UFC 269 featured two best fights of the year in Charles Oliveira vs Dustin Poirier and Amanda Nunes vs Julianna Pena. While Oliveira defended his title, Pena gave the whole MMA community a shock by defeating Nunes to become the new women’s Bantamweight champion.
Oliveira submitted Poirier in the third round of the fight. It was probably Poirier’s last run for the championship. On the other hand, Nunes dropped a submission loss again Julianna Pena in the second round that end her 7 year-long winning streaks.
Overall the PPV was a huge success as ESPN Plus sold slightly more than 500,000 PPV units for UFC 269. That makes the revenue from the PPV is around 37 million dollars, considering the hike in the PPV price to $74.99. Whatever may be the reason 2021 was a great year for PPV business as seven events have been reported as selling at least 500k buys.
While it was a dream for the promotion to cross the mark twice a year in the period of 2010-2018. After allying with ESPN, UFC has certainly done better in putting the promotion in front of more fans.
The year 2021 was the fiscal year in their 20+ year history. Certainly, two big Conor McGregor events helped boost the revenue. However, UFC’s strategy to involve more than one fight in the PPV also supported the growth.
Should UFC increase fighter’s pay?
UFC and the underpayment to the fighters issue have been around quite a while now. Youtuber Jake Paul recently accused UFC of looting the customers and not paying their fighters properly.
With UFC increased popularity over the years and frequent successful PPVs, the promotion should pass on the benefits to the fighters. As discussed earlier when the PPV buys were hardly 500k in the year 2017 the minimum fighter’s pay then was 10,000 dollars which increased to 12,000 by the year 2022.
What do you think? Is the rise in the minimum fighter’s pay enough, or do they need to increase more? Do let us know in the comment section.
