After UFC announced its massive multi-year, $7.7 billion deal to stream events on Paramount starting in 2026, many immediately wondered how the new agreement would change the promotion’s pay structure.
Fighter pay has long been a highly debated topic in MMA, with many criticizing the purses that UFC has given its fighters for years.
A study commissioned by the UFC in 2013 showed that roughly 18 percent of its revenue went to its athletes, a much smaller figure than leagues like the NFL or NBA, where around 50 percent goes the way of the players.
The claim that UFC has used market dominance to “pay its MMA fighters less than half as much as they otherwise would have received” was a major basis for the Cung Le et al. v. Zuffa antitrust lawsuit, which reached a settlement just last year.
With all of the debate over fighter pay for more than a decade, it’s not surprising that questions would be brought up about how the deal would change anything.
A member of the media raised this question to UFC CEO Dana White on Tuesday evening in Las Vegas at a press conference. While White said that specifics regarding fighter pay haven’t been figured out yet, he expects that the promotion’s bonus structure will increase.
“I’m not going to have any comments on that yet because we still gotta get together and figure this stuff out,” White said about fighter pay this week. “It’s August, we have until January to figure all that stuff. But the low-hanging fruit that’s easy to answer? Bonuses are obviously going up. So, that’ll be big. Forget about the tide rising with all the other fighters, just the number the bonuses bring to a fighter, that’s millions of dollars.”
UFC currently hands out four bonuses per event, with the payouts almost always carrying a value of $50,000. These bonuses tend to go to winning fighters who put on particularly stunning performances, but can also go to a losing competitor if they put on the “Fight of the Night.”
While bonuses offer a significant boost to the pay of some fighters, especially those who appear on undercards, they are never guaranteed, even for a winning competitor.
Publicly accessible purse figures for UFC events are rarely seen, as Nevada, among many other states, doesn’t require a promoter to disclose their pay for an event.
But numbers still get out infrequently, like when UFC held a Fight Night event in Atlanta two months back. Headliner Rose Namajunas earned the highest out of everyone ($500,000), and prelim fighter Rodolfo Bellato took home the lowest pay ($12,000), per documents obtained by MMA Fighting. A similar pay range was seen at UFC 311 in January.
