Originally Posted by
jsearles22
Is it possible the UFC is in trouble?
I guess it depends on what you mean by "trouble." Certainly not financially in trouble, not now. They get guaranteed money for every show from ESPN no matter how shitty, they get paid for every PPV as if it sold about 500K buys under the old system, they are locked into this deal for 6 more years, and they pay their fighters under 20% of their revenue. They are making money hand over fist right now without even having a live gate.
It's a lot like the WWE right now. Consider those guys. They get paid SO much for TV, guaranteed money, that by the nature of not having to travel and do live house shows right now (they tape their shows in their own building in Florida rn, much like UFC runs in their own building in Vegas), they are making even more money than if they had to run their regular schedule of shows. They are financially bulletproof, for the next bunch of years, even though their ratings keep going down.
The only way either of these 2 companies gets in any trouble at all is if the TV landscape crashes completely, and even then, we've never seen live sports tv money go anywhere but up in our lifetime.
It really is a bad time for a top fighter like Bones to ask for huge money, tho, when there's no live gate. Same with Conor, he won't be fighting in an empty arena any time soon, because he's not gonna take the haircut that comes along with that.