Since retiring from UFC, Matt Brown has put a lot of time into building businesses — most notably his gym — and setting himself up for success in a post-fighting career.
While he never headlined pay-per-views or won championships, Brown spent 16 years in the UFC, and during that time he learned a lot about how the promotion does business. It’s thanks largely to that experience that the now 43-year-old former fighter believes the conversation about fighter pay is much more nuanced than simply saying UFC should be paying athletes more money.
On the surface, Brown agrees that everybody on the UFC roster is underpaid compared to the vast amounts of revenue the organization is generating. But the cause and effect of why that’s happening goes much further than simply stating that UFC needs to pay more.
“It’s hard to expect the UFC to just be completely fair about it,” Brown said on the latest episode of The Fighter vs. The Writer. “They’re running a business, and they run it very f*cking well. They’ve done an amazing job building their business. I think 99 percent of people in their shoes would be doing very similar to what they’re doing.
“Does that make it right? That’s up to each person to decide on their own. I think it’s just way more complex than people give it credit for.”
As much as the responsibility always falls back on UFC’s shoulders for underpaying athletes, Brown says anybody complaining about fighter pay can’t expect business owners to do anything differently than attempt to maximize profits for their businesses. But Brown also knows some of the blame rests with the fighters themselves for not holding UFC to account over the years — and he’s pointing the finger right at himself as part of the problem.
“If anybody is to blame for fighter pay, it’s the fighters — and I’m one of them, at least formerly,” Brown said. “I never fought against the UFC about my pay. You’ve seen on Instagram, Twitter, different interviews where the fighters stick up for the UFC.
“I’ve never heard of a business in my life where the employees — if you want to call us employees or even subcontractors — where they’re going to say, ‘I shouldn’t be paid more, they’re paying me a perfect amount of money.’ That is so unbelievable to me.”
In the past, Brown acknowledged that his only real complaint about pay came down to an in-person meeting with UFC CEO Dana White where he expressed his concerns. There was no real argument or negotiation because Brown says White agreed with his argument and the two sides reached a new deal without any further discussion.
That said, Brown never really complained about his pay with UFC because he essentially understood that arguing probably wouldn’t get him anywhere good.
“Look, I’ve always been happy with how the UFC’s treated me, I like them,” Brown said. “There’s no hate against them at all, but if I thought sticking up for myself and fighting with them about pay would get me paid more, I would absolutely do it in a heartbeat. I only question if guys are saying that because we know the amount of power that [UFC] have.
“If you try fighting against [UFC], your chances of getting more pay just get diminished. You’re just lowering your chances of getting more pay. So of course you publicly stick up for them even though something in the back of your head is saying, ‘Damn, this isn’t really what I want.’”
Another subject that comes up often regarding fighter pay is the lack of a union to represent MMA’s athletes, which plays a massive part in negotiations with other sports leagues like NFL or NBA.
But even that’s a tough comparison because the NFL is ultimately made up of 32 teams and 32 owners, and the NFL Player’s Association represents athletes across all those various teams who join the union on the day they start playing professional football. Thanks to the revenue sharing model set up for the league, the competition during the season still ultimately benefits everybody under the NFL umbrella.
That’s not the case in MMA.
UFC is by far the biggest and most profitable organization, but there’s no relation between UFC and competitors like the PFL or ONE Championship. A fighters’ union would almost have to be league specific, and that gets even more complicated when you’re dealing with contracts, athletes signing or leaving UFC to go elsewhere, and then maybe even moving on to an international promotion where a union would have no control or influence.
A better comparison would be contrasting UFC to one NFL team with no natural competitors to really challenge them on a global scale.
“UFC is like the [Dallas] Cowboys if the Cowboys had won the past 20 Super Bowls in a row and there’s not even a close second-place team,” Brown said with a laugh. “Like, literally every college star only wants to go to the Cowboys. They have complete power over every Super Bowl.
“They’re going to win for the next 20 Super Bowls and they’re like, ‘You want to go play for the f*cking Bears? Go for it. There’s another kid coming out of college tomorrow, buddy.’”
Brown doesn’t know if there’s ever going to be a solution long-term to solve fighter pay concerns, but he recognizes there’s an ongoing antitrust lawsuit at least attempting to deal with some of the disparity between UFC and other major sports leagues.
In the meantime, Brown offers advice to every other fighter either in UFC or hoping to make it to UFC when it comes to long-term planning for the future.
“If you’re an aspiring UFC fighter or MMA fighter, you need to view the UFC for what it is,” Brown explained. “It is a stage to magnify your brand so you can make money in other ways. That’s where you’re going to make the real money. Even Conor McGregor, he certainly could have retired just off the money he made in the UFC, but he’s made what 10, 20 times more probably outside the UFC? That’s the way you’ve got to do it.
