How much is a UFC title worth these days? With PPV gone, the reality is sinking in

A while back, a reader wrote in with a question for my weekly mailbag that sounded simple but turned out to be trickier than I expected. It went something like this: In the current era, what’s the true value of becoming a UFC champion?

In the pay-per-view days, the answer was relatively simple. Every fighter believed that the key to unlocking MMA riches was to fight all the way up the ladder of a given division, win the UFC title, then defend it multiple times. The promotion’s standard champion’s contract offered every fighter a cut of pay-per-view proceeds, and it was that cut that purportedly made the difference between good money and life-changing money.

Being an especially popular champion also helped, since the share of pay-per-view revenues went up with the event’s buy rate, but the belt was the prize that made it all possible. Without that UFC gold, you’d always be just another working fighter, bleeding for your show and win money.

Now UFC pay-per-views are essentially extinct. Fans get every event for the low monthly cost of a Paramount+ subscription. TKO, the UFC’s parent company, gets an average of around $1 billion per year just to put on the events. Fighters still dream of UFC gold, but what’s that title worth now that the UFC no longer has to share any of that TV money?

It seems like a question worth revisiting now. UFC middleweight champion Sean Strickland is clearly unhappy with his compensation. He apparently thinks little enough of the title’s value that he’s willing to give it up without a fight if it will get him out of his contract and into free agency faster. So what gives? Are those hunks of leather and gold still worth something in the UFC?

I reached out to a few different managers to get some answers. Many didn’t want to discuss the topic and most didn’t want their name attached, out of concern for how it might affect their relationship with the UFC. But there was a clear consensus on the issue.

For one thing, they said, the dream of pay-per-view riches was already mostly dead even before the UFC ditched that model. Pay-per-views in recent years just weren’t selling like they used to. We could all come up with our own list of reasons why — the high and always increasing price of events on ESPN+, the ready availability of alternative means of seeing these events, a general cultural shift away from this relic of the cable TV age — but the result for fighters was the same regardless. Even with the title, they weren’t seeing too much in the way of pay-per-view money.

Still, the standard UFC contract already included a bump in pay for becoming a champion, they said. Fighters also get a boost in terms of their “Promotional Guidelines Compliance” payouts — basically the money fighters get to show up to their fight week responsibilities and wear the Venum fight kit the UFC gives them. (Champions get $42,000 per fight under the current system, while challengers get $32,000. Outside of title fights, the pay tops out at $21,000, but that’s only for those rare souls with more than 21 UFC fights.)

Managers also said that opportunities to make money outside the cage improved with a UFC title. Champs get more offers for sponsorships, meet-and-greets and seminars. Their supplemental income tends to improve, even if it’s not to a life-altering degree.

In other words, yes, it still pays more to be a UFC champion. The difference is more modest than it used to be, several managers said, but it’s also more predictable. That has both benefits and drawbacks.

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As one manager pointed out, fighters now know exactly what they can expect to make as champion. They aren’t chasing some pay-per-view fantasy that may never come true, believing that maybe the next one will top 1 million buys and bring the money raining down from the heavens. Even during the last phase of the pay-per-view era, that was never going to happen for most UFC champs anyway, this manager said. Better for them to discard the illusion altogether and know what they’re really getting.

But that knowledge can also be a disappointment. The fact that it is fixed in advance, that no amount of hype or salesmanship or pure athletic performance is going to chance that final figure, it can leave some champs feeling stuck. This is the pay and it’s not going to get any better, no matter what you do. And if those same champs see reports that TKO is paying other fighters like Conor McGregor or Conor Benn vast sums for a single fight, they might quite reasonably despair at the realization that nothing in their UFC contracts allows them even the remote possibility of reaching that level.

Back in the pay-per-view days, maybe the future still felt like an open promise. A champion’s earnings were, at least theoretically, almost limitless. That whole thing UFC executives used to like to say about eating what you kill? That was technically more true then, or at least more possible.

But there’s also another consequence to the death of pay-per-view. Now that the UFC doesn’t have to worry about selling these individual events, making the case for why each one is worth premium prices, it doesn’t have to care quite so much about the overall quality of any given card. That means it also has less incentive to placate any given fighter.

In the past, the UFC might have had more reason to work with a champion like Strickland in search of some compromise that would land him and his drawing power in an upcoming main event. Now? The UFC makes the same amount of money whether he fights or sits at home. And if he sits at home for too long, the promotion can simply take that belt back and let the next two guys on the list fight for the vacant title. Just ask Valentina Shevchenko how easily even a longtime champ can get pushed to the side.

Like it or not, the fact is that those old days are gone and they aren’t coming back. UFC champs are living in a new reality. Now they know exactly what to expect. And for many, that is both the good news and the bad.