Learning from the UFC Antitrust Hearings

An almost five years old case has entered the Court of Las Vegas for a hearing according to the latest UFC News updates where the former UFC Fighters filed a case against UFC for monopolising the market of Mixed Martial Arts. These fighters included Jon Fitch, Cung Le and Nate Quarry who were once prominent in the UFC. The UFc wanted to get the case dismissed then and there and they tried their hands at this as well. However, the judge elected to get a hearing into the case.

This decision was much to the expectation of the fighters who once featured in the top 10 lists of UFC Rankings, and they were certainly overjoyed as the hearing went well for them as the lawyers defending the UFC were upset after the hearing. As for the insights into the case, we can be sure that the case is nowhere close to being resolved and that even the class certification hasn’t completed by now — and that’s a very important part of the case.

The major issue that has been put forth by the fighters in the case is that the UFc has capped the share of revenue to the fighters at a maximum of 20 percent and the athletes are not getting their due share. This is also supported by a hypothetical rule in the industry that if the company is doing well, the shares as well as the wages of the employees would rise. In the defense of this argument, the UFC advocates affirmed that the company is paying way more than what the other organisations are paying their athletes and that the former UFc stars are making a fuss out of nothing.

However, it is worth mentioning here that should the fighters win the case, the civil suits penalty can be tripled by the Courts and this will have a huge impact on how the industry of Mixed Martial Arts would progress in the days to come.