The Economic Impact of Sponsor Tax and Bans, More EA Ban Info
July 9, 2009
While the sponsor tax imposed by the UFC has been the source of much discussion and what if scenarios, the fighters themselves are seeing tangible effects on their bottom line. MMAPayout spoke with one fighter manger/agent who wished to remain nameless but who enumerated what the various UFC sponsor bans and fees have cost in real dollars. This fighter rep said the loss for his fighter was easily 6 figures. The total impact thus far was approx $160k total, mostly in new money/deals, indicating that the UFC moves are having a chilling effect on bringing in new sponsorships to the fold. The agent/manager said the majority of sponsorships have remained intact, these being his cornerstone sponsors..that the fighter hadn’t lost any of these sponsors due to the ban/fees. The biggest impact seemed to be with the non-long term sponsors as well as supplemental sponsors that vary from card to card.
Also of note on another controversial story, the EA MMA vs UFC front, Dave Meltzer had a small blurb on the situation in the latest Wrestling Observer Newsletter:
UFC wants the word out that anyone in the EA game will never work for UFC…..There is the attitude right now that even the people who have already signed for the game even before they made this doctrine clear this past week wont be brought in, which isn’t exactly fair as you can hardly punish someone for making a decision to sign up for a video game when they had no opportunity to get into your video game in the first place. The guys who end up screwed here are the WEC guys, who can’t in the UFC game, but also didn’t have the opportunity to negotiate deals for the EA game.
While it has been pretty much a given that this move by Zuffa flew in the face of fundamental fairness, this bit of news also indicates that logic and reason weren’t part of the equation either when formulating the company’s wrong-headed policy with respect to the competition from EA MMA.
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