UFC Merchandising Agreement - Fighters Get Scammed

[Suqleg]

Originally Posted by machine29

Think about it though. How many fighters have clothing Companies that sell their likeness?


GSP with Afflicition, Rampage with Affliction, Chuck was butu know Dana probably excluded him


Im just saying, most fighters cant make money off themselves. Really Tito and Randy are the only two I can think of that have really made a shit ton of cash off their personal clothing lines.

So this is no risk option to make a ton of money. The fighters who are business savvy and plan on building their own clothing CO> won't sign it. The ones who have no clue how to market or start a CO will gladly sign it and make way more money than they could ever dream of.

I love how people claim the UFC are ripping them when they arent forcing them to sign anything. U dont have to sign it but they dont want to hear u crying when this dude is a millionaire and u are only making sponsorships and fight purses.

Some of u are getting confused I can tell.
They can still wear Tapout,American Fighter, Warrior etc to the octagon. They can still have all their sponsors. They just cant make a T shirt with their likeness *meaning their name or picture on it and sell it*

How many fucking fighters do that anyway? Hell even Tito only has maybe 4 or 5 shirts with his pic on it.

ALSO:

if the fighters get 10 percent off the video game to split.

think of that. That game will EASILY sell 2 million units. Thats a gross of 120 million dollars. fighters will split 12 mil off the game.

12 million divided by lets say 100 fighters would be 120,000 each for doing nothing. say only 20 fighters are offered this deal, that would be 600G's a piece for doing nothing.

As far as the Video game goes They are selling the UFC brand not any individual fighter. If anything this is promotion for them.
Allot of companies pay a lot of $ for product placement in games. Fighters are their own product and getting Marqee placement. Now if the game was called Forrest Griffing fighting game, he should get paid because he is the brand of the game. The UFC probably has final say on who makes the cut and would you wanna be the guy that is not in it?

[Ghostfacechilla]

Originally Posted by VeNoM_2K5

What's the consequence if you don't sign this agreement?

I can see a lot of fighters sitting down and thinking "nope..." to this.

To reply, i think the consequence of not signing this deal is considered by zuffa and dana white as a slap in their face and disrespect (kinda like a boss in a typical office who asks for a favour or a job to be done and the employee doesn't do it) - maybe this is a poor example, but bottom line is dana and co. would not appreciate it, and this would translate in future negotiations etc... or even result in a fighter being dropped.


I'd also like to add my point of view as to how this will play out:

Many are going to sign this contract, and some will not. Probably more out of a combination of making more money than they can make at the particular moment ( pressure from the fight game, knowing that your next fight could be your last, unlike other sports where there is pretty much always another day, because in other sports, a loss isnt all that bad ie. golf, tennis, bball etc. ) - and the pressure from dana white

After about 5-10 years time, when mma hopefully becomes a mainstream sport, with fights coming from dif orgs, and pple paying ppvs due to who's on the card and not the brand ( ie boxing ) - resulting in fighters hopping orgs, they will see that signing such a contract is ludicrous and everyone including fighters and the public will one day look back and criticize this deal zuffa has made. Point being, this is good for now, seeing as most fighters may not generate much anyway, and their already short careers can be over in a flick of an eye, but will not be worth it for them in the future.

[J.J.MCLANE]

I doubt dana is holding a gun to there heads telling them they have to sign up.

its business dude. every fuckin in the world does shit like this all the time.

if they don't like it LEAVE!!!!!!!

[jabXhook]

This is a similiar situation to what has/is happening to poker players.. About a dozen top pro players refused to sign image rights over to WPT(world poker tour) and were banned from playing..
Some of the reasoning for refusing was they had no control over what they were endorsing..
MMA is still a very young sport and at the moment the org's mainly the UFC hold all the cards.. I think this is why it is so important that Affliction/Elite XC Strikeforce etc do well and survive so fighters have more employment oppurtunities..
As the sport grows worldwide hopefully the fighters will yeild more power..
Anyone who is familiar with European football(soccer) will have seen in the past 10 years the power going away from the clubs and more to the players. Freedom of contracts/Bosman ruling...
Great post TS

[FortheLoveofMMA]

Originally Posted by killerbay

I would like to know how much money the UFC makes each year and what percentage goes to the fighters, I would bet less than 25%.

WAY less then that. if you spent the time to crunch the numbers, i would bet my yearly salary it would be no more then 10% - with 5% of that going to the ultra stars

[FortheLoveofMMA]

Originally Posted by jabXhook

This is a similiar situation to what has/is happening to poker players.. About a dozen top pro players refused to sign image rights over to WPT(world poker tour) and were banned from playing..
Some of the reasoning for refusing was they had no control over what they were endorsing..
MMA is still a very young sport and at the moment the org's mainly the UFC hold all the cards.. I think this is why it is so important that Affliction/Elite XC Strikeforce etc do well and survive so fighters have more employment oppurtunities..
As the sport grows worldwide hopefully the fighters will yeild more power..
Anyone who is familiar with European football(soccer) will have seen in the past 10 years the power going away from the clubs and more to the players. Freedom of contracts/Bosman ruling...
Great post TS

this is very true.

[Tiseye]

It reads pretty one sided IMO, but that isn't anything new in corporate contracts. I would feel pretty ticked if I were a UFC fighter and was under that agreement though. I'd want some concessions somewhere in there aside from the bit of the action they toss your way.

[N-do]

Originally Posted by Pink Butterfly

HAHA, wtf. Looks worse than the typical music artist agreements. Now I have even more respect for guys like Fedor and Joachim Hansen

Wouldn't you expect it to be worse than a music artists agreement.

A musician has to create music, and perform. This is a licensing agreement. The fighters don't have to do anything but cash a fucking check.

A third party licenses a fighters likeness for a product from Zuffa, a manufacturer manufactures it, retailers sell it. The fighter just gets a fucking check and goes to the bank. Everyone else did all the work, so you can't expect the fighters to get the lions share of the money.

While sherdoggers piss and moan, I bet the UFC fighters are pretty stoked about the fact that they'll be getting checks in the mail in the future for basically doing nothing.

If the TS wants to bring up other licensing agreements and compare them we can get a fair idea of the contract in relation to other merchandising deals, but this seems like a pretty good deal to me.

Zuffa secures licensing deal, third parties handle manufacturing distribution and retail sales, fighter goes to mailbox and gets check. SWEET

[I-C-DEAD-PEOPLE]

So lets see.....with the deal, the fighters get 10%/20% for certaing things. On top of the money they make for fighting and for sponsorships they get more. How much would they get if the UFC never put the deal together? Oh yeah, NOTHING.

[chaman4g]

wow thats crazy