New documents reveal UFC event fees collected by NSAC from past 7 years

This article is cross-posted from Trent Reinsmith’s Substack newsletter, C’mon Now. Subscribe to read more!

State Athletic Commissions and UFC event fees

Recently the topic of “taxes” for MMA events arose. One reason this came up was because the California State Athletic Commission recently discussed increasing the cap on fees that it would collect on events it oversees from $100,000 to $200,000 per event. The cap limit increase would not change the percentage the CSAC collects from these events, such as MMA and boxing. That percentage would remain at five percent per event.

During the meeting, CSAC executive director Andy Foster pointed out that California’s five percent limit remains lower than Nevada’s uncapped eight percent. Other states that do not have caps on the amount they take from the gate include Texas and New York.

According to NRS 467.107, which pertains to the Nevada State Athletic Commission, “In addition to the payment of any other fees and money due under this chapter, every promoter, except as otherwise provided in subsection 3, shall pay a license fee of 8 percent of the total gross receipts from admission fees, if any, to the live contest or exhibition of unarmed combat, exclusive of any federal tax or tax imposed by any political subdivision of this state, without any deductions for commissions, brokerage fees, distribution fees, advertising, contestants’ purses or any other expenses or charges.”

In the interest of finding out how much the NSAC has collected in fees from the UFC over the years, I requested the following from the NSAC via FOIA, “Requesting individual (by event) and total gate fees the UFC paid to the Nevada State Athletic Commission per NRS 467.107…” Nevada recently delivered that documentation to me, which I will publish in two posts. The first covers 2016 through June 2023 and is below.

UFC event fees by the numbers

According to NRS 467.107, the fees collected are for “administration of drug testing program; regulations; costs and fees.” Here are some screenshots of the collected fees:

This article is cross-posted from Trent Reinsmith’s Substack newsletter, C’mon Now. Subscribe to read more!

Trent Reinsmith

Trent Reinsmith is a freelance writer based out of Baltimore, MD. He has been covering sports for more than 15 years, with a focus on MMA for most of that time. Trent focuses on the day-to-day business of MMA — both inside and outside the cage — for Bloody Elbow.

More from the author