Report: Cat making 100/100, Rousey 65/65
The LA Times Lance Pugmire tweeted that Ronda Rousey’s guaranteed purse is $65,000 and $65,000 more with a win, and CatZingano’s was 100k/100k.
The LA Times Lance Pugmire is well connected in the industry, and tweeted some curious purse figures for UFC 184.
Lance Pugmire @latimespugmire
•California commission tells me @RondaRousey guaranteed purse is 65,000 dollars and 65,000 more with a win.
•And @CatZingano gets 100,000 guarantee plus 100,000 for a win.
*Told by @ufc official that @RondaRousey pay per view back end cut will allow her to surpass 1 million in earnings for this fight.
•To clarify @RondaRousey money, @ufc doesn’t report what it pays fighters and there’s been past disputes. So I report guaranteed money.
The UFC is a privately-held company, and as such is under no responsibility to disclose what they pay their employees or fighters, who they classify as independent contractors. Further, fighters don’t want their salary being public, or they would make it public on their own.
PPV points are a standard means of compensation for the most elite fighters in the sport. Details of contractual arrangements around PPV points are not public, but a few times the contracts have been revealed during court proceedings.
For example, Eddie Alvarez’s contract offered $1 for each PPV between 200,000 and 400,000 buys, $2 per buy between 400,000 and 600,000, and $2.50 per buy over 600,000. Alvarez would have received no extra money for PPV buys under 200,000.
When Alistair Overeem signed with the UFC, his contract reportedly called for a $2 PPV bonus per viewer, “for all revenues received by UFC-Zuffa for telecast of the Lesnar fight in the United States, Canada or over the internet in excess of $500,000.” At roughly $50 per PPV, that would appear to translate to $2 for every buy over 100,0000, but the UFC does not receive all the revenue from PPVs, so the deal would kick in at something well over 100,000 buys.
Rousey is a bigger name than Overeem was, even at his peak, when he entered the UFC. So it is a reasonable guess that she starts getting a cut of the PPV at 100,000 (sooner than Overeem), and that she get something higher than Overeem’s $2.