golden Boy, Mayweather Promotions, Roc Nation, Kathy Duva'due south Primary Event, Lou DiBella, Gary Shaw, Yvon Michel, and Jean Bedard's Interbox are all promoting major boxers in the United States and Canada. In addition K2, Eddie Hearn'due south Matchroom, Frank Warren's Box Nation, Fernando Betron, Team Sauerland and other major promoters are competing with those promoters for boxers exterior the ABC.

In MMA almost every top fighter, with the exception of a very small handful, is in the UFC. This concentration of top fighters in the UFC also helps explicate the discrepancy we see between boxing and UFC prelim purses: UFC prelims are filled with fighters that would often be fighting on main cards nether a multitude of battle promoters.

As an instance, at concluding years Miguel Cotto vs. Saul Alvarez card, the lowest paid boxers were Jose Naranjo, who earned $ii,000, and Hector Tanajara, who was paid $4,000. Depression in comparing to any UFC fighter to be sure. Going into their super featherweight bout though Naranjo was also 3-1-1 while Tanajara was sporting a three-0 tape. With records like that it'south doubtful they would be in the UFC at all if they were MMA fighters.

Instead, the 'UFC quotient' boxers are sprinkled across numerous events held by the many major promoters. According to BoxRec Lou DiBella was involved with the promotion of 29 events concluding year. Oscar De La Hoya 42 events. Bob Arum 56.

The idea that the UFC'due south place in the market place is the result of their power to act equally a promoter, regulatory body, and sanctioning body all at in one case goes hand-in-hand with the arguments behind the Muhammad Ali Expansion Act. In remarks that will make the supporters of that legislation smile, Leon Margules, Gary Shaw, and Lou DiBella all cited the Muhammad Ali Reform Boxing Act as the major reason boxers earned more than. (Non all boxing promoters concord with this though - Keith Veltre, CEO of Roy Jones Jr Boxing Promotions, was on the Lineup MMA podcast arguing that the Ali Act does nothing for boxers and would not doing anything for MMA fighters either.)

This seems somewhat dubious considering that the Ali Human activity currently is not enforced by either the Federal regimeor the Association of Boxing Commissions. But co-ordinate to boxing promoters this hasn't stopped it from having an impact on the industry, specifically the provisions that require disclosure past promoters.

"Something as simple as letting fighters see the revenue would drastically alter the pay scale." -Tim Kennedy

According to all of the boxing promoters I spoke to, the disclosure of at least some of these acquirement sources (here is an example of what one land commission requires to be disclosed) has led to a more level playing field for boxers negotiating with promoters.As Margules explained "In boxing we negotiate the purse based on those revenue sources. Everyone knows what they are, everybody knows what ESPN pays, everybody knows what Commencement and Pull a fast one on pays."

"They're going to say," Shaw said to me, "if [a fight] is making a thousand dollars you lot can't just pay me $200 to brand $800. In the UFC, they take no idea what the pay-per-view are doing. At that place's no disclosure act, so yous can pay guys whatever you want. If you are the just gas station in boondocks you can charge whatever you lot desire."

One fighter (at least the merely UFC fighter who was willing to comment publicly) who agreed with the idea that disclosure would have a big affect on the industry was Tim Kennedy. "Something equally uncomplicated as letting fighters see the revenue would drastically change the pay calibration."

Disclosure most definitely aid, merely the amount to which it would is upwards for debate. Right now, with the lack of competition in the industry, all it may atomic number 82 to is the disclosure that the UFC is making a lot of money while the other promotions are bringing in very little.

The question for what is the solution to low pay in MMA is non an easy i to answer.The Ali Human activity, antitrust lawsuits, unionization, and fighters testing the marketplace take all been proposed as fixes but it'south hard to know what impact they volition actually have. For some the ready may be worse than the trouble. For others, a solution may target a symptom but ignore the real source.

Based on their position in the market, information technology seems plausible that the UFC could actually pay less if they wish. It'southward a state of affairs that is not lost on several MMA managers, who were complimentary to the UFC for being more generous than they had to exist, because the lack of leverage nearly fighters had. Ironically also, the UFC position in the market very likely limits how much MMA managers can charge their clients. The fact that in that location is very little career/fight management to exist washed for UFC fighters compared to that of boxers who accept to negotiate with multiple promoters, sanctioning bodies and broadcast partners, has led to MMA managers having to charge less for their services. The aforementioned holds true for sanctioning bodies, where the UFC's buying of their own titles means sanctioning fees are no longer the responsibility of an MMA fighter.

The sorry truth is most MMA fighters make less than boxers, a sport that itself has a long and terrible history of taking advantage of its athletes. The fifty-fifty sadder truth is that matching battle may exist the best matter MMA fighters tin ask for.

Source: https://www.bloodyelbow.com/2016/8/23/12512178/why-do-boxers-make-more-than-mma-fighters

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