UFC Antitrust Lawsuit: Will Class Action Status Be Granted?

By Paul Gift, Forbes

“Forthcoming”

With one word, the antitrust lawsuit filed against the UFC by now-former fighters snapped back into reality after an eight-month hiatus as Judge Richard Boulware of the U.S. District Court in Las Vegas closes in on a decision on whether the case should be certified as a class action.

Boulware’s tease of a forthcoming decision came as he issued a ruling on a few miscellaneous motions, granting motions to seal and declining to reinstate a portion of the previously stricken testimony of former UFC matchmaker Joe Silva. 

While it might be tempting to think the UFC’s back is against the proverbial cage as the world’s largest MMA promoter with fighter compensation calculated at 19.5% of event revenues, antitrust cases are not easy to win. You don’t go into court and say the UFC is big, it pays its fighters a lower share of event revenues than similar metrics in the Big Four sports, therefore it’s guilty of “being a monopoly.” That’s not how antitrust cases work.

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