Cohen Milstein’s nationally recognized antitrust practice group recently secured a $375 million antitrust settlement benefiting more than a thousand mixed martial arts fighters who had accused promoter Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) of unlawfully achieving market dominance that locked them into unfair, low-paying contracts.
U.S. District Judge Richard F. Boulware granted final approval to the deal on February 6, 2025, six months after saying he wanted a deal that would return “life changing” money to the Plaintiffs. Litigated over more than a decade, the antitrust class action showcases Cohen Milstein’s ability to achieve justice for its clients by outmaneuvering and outlasting deep-pocketed corporate defendants.
The settlement in Le, et al. v. Zuffa LLC (dba UFC), et al., 15-cv[1]01045-RFB-BNW (D. Nev.), covers more than 1,100 fighters who competed in UFC-promoted MMA bouts taking place or broadcast in the United States from December 16, 2010 to June 30, 2017.
Comparing their victory to “the end of a very, very long fight count,” Nate Quarry, one of the six original Le plaintiffs, told an interviewer that he and other plaintiffs broke into applause when the judge announced his approval. “Knowing that we get to split hundreds of millions of dollars between over eleven hundred fighters, that is an amazing feeling,” he said.
Under the settlement, Plaintiffs’ attorneys said 35 fighters should receive more than $1 million, about 100 fighters will get more than $500,000, and most of the remaining fighters in the class will be allocated amounts of between approximately $50,000 and $250,000. According to the Plan of Allocation, the minimum individual recovery is $15,000.
Fighters who have participated in UFC bouts since July 1, 2017 continue to litigate a second antitrust class action, Kajan Johnson, et al. v. Zuffa, LLC, which was filed in 2021 by Cohen Milstein and its fellow co-lead counsel.
Quarry, who has been vocal about the physical and financial toll caused by his championship MMA fighting career, said he and other Plaintiffs will continue the legal fight until the rules are changed for current and future MMA fighters. “… [O]ur goal from the very beginning was to hopefully get some monetary relief for the fighters that had been just horribly shortchanged. But then also we wanted to change the sport,” he said.
In certifying the Le class in 2023, Judge Boulware said plaintiffs had established that UFC parent company Zuffa had “willfully engaged in anticompetitive conduct to maintain or increase their market power.”
“Due to this anticompetitive, coercive conduct, fighters were trapped by Zuffa’s exclusionary contracts and their restrictive terms, creating a situation in which Zuffa had unfettered power and opportunity to suppress fighters’ compensation,” the judge wrote..
Dating from at least 2010, Plaintiffs alleged that UFC’s anticompetitive behavior allowed it to retain more than 80% of all revenue generated by MMA events in the U.S., while paying UFC fighters a fraction of what they would earn in a competitive marketplace. That percentage remained unchanged despite the explosive growth of Zuffa, which promoter Dana White and brothers Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta purchased for $2 million in 2001 and sold 15 years later for roughly $4 billion.
According to Judge Boulware, Plaintiffs established that UFC achieved its market power through anticompetitive means like buying and shutting down rival companies and “locking up” fighters into unfavorable and exclusionary three- or four-bout contracts. Fighters had no ability to negotiate terms, since UFC was effectively their only potential employer. And while UFC could drop fighters without explanation, the contracts barred the fighters from going elsewhere.
Moreover, UFC strong-armed fighters into signing new contracts before the old ones expired through its power to match them with unfavorable opponents in their remaining bouts, making the contracts “effectively perpetual,” the judge said.
As Nate Quarry put it in a 2024 interview: “They just get blacklisted, they get cut. They get put on the undercard. They are given opponents that aren’t going to be a good match up for them … The UFC is very vindictive. You’re either with the company or you’re against it.”
The UFC reached a new settlement in one of its antitrust lawsuits Thursday and hopes a judge will green-light it.
TKO Group — the UFC’s parent company — reached an agreement with the plaintiffs of Le v. Zuffa that will pay $375 million in the class action lawsuit in which former fighters allege the MMA promotion violated antitrust laws.
This amount exceeds the proposed $335 million settlement that Judge Richard Franklin Boulware II of the U.S. District Court of Nevada rejected in July.
Following the filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the UFC released a statement about the settlement in the Cung Le case. However, a second antitrust lawsuit led by former UFC fighter Kajan Johnson was not mentioned in the disclosure.
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The antitrust lawsuit dates to 2014, when Zuffa was accused of violating antitrust laws by paying UFC fighters less than they were entitled to and hurting other MMA promoters with those practices. The lawsuit also alleges that the UFC has gained an unfair advantage in the mixed martial arts industry through years of anticompetitive tactics and engaged “in a scheme to acquire and maintain monopsony power in the market for elite professional MMA fighter services.”