“I hope that changes sometime, where like an NFL player only has four years but as long as they live below their means, which is pretty easy to do when you’re making millions of dollars a year, they can retire just off of four years of [playing football], where in the UFC that’s just not the case.”
I love him.
The Immortal is the man.
Is there a good reason why the UFC doesn’t revenue share more?
Never gonna draw top athletes paying like this.
They’ll never be able to compete with the NBA/MLB salary scale.
MMA is not a normal sport. It’s not for everyone and there isn’t a little league program.
No they can’t compete, but can’t they do better than they are now.
The removal of personal sponsors was an especially big kick to the fighters collective balls.
I feel Dana could easily pay his fighters more, but he chooses not to. By keeping them poor they are indentured servants and have no choice but to take whatever fight he offers or get black balled. I am mainly talking about the bottom 80%.
While the top fighters are balling the rest are probably making minimum wage when you take into account all the hours of training and you take away costs like management and training fees.
You also have to look at the long term effects of fighting on the body. A lot of these guys will be broken in their late 30s and frankly not a lot of them will have meaningful careers after fighting. Some may have skill to have careers, some may open a gym or train other fighters, most will not imo
He said on the Rampage podcast that he was most recently making 350k. That’s way more than I figured for someone of his level.
Would you pay for a ppv if the top 20% of fighters weren’t on it?
The bottom 80% of ufc fighters are basically the best of any other promotion and they are paid like it
I always pay for my Ppv. I have never illegally streamed
ive said it so many times in these threads but you can’t compare to other sports. Just such a different model.
Best thing ufc could do for fighter pay is figure out a way to get fighters more active. Fighters arent fighting 1-2x a year because thats all their body can take… Its not that… Its because of the UFC’s model. They have too many fighters for the events they have, they announce fights too far in advance (i get its for ticket sales), etc.
If UFC worked through these problems, fighters are easily capable of 6-8 fights a year which would drastically increase their pay without impacting their costs too much as theyre training year round anyway and in camp for half the year+.
Also it would allow fans to get more familiar with fighters which increases their marketability.
Also agree UFC should bring back sponsors for fighters. It was a failed experiment to get rid of them. If there were problems with previous fighter sponsorships they should just bring them back with different terms.
Fighters are fucked unless they develop a union or something similar. Matt Brown would have a different career if he fought back on fighter pay. The UFC wouldve given him tough fights stylistically and cut him after a few losses, no fun fights where he could showcase hit kill shots like the Diego match up
How is it so different when you break it down to revenue sharing percentage, its an expense to produce a product and the UFC is keeping an insane amount. The UFC sold for 4 billion in 2016 and is now apparently worth 12. They could easily pay the fighters a lot more
The UFC will never bring back sponsors, they’re most likely making a killing off of that
How much the UFC is worth doesnt matter but yeah revenue share is probably lower than other sports.
UFC isnt a mature sport. UFC does their own production and has all sorts of revenue that wouldn’t be included in a revenue share in another league.
Other sports do all sorts of shady shit and even if they report 50% of revenue goes to their athletes…50% of what revenue?
Its not apples to apples.
Let me explain…
Lets say UFC generates 50 million in revenue in a PPV event. For simplicity sake lets say that revenue is
30 million PPV + TV deals
10 million gate + other event revenue
10 million sponsorships
They pay the fighters $10 million.
Yeah thats 20% that sucks when the major sports with unions are closer to 40-50%.
But when you look at it closer UFC has costs associated with that 50 million.
Production costs - 2.5 million
Venue costs - 2.5 million
Fighter pay - 10 million
Other misc event related costs - 5 million
Marketing - 5 million
Okay that would put costs at 30 million against 50 million. So 40% gross margin.
Ufc has other costs, they have overheads, theyre developing other things, etc but not really important for this convo too much.
What do you think happens when ufc is required to put up 40% revenue share? Do you think that whole equation stays the same except for fighter pay and gross margin? Do you think they just accept going from 40% gross margin (on the event) to 20%?
No… What will happen is the same that happened in other sports. UFC will trade revenue for costs. They’ll push costs to their business partners in exchange for lower revenues.
They’ll make it so instead of 50 million revenue on that event its 30 million but they also lowered cost by 20 million. Now maybe the split changes a bit as a result as fighters get 12 million against UFC’s 18 million rather than 10 vs 20.
But thats what will happen (obviously numbers are just examples not meant to be taken literally).
UFC will follow every other sport and trade lower revenue for lower costs.
The proper value add negotiation here… Is negotiating number of fights… And negotiating sponsors.
I know the Freitas brother lost money before they made money in the ufc and solid it for a nice profit.
No one is saying fighters should get fiddy percent but some guys are at poverty level.
Some have side hustles and ways to market there ufc status, some do not however