Investing In Female Grappling, MMA, Lady Pros, Compared To Other Sports
fciwomenswrestling.com femcompetititor.com grapplingstars.com, Taya-Ovod-Shutterstock-Editorial-use-
February 9, 2023,
The definition is simple.
An investment is an outlay of money spent with the hopes of making a profit.
Preferably a very high one.
And, as simple as that definition sounds, the investments that business people are making in professional sports, in terms of the return on investment, range from puzzling to absolutely mind boggling.
Like paying a quarterback $200 million dollars or 25 percent of your overall budget.
In our great fully competitive female submission wrestling industry, the key to getting your cost down is having a great recruiter work with you.
As a producer, you will get far better rates than trying to put on an event and recruit yourself.
Part of the reason you don’t see as many wrestling companies on the landscape today, as you did in the snail mail days, is because it is not profitable. Competitive female wrestling costs have greatly risen but video sales have not. There is no Pay Per View contracts, television deals or large sponsors.
With FCI, we invested over $12,000 at our October 2021 event at the majestic San Francisco Airport Hyatt hotel but that investment was primarily spent on singers, dancers, competitive cheer and models. Their participation is geared to attract a sponsorship audience and, while we are extremely glad that we did that and have it on film and in pictures, it is not something we see doing again.
How much money did FCI invest in 2022 on female wrestling?
Zero.
We do plan on investing again but we are still putting in our Social Media infrastructure so that investment will have to wait.
It made us curious how much is being invested in the lady pros and the dollar amounts vary widely.
Time for some basics.
We’ll start in general.
According to the team at work.chron.com, “The average annual income for a professional wrestler was $51,537 as of 2021, according to the job site Simply Hired. Self-reported salaries generally ranged somewhere between $23,237 and $114,301 per year. These wrestlers get paid per match, and earn higher incomes the more they wrestle.”
That doesn’t sound bad if you greatly love to wrestle but we do understand why some struggle to make a living if they don’t get hired a lot.
Forbes Magazine breaks it down a little more stating, “WWE says that the average wrestler on the main roster makes $500,000 per year, while top performers make well into the seven figures. Performers are entitled to a share of gate receipts for house shows.”
The further we explored that subject, the more complex it appeared to become and if a wrestler gets injured and can’t perform for weeks to numerous months, many contracts stipulate a steep decline in revenue.
In terms of Indie Wrestlers, the informative source ehow.co.uk posted, “Independent (indie) wrestlers throw their bodies around and risk life and limb on a nightly basis — sometimes for a small pittance and possibly even at a loss. Most independent wrestlers hope to land a contract with a mainstream federation.”
Makes sense.
You have to pay for food, travel and hotel expenses on your own.
It is all in how much you are willing to invest.
The female grappling and MMA industry have their own investment, payment process as well.
We viewed what totalsportal.com shared and they reported, “PPV fights are the best source of revenue for the organizers. The championship winners and the challengers take a PPV share of 50% per fight. As Julianna Pena and Valentina Shevchenko holds the championship, they are highest paid fighters in the list.”
The top fighters like Julianna Pena, Amanda Nunes, Rose Namajunas and Valentina Shevchenko earned $500,000 per fight in 2023.
As you might guess, as you look at the smaller female MMA organizations, the money female grapplers and fighters get paid, drops.
As shared by mmafighting.com, “Newly crowned Invicta FC bantamweight champion Yana Kunitskaya cashed $10,000 for her title-winning performance over Raquel Pa’aluhi in Lemoore, Calif. on Thursday night, according to finalized salary figures released by the California State Athletic Commission to MMA Fighting in the aftermath of the event.”
Huge difference.
The losing fighter received $5,000.
Now, it is easy to understand why contracts, instead of pay per fight purses, are so important.
The emerging PFL landed a large contract with ESPN and their format for how they will pay their fighters could change.
On January 25, 2022, as posted by sporttechie.com, “The Professional Fighters League has reached a multi-year contract extension with ESPN to expand media rights for the network. The new deal, which will include broadcasting on ESPN linear networks and ESPN+, will last through the end of 2023. The PFL signed its last deal with ESPN in 2019.”
The overall deal is worth over $1.5 billion dollars.
Kayla was the PFL’s highest paid female star but now, even that could change.
According to mmafighting.com, “It’s not their business model anymore. Why pay Harrison $1 million a fight when they can sign someone off the Contender Series to a $10K and $10K contract? ESPN pays them the same lump sum for events, so that’s just burning $980K instead of keeping that revenue.”
Intriguing.
By comparison, given the staggering contracts that the National Football League is paying to quarterbacks, with questionable results at best, in terms of investing, we wonder what were they thinking?
As an example, on October 6, 2022, the longtime major sports information source sportingnews.com detailed, “At the beginning of September, Wilson and the Broncos agreed to a five-year contract extension worth $245 million.”
Given the disaster that the Broncos now find themselves in, concluding the 2022-2023 season with a disappointing 5-12 record, that investment is looking like an anvil that will keep the Broncos at the bottom of the division for years to come.
Then there is the Kyler Murray deal.
As educated by nfl.com, “Murray officially signed his $230.5 million extension.”
The Arizona Cardinals finished the season at 4-13, then fired their coach.
Kyler Murray is still there, most likely for years to come.
One of the worst aspects to this is the Cardinals are appearing on the NFL’s version of reality TV, Hard Knocks, where the public gets to watch them implode on a week to week basics.
Please don’t get us started with the disasters that have occurred in college football with coaches getting massive million dollar contracts, for years, and then are experiencing losing records in the present.
With the movement in the transfer portal, it could get much worse. Who you recruited today could be gone tomorrow to a higher bidder.
By comparison, the female submission wrestling industry can be a good investment.
Or at least, not as bad.
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OPENING PHOTO , Taya-Ovod-Shutterstock-Editorial-use- fciwomenswrestling.com femcompetititor.com grapplingstars.com
https://work.chron.com/much-money-professional-wrestler-usually-make-year-24583.html
https://www.ehow.co.uk/info_8716602_much-do-independent-wrestlers-paid.html
https://www.totalsportal.com/money/highest-paid-women-ufc-fighters/
https://www.nfl.com/news/cardinals-remove-independent-study-clause-from-kyler-murray-s-contract
https://fciwomenswrestling.com/