A Nevada federal court refused Thursday to let Ultimate Fighting Championship avoid a slated April trial on claims alleging the company suppressed fighter wages by up to $1.6 billion, and also refused to exclude crucial expert opinions from the case.
The order from U.S. District Judge Richard F. Boulware II denied a summary judgment motion from UFC’s parent company Zuffa LLC and also struck bids to exclude two of the fighters’ experts.
The order said the court already considered UFC’s arguments, for both the summary judgment and exclusion bids, when it certified a class of fighters in the case last year, and said the same reasons for certifying the class apply to the other motions.
“Moreover, and importantly, the standard at certification — preponderance — is, in antitrust cases like this one, more exacting than the standard at summary judgment which requires only a genuine issue of disputed fact,” Thursday’s order said. “This is especially the case here where a district court must (and did) weigh and resolve fundamental disputes between the parties’ experts.”
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The fighters are represented by Eric L. Cramer, Michael Dell’Angelo, Patrick F. Madden, Najah Jacobs, Joshua P. Davis and Julie Pollock of Berger Montague, Joseph R. Saveri, Kevin E. Rayhill, Christopher K.L. Young and Itak Moradi of Joseph Saveri Law Firm LLP, Benjamin D. Brown, Richard A. Koffman and Daniel H. Silverman of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Don Springmeyer of Kemp Jones LLP, Robert C. Maysey and Jerome K. Elwell of Warner Angle Hallam Jackson & Formanek PLC, Crane Pomerantz of Clark Hill PLC, William G. Caldes of Spector Roseman & Kodroff PC, John D. Radice of Radice Law Firm PC and Frederick S. Schwartz.
- Antitrust lawsuit seeks up to $1.6 billion in damages
- Class consists of more than 1,200 current and former UFC fighters
A U.S. judge in Nevada on Wednesday said a group of martial arts fighters suing the Ultimate Fighting Championship for alleged suppression of their wages can move forward as a class action seeking damages estimated at between $811 million and $1.6 billion.
U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware’s decision grants class-action status to more than 1,200 fighters who competed in live professional UFC-promoted mixed martial arts bouts in the U.S. between December 2010 and June 2017.
The plaintiffs contend Nevada-based Zuffa, which does business as the UFC, abused its market power to acquire or block rival promoters and used exclusive contracts to keep fighters within the UFC. The plaintiffs alleged the UFC suppressed fighters’ bout compensation.
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For the class: Eric Cramer of Berger Montague; Benjamin Brown of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll; and Joseph Saveri of Joseph Saveri Law Firm
Read Martial Arts Fighters’ Wage Lawsuit Against UFC Can Proceed as Class Action.
A Nevada federal judge gave Ultimate Fighting Championship fighters a crucial, long-awaited win Wednesday with the certification of one of two proposed classes in an antitrust suit alleging the organization repressed wages by up to $1.6 billion through coercive, exclusive contracts and the purchase of rival promoters.
U.S. District Judge Richard F. Boulware II certified a class of fighters who competed in at least one professional UFC mixed martial arts bout in the U.S. between December 2010 and June 2017, and he refused to certify a class of fighters whose identities were used in licensed merchandise or promotional materials.
Judge Boulware’s 80-page ruling came down to crediting the statistical model created by the plaintiff fighters’ expert economist, Hal J. Singer, while rejecting arguments from UFC parent company Zuffa LLC as the judge weighs allegations the organization has an illegal monopsony on the buyer-side market of purchasing fighter services.
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The fighters are represented by Eric L. Cramer, Michael Dell’Angelo, Patrick F. Madden, Joshua P. Davis and Mark R. Suter of Berger Montague, Joseph R. Saveri, Jiamin S. Chen and Kevin E. Rayhill of Joseph Saveri Law Firm LLP, Benjamin D. Brown, Richard A. Koffman and Daniel H. Silverman of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Bradley S. Schrager of Wolf Rifkin Shapiro Schulman & Rabkin LLP, Robert C. Maysey and Jerome K. Elwell of Warner Angle Hallam Jackson & Formanek PLC, William G. Caldes of Spector Roseman Kodroff & Willis PC, John D. Radice of Radice Law Firm PC and Frederick S. Schwartz of The Law Office of Frederick S. Schwartz.
