A case for fighter pay being private
Last week ESPN published a list of the highest paid athlete in 31 sports, from dog sled racing ($50,400) to…
Last week ESPN published a list of the highest paid athlete in 31 sports, from dog sled racing ($50,400) to Boxing ($50,000,000). What a difference three zeros makes.
Alpine Skiing (women) Lindsey Vonn $612,417
Alpine Skiing (men) Marcel Hirscher $510,192
Auto racing Fernando Alonso $40,000,000
Badminton (women) Wang Yihan $277,550
Badminton (men) Lee Chong Wei $267,350
Baseball Alex Rodriguez $30,000,000
Basketball Kobe Bryant $25,244,000
Beach volleyball (women) Larissa Franca/Juliana Felisberta da Silva $326,700
Beach volleyball (men) Emanuel Rego/Alison Cerutti $306,700
Billiards Shane Van Boening $160,450
Bowling Sean Rash $140,250
Boxing Manny Pacquiao $50,000,000
Bull Riding Silvano Alves $1,461,964
Darts Phil Taylor $938,497
Distance running (men) Emmanuel Mutai $815,000
Distance running (women) Liliya Shobukhova $720,000
Drag racing Del Worsham $1,193,000
Eating Joey Chestnut $205,000
Equestrian Rolf-Göran Bengtsson $1,161,280
Fishing Kevin VanDam $706,500
Football Charles Johnson $34,000,000
Golf (men) Luke Donald $9,509,604
Golf (women) Yani Tseng $2,921,713
Hockey Brad Richards $12,000,000
Horse Racing (jockey) Ramon A. Dominguez $20,567,032
Poker Pius Heinz $8,876,067
Racquetball Kane Waselenchuk $270,000
Rodeo Trevor Brazile $365,293
Rugby Union Sebastien Chabal $1,318,195
Sled dog racing Dallas Seavey $50,400
Soccer Wayne Rooney $20,821,300
Squash Nick Matthew $129,592
Sumo wrestling Hakuho 1,100,000
Surfing (men) Kelly Slater $556,250
Surfing (women) Carissa Moore $114,900
Tennis (men) Novak Djokovic $12,619,803
Tennis (women) Petra Kvitova $5,145,943
Triathlon (men) Alistair Brownlee $162,892
Triathlon (women) Helen Jenkins $151,050
The world’s fastest growing sport was missing from the list, presumably because, as the story noted, official salary data unavailable for sports not listed. So should complete salary data be available for MMA?
Recently, UFC President Dana White for once stopped holding back his feelings, and simply spoke his mind on the subject.
“To be honest with you, it’s not your f—— business,” explained White, who added “they’re making a lot of money.”
Mike Chiappetta at MMAFighting took the opposite side, arguing for full disclosure like other sports.
Now Jason Cruz at MMAPayout.com offers a nuanced counter argument.
MMA Fighting’s argument that the sport of MMA could lose out on potential athletes because of the lack of salary information is improbable. Most likely athletes will choose their profession based on the best possible chance of making it in the professional ranks of the sport. There are examples of athletes choosing a sport and then reversing course. (NFL First Rounder Brandon Wheedon played baseball a couple years before going back to play college football and getting drafted.) But that example is beyond the scope of the theory that someone will actually choose a sport based on how much you could make. There are instances of former football players taking up MMA after their pigskin career is done. But, that is after their first career is over.
Moreover, it’s not plausible to think that someone would choose a career in MMA over a career in NFL because money in MMA is not as good as that in professional football. Even without knowing the salary structure in MMA, one need only look to the salaries that NFL rookies will make to assume that if you had a choice to play professionally or fight in MMA, one would choose the NFL.
Transparency of the UFC’s salaries lends credibility to the sport based in part on the fact that the other sports are willing to reveal the way it pays its athletes. For the UFC to say it’s none of your business makes it seem that it is hiding something rather than protecting the privacy of its fighters. The ESPN OTL report builds on the premise that it is hiding something. Like it or not, that is how it is perceived.