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Last Saturday, the UFC posted a gate north of $8 million and drew a fantastic audience on CBS, heightened by male viewers, and yet, fan sentiment has never felt this dismal. Why?
The largest gulf in MMA resides between the UFC’s record-setting business that you can set a watch to on an annual basis, and a fanbase that grows disgruntled by the day among a swath of fighter discontent.
A decade ago was one of the most important and impactful years in UFC history. It was the superstar era of Conor McGregor, Ronda Rousey, and Jon Jones, and today, all three are venting their anger toward the TKO run entity.
Fighters and fans can be lumped together as a collective group whose influence is well behind that of shareholders, sponsors, network partners, and foreign governments. But it’s also the class with the loudest voices, and it’s becoming hard to ignore the noise.
It’s a brewing issue that appeared to cut through in the summer of 2016 when the UFC was sold to Endeavor. The sale itself was not stunning, but the price tag was, and suddenly, fighters had a thought: Where is my piece? It was a fleeting moment of reflection where the lack of downstream effects from a sale in the billions, the invasion of Reebok to circumvent outside sponsors, “take it or leave it” offers, restrictive contracts, and zero claim to any television rights added up to a realization of why the UFC made such a great business for its owners.
Like any labor discontent, the complaints were loud, but action was futile. One of the outliers was female bantamweight Leslie Smith, who spoke up, asking speaker Kobe Bryant about unionization at a UFC Athlete Retreat. Smith went a step further, working with Kajan Johnson and labor lawyer Lucas Middlebrook to launch Project Spearhead and file a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board in an attempt to formally organize fighters.
The gist of Project Spearhead was to sign up 30% of fighters (anonymously) and submit to the NLRB to determine if they qualified as independent contractors or employees based on its criteria. If yes, they could move toward formalizing a union with a goal of entering into collective bargaining with the UFC.
Despite the possible upside and protections of anonymity, few fighters were willing to join, and the project fizzled out.
The UFC did not renew Leslie Smith’s contract despite a two-fight winning streak, and ended her career fighting for Bellator through 2021.
The MMAFA (Mixed Martial Arts Fighter Association) played the long game, filing an antitrust lawsuit against the UFC in December 2014 and playing out for the next decade. The result was a $375 million settlement awarded in 2024, but the long-lasting value was the level of depth we learned about the UFC’s operating practices through the findings in discovery.
One of the findings was a 2013 study conducted by Mercer and commissioned by the UFC, learning that the promotion paid its fighters just under nineteen percent of overall revenues, the lowest of the major sports studied. Further, from 2011 until 2017, despite growing revenues, fighter pay stayed at 19-20% of overall revenues. In 2016, the UFC was able to project that fighter compensation would remain steady at 20% in the forthcoming years.
Fighters were now becoming equipped with the data, but an inability to do much beyond complain, ultimately succumbed to the “take it or leave it” scenario in an evaporating landscape outside of the industry leader.
The UFC saw its media rights soar as it entered a pact with ESPN in 2019, then doubled its annual rights fees, moving to Paramount this year, worth an average of $1.1 billion/year. The fighters have no claim to any percentage of that amount, and UFC is upping the fight night bonuses, at their own discretion, from $50,000 to $100,000, and adding $25,000 finishing bonuses.
It’s a drop in the bucket for an easy talking point when the subject of low fighter pay is broached. Last weekend, $500,000 in bonuses were handed out, or six percent of the company’s $8.3 million gate for the show, which only evaporates further if we were to include its rights fee from Paramount and its burgeoning sponsorships.
So, the UFC finds itself in this unique conflict, which may not even be viewed as one internally.
Despite all these headwinds, fighters complaining, fans upset over matchmaking, and Netflix carving out a piece of the MMA pie on May 16, it’s a pat hand being played by the industry giant. If there is an area to exert pressure, Paramount’s multi-billion-dollar investment would be the starting point where the biggest fights would propel new sign-ups.
The numbers have not run parallel to the negative headlines where the UFC did an enormous gate figure for a non-marquee UFC 326 and did monstrous male viewership on CBS. Without those areas being affected, it’s hard to envision the UFC parting with its profits to offset viewer discontent.
It’s the paradigm of a publicly traded company where “shareholder value” is often cited but rarely examined. The UFC would argue that keeping fighter pay at a set percentage level on an annual basis will ensure a level of profitability and that the onus belongs to stakeholders of the company, not the product (ie, the fighters).
However, that argument is challenged when Mark Shapiro and TKO explain that a minimum loss of $30 million for the White House event is an investment in its brand and long-term growth. The thought is that so many new eyes will be placed on the UFC on June 14 that it will have a ripple effect for months, maybe years to come, with exposure and coverage that cannot be bought. Is that possible? Sure, but that same strategy is vetted and sold every year when companies spend fortunes for the prestige of being among the Super Bowl advertisers, and few ever go on to recoup the figurative “brand value” attached to the literal price tag for such a spot.
TKO could just as easily make the pitch to its shareholders that investing that much more into promoting the biggest fights will be its best opportunity to cast a wider net to attract audiences when stars are fighting other stars on the largest platforms available. The company could have a stranglehold on the heavyweight division through Francis Ngannou, Jon Jones, Tom Aspinall, and Alex Pereira. Instead, they have opened the door, and on May 16, Netflix will steal audience away from the UFC for a fight that was pitched to the UFC first.
Imagine Jon Jones fighting Alex Pereira or even Francis Ngannou on the White House card, and the larger impact that would make? Instead, UFC has doubled down on its brand as the entry point, with the names on the card becoming interchangeable and unwilling to break any Excel formula that interrupts next quarter’s projection.
It would be natural to assume that failing to give the audience what it wants will erode its fanbase over time. Perhaps that will play out, but in March 2026, it’s far from a reality, and while discontent, there is no evidence that the same fans who are upset about the White House card will not have their Paramount+ subscription activated on June 14.
Fighters have let many opportunities slip, and we’re at a point in the game of leverage, where the athletes have nearly forfeited any that they possessed. The UFC can turn down Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano, they can retire Jon Jones, walk away from the Francis Ngannou business, and keep Conor McGregor benched longer than the length of a presidential term. The cost of those decisions has been record profits, a gasp-inducing media rights deal with Paramount, and influence within the Trump administration.
Scott Galloway often refers to the difference between “being right versus being effective”. The fanbase and fighters don’t have an issue with the former, but have failed miserably in the latter, leaving public discontent as merely the cost of doing business for the UFC, instead of a factor affecting it.
