[MrMastodonFarm]

Stolen from Sherdog.com forums. Great posting..

UFC Pay: A Guide For Posting
For the love of god, how many times are morons going to post false, inaccurate, and misleading statements regarding fighter pay and the amount the UFC makes on its shows. I don't have a problem with people talking about the pay of fighters, but at least have some knowledge and common sense before spewing out complete and utter nonsense.

Common misconceptions about fighter pay.

1. The listed pay is not the full pay from the UFC. That pay is only show and in some instances show and win bonus (Nevada requires both). Other bonuses are not included and these are quite substantial for the top fighters with their PPV cuts, but even the lesser named fighters can get bonuses for fight of the night, submission of the night, KO of the night, etc. Tito, Chuck, Ken, Randy, Royce, Hughes have all been rumored as million a dollar fight guys. Sylvia has been given 50k automobiles as bonuses for a job well done. Franklin has supposedely been given significant dollars for a down payment on his house.

2. The UFC allows the fighters to promote pretty much anything (there are certain things they ban, such as advertising competing casinos and offshore gambling sites) and thus allows them to get significant advertising/sponsorship dollars when they fight. Without the fight they don't get this money, and yes it isn't paid by the UFC, but they certainly could ban all advertising if they chose to.

3. The UFC gets many fighters certain sponsorships, appearances, coaching opportunities, etc., which provide additional money to the fighters. Obviously Xience is the big sponsor, but there are others.

Common misconceptions about UFC income.

1. The PPV buy numbers is not pure profit to the UFC. The PPV company takes anywhere from 40-60% right off the top. No one knows the exact numbers, but MMA Weekly estimates it at 50% for a company in the UFC's position.

2. Uncle Sam takes about a third of any amount, which is obviously a hefty amount.

3. The UFC has additional employee salaries directly related to the actual event. These include the judges (assigned by the athletic commission but paid for by the UFC), the doctors, the ring girls, the announcers, etc. No one knows how much this amounts to, but they don't work for free.

4. The UFC has a number of expenses for each event. This includes the medical insurance for every fighter, travel expenses for the fighters, drug testing, and the big one advertising the PPV on tv, radio, in print, etc. Advertising is expensive.

5. The UFC has to rent the facility. Depending on their arrangement they may have to pay for the security and possibly could get a share of the proceeds and gates, but once again no one knows what those arrangements are. It would pure speculation as to how much of the gate they actually get and what sort of percentage of arena advertising they get.

6. The UFC has general overhead. This money has to come from somewhere. This overhead includes their office rental, utiltiy expenses, travel expenses, legal fees, salaries for their non-fighter employees (scouts, secretorial staff, management).

7. The UFC almost certainly loses money on the UFN shows as the salaries are pretty large and the money they take in isn't much (live gates aren't a lot and some of that goes to the facility - UFC probably doesn't get any dollars from the commercials but gets a flat fee from Spike, no one knows what that is so speculation is dumb). They use the UFN's to promote their fighters, build name recognitiion, and advertising for PPV's so it makes sense for the UFC to do them, but the UFC probably is losing money on them (and probably lost a lot on the Tito/Ken UFC since those guys are huge money fighters).

Bottom line when all is said and done the UFC, while probably making money (notice I said probably) overall isn't to the point where they are making a lot of money. Of a 30 million dollar PPV take, after the PPV provider and government take their cut the UFC is proabably left with no more than 10 million to cover all other expenses, which as outlined above are fairly significant.