Read UFC Fighters Get Class Cert In Wage-Suppression Suit.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Philadelphia, PA – June 24, 2021) – Kajan Johnson and C.B. Dollaway, two long-time veterans of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (“UFC”), filed a proposed class action antitrust lawsuit against Zuffa, LLC (d/b/a Ultimate Fighting Championship and UFC) and its parent company Endeavor Group Holdings, Inc.
The lawsuit is similar to the class action brought by Cung Le, Nathan Quarry, Jon Fitch, Brandon Vera, Luis Javier Vazquez, and Kyle Kingsbury against the UFC currently pending in federal district court in Nevada. See Cung Le, et al. v. Zuffa, LLC d/b/a Ultimate Fighting Championship and UFC, No. 2:15-cv-01045-RFB-BNW (D. Nev.) (“Le”). Like the Le action, the lawsuit filed by Johnson and Dollaway alleges that Zuffa violated antitrust laws by paying UFC fighters far less than they were entitled to receive and eliminating or hurting other MMA promoters. The class period ultimately proposed by the plaintiffs in the Le action closed on June 30, 2017. Plaintiffs Johnson and Dollaway bring this case on behalf of those like themselves who fought in a bout promoted by the UFC on or after July 1, 2017.
The fighters claim that Zuffa and Endeavor engaged in the following anticompetitive practices:
- locking fighters into long-term, exclusive contracts which, the fighters say, prevents them from competing elsewhere;
- using its market dominance to coerce fighters to re-sign contracts, allegedly making the contracts effectively perpetual and preventing fighters from reaching free agency; and
- acquiring and then closing down other MMA promoters that threatened the UFC’s dominance.
The fighters contend that by locking up the vast majority of top fighters in each weight class and buying out its biggest rivals, Zuffa’s scheme prevented potential competitors from obtaining the critical mass of top fighters necessary to compete with the UFC, rendering other promotions to the “minor leagues.” In MMA, athletes obtain fame by competing against ranked opponents, ascending the rankings, and vying for titles. The fighters argue that by acquiring all potential competitors and signing virtually all top Fighters to long-term exclusive contracts, Zuffa left the top Fighters and aspiring top Fighters with nowhere else to go to compete at the top level of the sport. Due to this lack of competition, according to the fighters, Zuffa pays UFC fighters significantly lower share of revenues than they otherwise would if the fighters had more options.
“Like Carlos Newton, Cung Le, Nathan Quarry and Jon Fitch before me, I am honored to bring this lawsuit not only on behalf of myself but all those fighters in the proposed bout class who are afraid to speak out against the injustice we have endured. I feel obligated to do my part to leave the sport better off for my students and all future mixed martial artists to come,” said Plaintiff Kajan Johnson.
“We train hard and risk our bodies to succeed in this sport. Every time we step into that Octagon, we leave a piece of ourselves behind. The UFC should have to pay us competitive compensation for our services, just like professional athletes in other sports get paid based on competitive markets,” said Plaintiff C.B. Dollaway.
In December 2020, Judge Richard F. Boulware, a U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Nevada, who is overseeing the Le action, indicated that the Court would be granting class certification to professional mixed martial artists who competed in bouts for the UFC. This ruling would allow the ground-breaking antitrust lawsuit to proceed as a class action. Specifically, the proposed class in the Le action would include:
“All persons who competed in one or more live professional UFC-promoted MMA bouts taking place or broadcast in the United States from December 16, 2010, to June 30, 2017.”
“By filing this action, we are bringing the proposed class period forward to also cover all fighters who competed in bouts between June 30, 2017 and the present,” said Eric L. Cramer, one of the lead counsel for the proposed class.
The case Kajan Johnson, et al. v. Zuffa, LLC, et al., No. 2:21-cv-01189 (D. Nev.) was filed in federal district court in Nevada. The law firms representing the fighters are Berger Montague PC, Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, The Joseph Saveri Law Firm, Inc., Kemp Jones LLP, and Warner Angle Hallam Jackson & Formanek PLC.
For more information about Johnson, et al. v. Zuffa LLC, et al., and Le, et al. v. Zuffa LLC, contact Richard Koffman at rkoffman@cohenmilstein.com.
Ultimate Fighting Championship has long dominated the world of mixed martial arts. But UFC’s effort to swallow up competitors has triggered a class action by fighters who claim it’s abusing its power. Now a key court victory threatens the organization’s very business model. Bloomberg’s Josh Eidelson investigates.
The antitrust class action discussed in this Bloomberg video is Cung Le, et al v. Zuffa, LLC, d/b/a Ultimate Fighting Championship and UFC, Case No. 2:15-cv-01045 (D. Nev.) Cohen Milstein is Co-Lead Counsel in this case.