Endeavor announced that the UFC had its best financial year in the history of the company at the company’s latest earning call with investors on Wednesday.
During the investor call, Emmanuel announced, “…UFC posted its best financial year in its 28-year history. All Pay-Per-View events sold out, sponsorship hit record revenue highs and international rights deals saw significant increases.”
Despite the news of the UFC’s biggest financial boon to date, Endeavor CEO Ari Emmanuel got a little testy with any questions about how the MMA promotion pays its fighters. Ahead of the call, the SBJ had an article about the challenges the UFC faced amid highlighted concerns about fighter pay. The SBJ article spoke with Lawrence Epstein in giving the UFC side of the story. While the article focused on attention-getter Jake Paul’s social media crusade against Dana White and the UFC highlighting the need to pay fighters as well as the recent Francis Ngannou pay dispute, Epstein responded with the company line that fighter have an opportunity to market themselves into success.
There is also the quote that the UFC has increased fighter pay 600% since 2005 per Endeavor CFO Jason Lublin. Per The Hollywood Reporter:
The faulty fact that UFC fighters are being paid 600% more than in 2005 is a mislead, misread and misrepresentation on the issue. Certainly, pay in 2005 was low but the raise in pay is not commensurate with the outside factors of cost of living (and training), inflation and the fact that the company has succeeded exponentially since 2005. The UFC now has a television deal, licensing agreement nationwide and huge sponsorship deals. The 600% increase is not lockstep with these other factors.
When questioned about fighter pay during the investor call, Emmanuel stated that he would not comment.
Brandon Ross asked, “I think the pushback that’s out there, though, is that your overall revenue basic UFC has grown much more than that 600%, I believe, and what the overall relative share should be? Emmanuel responded, “Well I’m not commenting on that. I think we’ve done very well as it relates to the pay for the fighters.”
Payout Perspective:
It is hard to celebrate the financial success of the company, when it is known that a segment of the business is known to be paying low wages to its labor. The issue here is that Endeavor wants to tout the UFC success in order to promote more investment in the company and Endeavor overall since it is now a publicly traded company. However, its clear that the more eyes on the company, the more people will realize that the talking points of increase in fighter pay are not commensurate with the financial success of the entity. The UFC is doing well financially and its clear that the acquisition by Endeavor was a success.
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