UFC Senior Vice President Mike Mossholder states that Ronda Rousey will likely be the face of the UFC’s first official outfitting deal according to reports on FoxSports.com and AdWeek.
Although Mossholder did not indicate the clothier, he stated that the UFC were in active negotiations with a “premium apparel line” per the AdWeek article. But, it appears to be an exclusive deal to outfit any UFC fighter that will step into the Octagon for the company.
Both articles state that a clothing deal could be a financial boon for the UFC as it listed Nike’s 5 year, $1.1 billion deal with the NFL as an example.
As an indicator of Rousey’s draw, the Adweek report states that Rousey is No. 3 in ticket sales for the UFC and Xyience sales jumped 12 percent when it place images of the women’s bantamweight champ on its cans. Rousey has become the top requested athlete by UFC sponsors when it comes to fighters they want to endorse its brand.
Payout Perspective:
The overarching news here is that the UFC will have uniforms at some point. The not so breaking news is that Ronda Rousey is star. AdWeek identifies Nike, Under Armour and Adidas as potential clothing sponsors while Fox Sports also includes Reebok. Each of the clothing sponsors have fighters it represents. Notably, Adidas just signed Robbie Lawler (although Lawler wore no visible Adidas gear on Saturday), Under Armour worked with GSP, Reebok signed Anthony Pettis and Johny Hendricks and Nike has Jon Jones, Anderson Silva and Junior dos Santos. We shall see what happens. Whatever choice is made, we can expect Rousey to sport the gear in print ads and commercials.
jesse says
All this means is fighters will make significantly less money where as the UFC will make a lot more which is complete bullshit!
jesse says
All this means is fighters will make significantly less money where as the UFC will make a lot more which is complete bullshit!
Wonderjudas says
@jesse
Explain how.
Pink Pig says
Ahahahahahaha listing Nike’s $1.1 billion deal with the NFL.
The NFL is on another universe in terms of popularity. It is the only real religion in America. It is literally worshipped.
UFC would be lucky to get $5 million.
jesse says
@Wonderjudas
It means that fighters won’t be able to wear their sponsors to the octagon to gain more money (which in a lot cases is more than the UFC pays) yet the UFC would be paid a sizeable amount by the brand which will sponsor the uniform
anti trolls says
Pink pig the biggest dip shit troll of all TIME
D says
No more Dude Whipes.
Seriously though, this is bullshit. There also shouldn’t have been that $100k tax on sponsors previously.
Saldathief says
More Bull shit from the UFC, they should be working on developing major fights instead of worrying about apparel. This is a typical failure in business when someone has a key business, example ppv, and then they try to do a million different things and lose focus on what they were good at. This shows the complete lack of maturity as a company. I wonder how many meetings they had over this nonsense? How much time and effort was spent. Meanwhile ppv’s are way down, tv ratings are way down, ticket sales are down. One more way they think they can have 100% control over fighters. And using Rousey to sell anything is a mistake, people generally dont like her,. It alienates all the male fighters and makes the UFC look like a tits and ass calender.
D says
Sal, don’t try to act like you know anything about business because you don’t. Go focus on your meals.
Saldathief says
Yea D hows the UFC ppv business doing bahahahahaha oh wait lets concentrate on overpriced crap that no one will buy and lets blow Rousy’s head up so she will stay with the ufc we can stroke her ego and tell her she’s a model bahahahah please please Ronda stay with us we will make you a model bahahahahaha
Give us a break D you cant google or make this crap up bahahahaha
D says
Sal, no one believes your nonsense. Everyone knows you just manufacture numbers that Uncle Bobby tells you, because you are his little queen. Haha.
Yan Desjardins says
@Jesse
The UFC might compensate fighters. They might even be able to get more money by going this route. They might not do it, either.
Nothing has been announced either way, and I was wondering if you were coming up with a conclusion based on facts which hadn’t been released. Let’s see how this one plays out.
jesse says
@Yan
I hope the UFC do compensate the fighters more as its well known that fighters are woefully underpaid and not having sponsors is just another hit. But being honest everything Dana White does is to benefit him and the rest of the brass such as charging sponsorship tax which drove away most sponsors, making fighters wait till PPV’s gained over 300k buys before they got any bonus, etc. so i don’t expect the fighters to get much from the deal.
Pink Pig says
It’s hilarious how big the UFC is in their own minds.
Jamie says
@yan @jesse When this was first discussed White said there would be areas for fighters to have sponsors on uniforms. The idea was also to pay fighters for wearing the uniform. This was in response to low-mid level fighters having real problems getting sponsorship….well, apart from DYNAMIC FASTENER.
But of course, the primary focus foe the UFC is making themselves lots of money.
jesse says
@jamie we’ll see how it goes but what does it mean for fighters like Jon Jones, Pettis, Hendricks and Lawler who have major apparel deals?