Notice Upcoming events, rumours, and announcements

The UFC is looking at a Bisping-Evans rematch in London to cap Bisping's career. Evans is a shadow of his former self these days, frankly.

The UFC also wants to book Darren Till against Wonderboy in what would certainly be a title eliminator for Till. Too soon?

 

Chuck Liddell is going to be on Celebrity Big Brother which apparently isn't just a thing in the UK?

 

Michael Chiesa will flex his neck muscles again at UFC 223.

 

I have no idea how much of this is accurate I just wanted to write out my thoughts and see if they make sense.

I've been guilty of saying that UFC shows that sell <250k are poor or low selling. I've been rethinking this lately as it relates to the fighters, especially Mighty Mouse. Using an example of a "small" PPV with a "low" buy-rate and ticket sales...

100,000 x $50/buy = $5,000,000 (gross)

Note: this price is increasing to $60

Even if the pay-per-view provider takes 30% (it would be 50% but accounting for online PPV buys which the UFC provides), that leaves $3,500,000. Bump that up to $4,000,000 based on selling approx. 6,700 tickets at $75/each on average.

Yes, this is gross revenue, and the UFC has overhead costs. However I think they can defer a lot of these. The arena rental is a non-issue, especially at T-Mobile in LV. They have a longstanding deal with MGM who make their money back on concessions and hotel rooms/gambling. Other arenas probably make similar deals with them to get the shows. Only very high-end ones like Staples Center or MSG are probably expensive to do but they make those big shows to counteract it. They also have to do advertising and marketing but I think those are offset by sponsorships. Their operating costs don't come out of PPV's directly, and a lot of the costs for setting up and executing a show are probably part of the arena deal.

Since the fighters are contracted their salaries don't come straight out of the PPV revenue but for the sake of the argument we can say they do. Here is an example from Miocic vs. Ngannou:

Stipe Miocic ($600,000 + no win bonus = $600,000) def. Francis Ngannou ($500,000)
Daniel Cormier ($500,000 + no win bonus = $500,000) def. Volkan Oezdemir ($350,000)
Calvin Kattar ($14,000 + $14,000 = $28,000) def. Shane Burgos ($22,000)
Gian Villante ($50,000 + $50,000 = $100,000) def. Francimar Barroso ($27,000)
Rob Font ($30,000 + $30,000 = $60,000) def. Thomas Almeida ($36,000)
Kyle Bochniak ($12,000 + $12,000 = $24,000) def. Brandon Davis ($10,000)
Abdul Razak Alhassan ($20,000 + $20,000 = $40,000) def. Sabah Homasi ($12,000)
Dustin Ortiz ($30,000 + $30,000 = $60,000) def. Alexandre Pantoja ($14,000)
Julio Arce ($10,000 + $10,000 = $20,000) def. Dan Ige ($10,000)
Enrique Barzola ($21,000 + $21,000 = $42,000) def. Matt Bessette ($12,000)
Islam Makhachev ($16,000 + $16,000 = $32,000) def. Gleison Tibau ($50,000)

Four fighters got $50,000 bonuses. With that we're at $2.75MM.

DC and Stipe get PPV shares. These are tiered based on how many PPV's are sold. Randy Couture revealed how this works a few years back. He got $1/buy from 100k-175k buys, going up to $1.50 to 300k, $2 up to 330k, and $2.50 above that. AFAIK he got nothing if the PPV sold less than 100k buys which is rare.

For our example if Miocic/Ngannou sold 100,001 buys that's another $200,002 off the top to split between the two champs putting the fighter salary at roughly $3MM.

Tax-- yes tax is a thing but WME is a multi-$billion company and probably have insane tax lawyers. They (the UFC) are also based out of tax-friendly Nevada. Generously take 10% for tax.

So if Miocic/Ngannou only sold 100k PPV buys the UFC is still clearing $900,000 for the show. The early estimates put the show at around 300,000 buys so triple that to $2.7-million. That's not bad at all.

This is with Miocic saying he is underpaid.

It might be narrow to say that the billions in debt WME incurred by purchasing the company are not related to fighter pay. $1-3MM/mo from PPV isn't going to pay that down anytime soon. But the argument that Johnson doesn't deserve more because he doesn't sell belies the fact that even small PPV shows are pretty profitable for the UFC.

 

When asked whether he’d watched Ngannou’s fight with Miocic, [Derrick] Lewis said that he hadn’t because he didn’t want to give Ngannou any of his money and that he’d only seen highlights because his friend facetimed him.

Lewis then went on to comment on Ngannou’s age and again, he didn’t hold anything back.

“That motherf***er is at least 40,” Lewis later added. “They say he was homeless so he probably don’t even know. Tell me where his birth certificate is at.

“He’s 40 man, juiced up. They say he’s younger than me, there’s no way he’s younger than me.”

https://www.mmanytt.com/latest-news/derrick-lewis-rips-francis-ngannou-40-years-old-juiced/

 

Cyborg/Nunes expected to headline UFC 224 in Rio.

It'll be nice to have a main event where the possibility of it ending in abject silence is negated.

 

Werdum vs. Volkov will headline the upcoming show in London

Bisping and Till ruled out

 

I think Bisping is gonna retire. Dude should, too. No more necessary punches. He had his moment, won his belt, and lost and then got slaughtered a month later...

 

Fighters never really retire. I could see Chuck Liddell cashing in on his current Big Brother bump for another fight.

That being said passing up the chance to fight in London sounds ominous.

 

Scalpers/Hubbers have made this show a sell-out in about an hour.

Shame for fans who want to go but now have to pay 1.5-2x the price.

Hopefully there are loads of unsold tickets and the next time the UFC comes people can actually get presale for face.

 

Bisping is warm to the idea of Machida being his last opponent.

 

What do you get for going against the family?

UFC attempting to book Uriah Hall vs. Paulo Borrachinha

 

Woodley says he's in negotiations to fight Nate @ UFC 226

 

Yeah, no.

 

Diaz is 3-3 in his last six, hasn't fought a proper welterweight since Rory in 2011 (when he lost to Rory and Donger and was clearly outsized in the weight class), and would demand so much money for the Woodley fight it is a waste of time to even try and book it.

So obviously the UFC will go all-in trying to make this happen.

 

Records don't matter to WME. Selling fights matters and right now Woodley is not popular amongst the common fan. Nate is a relatively big named fighter. Thats all that matters anymore.