UFC Business Year-In-Review

  • UFC 66 BREAKS RECORDS; UFC BUSINESS YEAR-IN-REVIEW Saturday, January 06, 2007 - by Ivan Trembow - MMAWeekly.com

UFC Business Year-in-Review

...Heading into 2006, the UFC had drawn live gates of $2 million or more on just two occasions in its history (UFC 52 with Liddell vs. Couture, and UFC 54 with Liddell vs. Jeremy Horn).

In the year 2006 alone, the UFC surpassed the $2 million mark in ticket sales with seven different events, three of which also surpassed the $3 million mark, and one of which also surpassed the $5 million mark.

Chuck Liddell has been in the main event in five of the nine events in UFC history that have drawn live gates of $2 million or more. The only two fighters who come close to Liddell's record are Tito Ortiz and Matt Hughes, each of whom have been in the main event in three of the UFC's nine events that have had ticket sales of more than $2 million.

In addition, Chuck Liddell has been in the main event in three of the four events in UFC history that have drawn live gates of $3 million or more, and he fought three different fighters in those three events (Randy Couture, Renato Sobral, and Tito Ortiz). Ortiz has been in two of the top four events, with Liddell and Ken Shamrock as his opponents.

The UFC held a total of ten pay-per-view events in 2006, and without taking pay-per-view revenue into account, those ten events generated $27,532,225 in ticket sales. The revenue in ticket sales, while impressive, is dwarfed by the skyrocketing PPV revenue.

Using the most conservative possible estimates for the UFC PPV events that took place in late 2006, the gross PPV revenue that was generated by the UFC's ten PPV events in 2006 surpassed $200 million. The total may actually be well over $200 million, depending on how well UFC 64, UFC 65, and UFC 66 performed at the PPV box office.

Using Zuffa's own public predictions of 1.2 million buys for UFC 66, that would mean that UFC 66 alone generated approximately $47.94 million in pay-per-view revenue.

http://www.mmaweekly.com/absolutenm/templates/dailynews.asp?articleid=3235&zoneid=13

Reading that, it does make the fighter's pay scale look extra shitty, bonuses or not...

what they pay the fighters is absolutely horrible.My guess is that only 30% of pro fighters make a good living without a second job.Its sad considering what boxers make.

Enough with the pay thing man, if a guy is a DRAW he gets PAID same as
boxing. people arent paying money to see perosh getting beat on a
curtain jerker. The fighters who DRAW crowds and ppv buys get the
money simple economics, look at the NFL, only the top tier guys get paid
the REAL money. If you want to pay everyone 25gs for a opener then you
can see financial problems like wfa pride.