In mainstream sports, athletes receive roughly half of the revenue generated. In the UFC, it's estimated that fighters reveive roughly 20%. BMF Jorge Masvidal appeared recently on ESPN’s “SportsCenter” and expressed his frustration with the UFC's revenue split; he recently asked for a release from his contract.
“Basically, it’s not that I’m asking for more money, it’s that I’m asking for a bigger revenue share of what we bring in,” said Masvidal. “I’ve got a lot of questions, and one of them is NBA, NHL, baseball, they make, I think, 50 percent with the players of what the organization brings in.
“Football, I think it’s 47 percent. Mine is like 18 percent. So I have these questions in my mind: Is it to put the cage up costs so much? The setup? What is it so much?”
“To me, it doesn’t make any sense. The guy across the cage, his intent is always to try to take my head off and none of us – no fighter ever – has gotten money off the gate or the hot dog sale or the piña coladas that they sell. We don’t get any of that, so that is not our concern.
“The fighters that don’t know, that are not educated, might say different things, but we don’t get a percentage of the gate, a percentage of the T-shirts, none of that. So what does it matter for us? Why do I have to do my job at a less rate? Now, if they were giving us 50 percent share or 40 percent or any of that stuff, it would be a different ball game. Yeah, we can come to different terms like the NBA or other sports because of the things at hand – the quarantine and not being able to do large gatherings and not being able to have them. But we don’t even have that. We’re not even near that ballpark.
“Most of us would be happy if it was 30 percent coming back, but it’s not even that. It’s less than 20 percent. I have these questions, and I want them answered.”
“Me and the UFC have been talking since the end of December about the next couple of fights. Numerous ideas got tossed around, several times back and forth. I said yes to everybody they offered me. I said, ‘Yes, I will compete and fight against anybody you want.’
“When it came to the numbers and a couple times we had differences, a couple other fights just fell through. On this current fight [vs. welterweight champion Kamaru Usman], they’re just not wanting to play ball at all. They want me to take less money than I did on my last fight [vs. Nate Diaz at UFC 244], even though I’m fighting for a world championship. A lot of things just don’t add up.”
