Yesterday we talked about the latest development in the UFC. Perhaps seeing ONE FC match their bonuses, the brass decided that an extra bonus might come in handy.
Last year UFC announced that their kits would be displaying the crypto.com logo prominently. At the time it was widely criticized as this was another sponsorship that benefitted the bras and did very little for the athlete.
UFC just announced that a part of this lucrative deal with “crypto.com” will be implemented in their upcoming events. The company will sponsor a new, additional bonus to be awarded to athletes. These new bonuses will be determined by fan votes during the event’s broadcast, with a total of $60,000 split between the winners.
The new bonus will be called “Fan bonus of the night” and it will be introduced at UFC 273: Volkanovski vs The Korean Zombie, which will take place this Saturday, April 9 at VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville.
But these fan awarded bonuses will be a feature only for the PPV cards – and not for ESPN+ events that happen weekly. UFC stands to gain $17.5 million per year from crypto.com while this new bonus means that the athletes would receive only $720,000 per year from the lucrative sponsorship. This is roughly 24 times more not to mention the new bonus is awarded to only 3 athletes per card.
Trent brings up very good points… also, the $17.5 million a year the UFC is getting from Crypto is hard cash, the $720K the fighters get is in coin, which may go up or down in value or have the complete bottom drop out of it… https://t.co/JEBRJueDcB
— Robert Joyner (@robnashville) April 7, 2022
This is just the latest injustice in UFC’s pay structure. We’ve previously talked about how at any given night UFC covers athlete pay from up to 18% of the revenue. These last few non PPV cards have been tremendously successful as well with record gates while the athletes receive as follows:
Curtis Blaydes: $262,000 ($131,000 to show, $131,000 to win)
Chris Daukaus: $80,000
Alexa Grasso: $86,000 ($43,000 to show, $43,000 to win)
Joanne Wood: $70,000
Kai Kara-France: $102,000 ($51,000 to show, $51,000 to win)
Askar Askarov: $26,000
Bryan Barberena: $122,000 ($61,000 to show, $61,000 to win)
Matt Brown: $105,000
Manon Fiorot: $80,000 ($40,000 to show, $40,000 to win)
Jennifer Maia: $60,000
Neil Magny: $230,000 ($115,000 to show, $115,000 to win)
Max Griffin: $53,000
Marc Diakiese: $66,000 ($33,000 to show, $33,000 to win)
Viachaslav Borshchev: $12,000
Sara McMann: $88,000 ($44,000 to show, $44,000 to win)
Karol Rosa: $28,000
Chris Gutierrez: $72,000 ($36,000 to show, $36,000 to win)
Batgerel Danaa: $28,000
Matheus Nicolau: $44,000 ($22,000 to show, $22,000 to win)
David Dvorak: $35,000
Aliaskhab Khizriev: $20,000 ($10,000 to show, $10,000 to win)
Denis Tiuliulin: $12,000
Luis Saldana: $24,000 ($12,000 to show, $12,000 to win)
Bruno Souza: $12,000
For this event alone, UFC earned $1,921,988.24 via ticket sales. And athlete pay adds up to $1.7 million.