Fighters who compete in the UFC are going to get a pleasant surprise heading into 2018 and it has to do with the Reebok sponsorship payouts.
Starting with the first UFC event of 2018 (UFC Fight Night St. Louis on January 14), more Reebok sponsorship money is going to be paid out on the first two fighter tiers.
This was all first reported by ESPN.
The new set up with see UFC fighters who have fought between one and three times in the promotion earn $3,500, which is $1,000 more than the original tier. Then the fighters who fight four to ten times in the UFC will now get $5,000, which is a merger of a part of the original tier one into tier two.
Originally, fighters who competed one to five times in the promotion would get $2,500 from the Reebok payouts.
With the new ties, here is how the Reebok sponsorship payouts look now:
1-3 Fights: $3,500
4-10 Fights: $5,000
11-15 Fights: $10,000
16-20 Fights: $15,000
21+ Fights: $20,000
Title Fight Challengers: $30,000
Title Fight Champions: $40,000
Another change taking effect in 2018 is going to be the media availability of fighters before each UFC event. Now fighters will provide four days of media availability before an event, six hours of fight week promotion and one hour of post-fight promotion.
Main event or co-main event fighters are now required to give UFC eight days of media availability, which includes access to UFC for filming material. The promotion can now request a one day, eight hour shoot up to twice a year for each fighter on the roster.
Both the changes to the Reebok payouts and media requirements were made without any fighter consent because the promotion is not required to do so.
