Daniel Cormier says he knows for a fact that fighters in the UFC will be making more money across the board ahead of the promotion’s launch on Paramount.
The UFC’s new streaming deal — valued at around $7.7 billion over seven years — kicks off with UFC 324 on Jan. 24. With the new platform, pay-per-view is no more, with the UFC and Paramount providing a one-stop shop for all UFC events.
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Speaking with longtime AKA teammate Josh Thomson on Weighing In, the former two-division champ says fighters, along with some craftier managers, were wise to the new wave of broadcasting and how it effects the athletes early on.
“They’re already getting more money, that’s the difference,” Cormier said. “People always talk about, ‘What’s the UFC going to do for the fighter?’ I know guys now… ‘Well pay-per-view’s going away, what are they going to do?’ I know guys now that are making more money than they did even when they were making pay-per-view, because pay-per-views just, maybe, weren’t selling as much as they used to.
“Whenever we were fighting and I was fighting Jon Jones and [Anthony] ‘Rumble’ Johnson, and having Nick Diaz, Nate Diaz on my card, I was making a boatload of money in pay-per-view. That’s not the reality of today.”
With pay-per-view points now a thing of the past, becoming a champion in the UFC becomes automatically more lucrative, without the pressure to put up a big number of pay-per-view buys, according to Cormier.
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Fans are hopeful that the UFC can put forth an appropriate promotional effort to make cards and events feel big and meaningful without those pressures. But for the fighters, Cormier says everyone will be getting more money across the entire fighting roster.
“Today, a big pay-per-view number was 600,000, 500,000,” Cormier explained. “Pay-per-views just didn’t sell as much. People are stealing it on streams, they’re doing all of these things where the numbers just weren’t [great].
“I know guys now that said, ‘Hey, can I restructure with the idea that pay-per-view is gone?’ The UFC’s like, ‘Yes,’ and now it’s like guaranteed money. They’re doing that. And the guy at the very beginning is going to do better, and the guy all the way to the top of the card is going to do better. They are giving these guys more money.”
