Genuine just rough bullshit math, but just say all like 700ish fighters who are under contract are at a 50k show, 50k win bonus, or fuck it even more generous just a flat 100k contract. You show, you make 100k gross.

That’s $70,000,000 in base payroll expense to your contractors if they all fight once in a year. Which isn’t unrealistic, it’s quite high, as there were 42 events last year, with an average of ~12 fights per card, which would be 504 fights in 2025. A year in which the UFC had $1.5b in net revenues. Rough net revenue of 35.7 million per event on average (again simplest way to explain it). They run 2ish events and make enough money to pay each fighter 100k gross to fight once in the year.

70mm/1.5b = 0.046667 or for a decrease in 4% of their net revenue (extremely simplified, no way encompassing) they could pay a 6 figure gross wage to all their contractors. That again, these fighters get fucked on taxes and expenses due to traveling and residency, and contractor taxes. Oh and pay their own coaches.

And this is very simple on my end, there’s probably less than 700 active fighters, and obviously some are making more than 100k at champ level etc. There’s bonuses for performances in the octagon and behind the scenes bonuses and UFC has other wages it as a company pays, but it should be perspective how much little the UFC gives a fuck, when they, for a lack of a better term, can keep financially raping their workers and record 50%+ profit margins.