The Ultimate Fighting Championship was subject to serious criticism because of the way they planned to distribute the money resulting from the Reebok uniform deal. As a result, the championship has decided to alter the way it is done: instead of following the original plan, distributing the money based on rankings, the UFC will pay fighters through a tiered system based on tenure. The contract with Reebok will go into effect this July.
UFC Changes Reebok Money Distribution
The tiers used for compensating fighters will be as follows: 1 to 5 fights, 6 to 10 fights, 11 to 15 fights, 16 to 20 fighters and over 21 fights. Champions and title defenders will get a more consistent pay. There is no word on the exact amounts associated with the above-mentioned tiers, of course. WEC and Strikeforce bouts will also mean extra credit for fighters – both were absorbed into the UFC brand in recent years, after being acquired by the parent company Zuffa LLC – but only for fights that took place after the company acquired them. The UFC made the above changes after discussions with both the fighters and their managers after the concern emerged that rankings, which are based on votes by the media, will not assure a fair distribution of the endorsement.
The tenure model is preferable to fighters, the UFC believes, because it is an objective number, unlike the rankings that are completely subjective. Fighters will be notified of the changes in the coming weeks. There is still concern about how much they will be paid through the Reebok deal worth $70 million, with several athletes expressing their concerns if the amounts will make up for the ones they received from other sponsors – enough to get yourself a microgaming Royal online app, I suppose.
The new deal will limit the number of logos a fighter can wear on his gear. One of the logos will be Reeboks, the other one will belong to a sponsor determined by the UFC. The fighters will be required to only wear Reebok during all their sponsored appearances, like media days, weigh-ins and fight week events. This limitation of logos to two has made several sponsors bail out – the fact that their logo will not appear on the fighter’s gear during a fight has made a sponsorship deal much less attractive for them. There is also concern about Reebok only being willing to pay the fighters when they actually fight. Many UFC sponsors remunerate their fighters regularly, even when they are not in action temporarily.
