The UFC’s new broadcast era will start out with some new fighter incentives.
Standard fight night bonuses have been $50,000 for more than a decade. On occasion, they’ve surged for special occasions – thought UFC CEO Dana White said in 2024 those days were over.
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But with UFC 324 on Saturday at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, the four standard bonuses – typically two for Fight of the Night and two performance bonuses, though sometimes it’s four individual performance awards – will move to a new standard: $100,000.
In addition, the UFC will give $25,000 performance bonuses to any fighter who wins by knockout or submission – but doesn’t get one of the big four $100K checks.
The news was reported by Sports Business Journal, to which White had promised to let break the news. In 2014, MMA Junkie was first to report that the UFC had shifted its post-fight bonus pay structure to $50,000 per award. It had ranged from $40,000 to $75,000 in the years prior, seemingly based on the size of the event.
On some occasions, White has announced higher bonuses – like $300,000 checks for UFC 300, or additional bonus winners when events have featured bundles of worthy finishes. But he’s also railed against being pressured to give more bonus money in the past. After UFC 304, he said he would never be pressured into raising the bonuses again.
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“I think tonight showed that we should not, no,” White said at the time. “Upping them doesn’t change anything – it doesn’t make them fight any harder. It doesn’t change anything. I’m not doing this again. Ever. Today was the last day I’m doing that.
“I’m not saying in the future the bonuses couldn’t go up, but I’m doing a press conference saying ‘$200(K)! $300(K)!’ – fcking never again. Never again. So you can thank everybody on this card for that. Nobody fought any harder, there was no sense of urgency – ‘Holy sht, I want the $100,000.’ Seven straight decisions … the $100,000 was a real big fcking ‘Woo-hoo. Let’s get it, boys.’ Fck that sh*t. Never again.”
But now that the UFC is in a new $7.7 billion deal with Paramount+, White and other UFC mouthpieces have been saying fighter pay is going to go up drastically in response. There’s no getting around the math that the promotion will pay out well more than double its past bonus expenditures this year.
Will the fighters respond is the question that will be answered soon.
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Bonuses double to $100K, each finish gets $25K starting with UFC 324
