During a recent episode of the The Joe Rogan Experience featuring Brendan Schaub, the topic of UFC athlete pay came up. Joe Rogan made it clear he believes UFC stars deserve a bigger share of the revenue.
The discussion began with performance bonuses, as Rogan expressed frustration with athletes having to publicly ask for additional compensation.
“I ha te all of it. I ha te people that have to ask for bonuses,” Rogan said. “The money is there, right? We know the money’s there. This is a $7 billion deal.”
Rogan admitted he does not view the issue from a traditional business perspective. “I’m not a businessman. I’ll say that right now,” he said. “If I was running the UFC, the stockholders, they would kick me out.”
Schaub agreed and added, “I assume with $7.7 billion, I’m like, man, I feel like we could give some over here.”
The conversation then shifted toward the current revenue split between the promotion and athletes, arguing that MMA should not be treated like a normal business because of the long-term physical damage athletes endure.
“I don’t think we should think of it like any other business because the entire business model is these guys’ bodies and the consequence is their health and it’s for the rest of their life,” Rogan explained. “You are putting your health on the line in a way that is not required in any other business other than maybe football and boxing and kickboxing.”
Rogan continued by emphasizing how essential athletes are to the UFC’s success. “You are the only thing that people are tuning in for,” he said. “Without the figh ters, there is no UFC.”
He went on to argue that athletes generating massive revenue in a short period of time should receive significantly higher compensation. “If you’re doing something that is generating a significant amount of money for a very short amount of time, I think you should get a lot of money for that if you are one of those people,” Rogan said.
He continued, “The amount of money that is left over for the other people, the people that are making the money that put the money in, they should still get a lot of money, which is why they did it in the first place. But I don’t think the balance is correct.”
Schaub then laid out a hypothetical scenario for how athletes could potentially force change following the UFC’s reported Paramount deal announcement.
“What I would have done is talked to all the managers, all the athletes, and said, ‘We’re not competing another match. They just signed this huge deal, 7.7 million. If you guys want to get your equal share, nobody’s agreeing to a bout, to a card, unless we get, I don’t know, someone’s going to figure out 30%. So it’s 18% right now. If we go up 30%, which they’re still gonna have profit, if they agree to that, then we’ll compete,’” Rogan said.
However, Rogan immediately acknowledged why something like that is unlikely to ever happen in reality.
“If you can get athletes to agree to that, it would work,” Rogan said before adding, “It’ll never happen.”
Rogan closed by explaining that, regardless of the financial logic behind the UFC’s business model, he personally would struggle with athletes feeling underpaid.
“If I owned the UFC, I would not feel good if people didn’t feel compensated correctly,” Rogan said. “This is just my feeling. And I’m not a good businessman. If you want to be a good businessman, you got to make the most money possible.”
