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UFC President Dana White
The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is one of the most profitable sports organizations in the world, and one of the most unequal.
In 2019, more than a third of professional athletes in the UFC earned less than $45,000. Last January, the president of UFC, Dana White, signed a $1.5 billion deal for airtime on ESPN. More recently, in February 2020, UFC handed more than $300 million to its shareholders, including a $3 million payment for White, whose net worth tops $500 million.
The mixed-martial arts league, unlike other professional athletic associations, has yet to unionize.
President Dana White, like his friend President Donald Trump, is no fan of unions. He has, on videotape, called members of the Culinary Union “the biggest bunch of scumbags on Earth.”
In Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, and the National Football League, athletes take home around 50 percent of the revenue. But this was not always the case. As sports journalist Dave Zirin wrote in his 2005 book What’s My Name, Fool?, “In 1967, the average baseball salary was $19,000 a year. That same year, the NFL salary was $8,000. A typical athlete in 1967 worked in the off-season.”
By exercising union power in the late 1960s and early 1970s, these athletes changed how the sports pie was divided. Today, the minimum salary of a MLB player is $563,500, while the NFL pays its athletes no less than $480,000. By contrast, UFC fighters make as little as $13,500.
The COVID-19 pandemic has made what was a bad situation for UFC fighters even worse. On the one hand, events were canceled between March 14 and May 9. On the other hand, it is unclear when and where events will be held in the future.
Middleweight Marvin Vettori was scheduled to fight in London on April 25, but says he was never paid in full after the event got canceled. While Vettori is lucky enough to be able support himself with the help of his sponsors, other fighters are not as fortunate.
“We’re not employed by the UFC. We’re independent contractors,” Vettori explained to me by telephone last week. “They might schedule you and then the fight gets canceled. All of a sudden, you have no income for six or seven months.”
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Featherweight Jordan Griffin still works at T-Mobile. When we spoke, he was fortunate to have won a $50,000 Performance of the Night bonus in February. While Griffin did not complain about his situation, he did think that a union might help UFC fighters. As he put it, “unions protect people in their jobs.”
Vettori believes that a union in the UFC is inevitable. “At some point,” he says, “we have to have our rights protected.”
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UFC championship belt
On May 9, a UFC fighter, Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza, tested positive for COVID-19 before the organization’s first live event since March. Light heavyweight Souza was worried about fighting in this event, but afraid he would not be able to pay his mortgage if he stayed at home. Now, he’s concerned about what this virus will do to him and those he came in contact with at the UFC’s host hotel in Jacksonville, Florida. In the live event on May 13, Vettori had his fight canceled again.
President Dana White, like his friend President Donald Trump, is no fan of unions. He has, on videotape, called members of the Culinary Union “the biggest bunch of scumbags on Earth.” And since there are few options to fight outside the UFC—in fact, the sport faces an ongoing antitrust lawsuit—most fighters are hesitant to express themselves.
“None of my fighters are willing to speak out against the UFC, even with the condition of anonymity,” one representative of fighters tells The Progressive. “I thought for sure one of them would want to speak with you as they’ve been very outspoken to me and their coaches.”
In 2017, Kobe Bryant held a Q&A at the UFC’s athlete retreat in Las Vegas. Bantamweight Leslie Smith asked Bryant, “How essential to your personal negotiations and the success of basketball in the world do you believe a players association has been?”
Bryant replied that NBA players “understand completely that a rising tide raises all boats,” adding that when fighters are similarly unionized “it will 100 percent fortify the sport and make the sport better, not just for the present but for future generations coming.”
Smith, who won three of her last four fights, was let go by the UFC in 2018.