A Revolving Door: The UFC’s New Business Model
In the beginning, the UFC was all about the fighters. The first event was a tournament that featured men who almost seemed like movie characters: The 400 pound Taylor Wily, musclebound professional wrestler Ken Shamrock, and wiry Royce Gracie and his borderline mystical Jiu Jitsu, trumping them all. It was a spectacle that was almost a freak show, virtually unknown men with unknown capabilities pummeling one another inside of a cage, nothing disallowed save for biting and eye gouging. Americans were hooked, but the product changed.
Like all things, the UFC evolved. Fighters began to crosstrain, and the curtain was pulled back on Gracie Jiu-Jitsu. The single art specialists were gone, replaced by athletes who mixed boxing, wrestling, Muay Thai, BJJ, and any other martial art they could get their hands on. The product was blood. UFC promo packages featured videos of Roman gladiators spattered with blood, walking into an arena alongside the blaring, heavy metal soundtrack of Stemm’s Face The Pain. The fighters were there to kill each other, all for the pleasure of the viewer at home.
MMA fighters, true MMA fighters, were a rare commodity in the early days. It wasn’t easy to find someone who could grapple, strike, and be in phenomenal physical condition in the early 2000s. As such, they were vital to the companies they fought for, each individual necessary for the creation of the product. And that was the business model for a while. The Ultimate Fighter allowed fans to become acquainted with the personalities of the fighters. Fan favorites like Tony Ferguson and Diego Sanchez, who never won championships, are permanent fixtures in the minds and hearts of hardcore MMA fans. The UFC built fights by building fighters.
It was gradual, not immediate. The UFC switched from Spike TV to Fox to ESPN+, and The Ultimate Fighter found itself buried next to college hockey documentaries. The meteoric ascension of Conor McGregor faded. Condom Depot and Dude Wipes weren’t retained as sponsors and were replaced with Corona and Monster Energy. Bruce Buffer started advertising movies when he announced the main event. All of a sudden, the UFC had gone corporate. The business model had changed. You weren’t watching Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz, or Brock Lesnar and Alistair Overeem, or even Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz. You were watching the UFC, straight up. There were too many fighters in the world, and they were an afterthought to the company’s bottom line.
Dana White’s Contender Series first aired in 2017, a series of singular bouts that allowed fighters to impress the boss and earn a contract. The Ultimate Fighter’s prize was a contract worth six figures, sometimes as high as $250,000. On DWCS, fighters who win impressively receive a two-fight contract, $10,000 to show, $10,000 to win. If a fighter doesn’t win enough, they’re simply cut and sent back to the vast ocean of the regional scene, replaced with the next DWCS fighter in line. Winning isn’t enough anymore, either. Just recently, Javid Basharat, who was 4-2 in the UFC and coming off an impressive win, and Jailton Almeida, who was 8-3 in the UFC and ranked number eight, were both cut from the UFC due to their fights not being entertaining enough.
The move to Paramount+ saw an increase in performance bonuses from 50,000 to 100,000, and an automatic bonus of 50,000 to be awarded to any fighter who gets a finish. At first glance, this seems great, but it sours when you realize that the UFC only pays fighters 19% of its revenue shares, compared to a striking 50% in organizations like the NBA and NFL. The athletes, especially at the lower level of the company, are denied their fair share and then offered an opportunity to earn it by performing in a spectacular fashion - often at risk to themselves. Imagine turning on an NBA game and finding out the Bulls would have their pay withheld if they didn’t dunk the ball a certain number of times, or tuning in to the NFL and realizing the Chargers quarterback needed to land two 50 yard touchdown passes in order to receive a living wage. Not only has the UFC changed from a blood-soaked spectacle to a corporatized sports league, but it’s changed into one that doesn’t pay its athletes fairly.
The fighters are now more than replaceable. They have to fight well and fight excitingly, or face removal. Being highly ranked doesn’t keep a fighter safe anymore. The only way to fight for the UFC is to act in accordance with the bottom line. The problem is worse than ever in the Paramount+ era, and not just in regards to firings and signings. Middleweight contender Sean Strickland had his microphone cut off at the post-fight press conference after he began to curse out champion Khamzat Chimaev. In more than 750 post-fight conferences, this is the only time such a thing has occurred.
The new product of the UFC is a revolving door. The waste is filtered out, and the new fighters are brought in. If they’re good for business, they ascend, and if they aren’t, they’re filtered out. Promo packages are identical, sterile, and wholly bereft of any edge. TUF is less relevant than it’s ever been, both in terms of MMA culture and the fighters it produces. There are no organizations that compete with the UFC. All the blood has been washed off.
