It’s long been known that the UFC sponsorship tax moves on something of a sliding scale. Some companies really have to shell out to get their name on a fighter’s backside. Other, small brands, pay less. Now, it turns out, that some don’t pay at all. Enter Dynamic Fastener, an industrial/commercial tool and building material manufacturer that has been getting it’s name emblazoned across the hips of as many UFC fighters as possible. MMA Junkie sat down with the president and owner of Dynamic Fastener Kevin Perz.
“We’re a small company,” Perz said. “If they employed that tax on us, and I hear it’s a minimum of $50,000, we wouldn’t sponsor anyone. This isn’t anything – you know, it’s just kind of fun. It’s fun seeing our name on TV with the coolest sport on Earth, and hopefully enough of our customers see it that it pays for itself or comes close.”
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“If I were [the UFC], I’d ask, ‘Why do you guys do this?'” Perz said. “See if you can get other little companies like Dynamic Fastener involved in this, and in that way make the fighters more money. It’d be bad for us because then we’d be priced out in no time. But it would be good for the sport.”
A lot of Perz’s ethos seems to be directed at his own fan interests. The article mentions in passing that he gave Miesha Tate $6,500 for her fight against Ronda Rousey and was prepared to pony up another $10,000 if Tate had won. For a guy who has a big interest as a fan of the sport it’s easy to see sponsorship as a non-competitive, beneficiary position. Industrial tool manufacturing isn’t a target demographic. Therefor, there’s not a lot of reason to tax a company like that because other, similar companies aren’t breaking down the doors to make similar deals.
Inevitably it’s something of an interesting aside in the sponsorship debate. A display of the kinds of deals that may be possible for fighters at a pretty low cost to investors, but require the perfect conflation of circumstances to exist. It’s hard to imagine that there are a lot of companies interested in fighter sponsorships with very little focus on return investment. Of course it could be that this is the UFC’s “solution” that Dana White was talking about in response to recent fighter sponsor woes. Perhaps it won’t be long before we see the return of Condom Depot.
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