MMA Fighters Get Green Light for Multibillion-Dollar Lawsuit
Judge Says He’ll Certify Fighters’ Class-Action Against UFC
(Bloomberg) -- A federal judge said he’ll approve class-action status for about 1,200 mixed martial artists in a multibillion-dollar lawsuit accusing the Ultimate Fighting Championship of abusing monopoly power.
The lawsuit, filed six years ago by former UFC fighters, claims that the promotion company’s parent “engaged in an illegal scheme to eliminate competition” that allows it to pay fighters “a fraction of what they would earn in a competitive marketplace.”
U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware in Las Vegas said during a virtual hearing Thursday that he expects to issue an order certifying the class-action on Monday.
The case is one of the most significant efforts in recent decades to deploy century-old antitrust law to attack “monopsony” power, the leverage companies can wield by cutting off workers’ ability to find work elsewhere.
But it may still take years to resolve, unless there’s a settlement.
“I am assuming, given the amount that both sides have invested in this case and the size of it, that whoever doesn’t prevail would seek to take this case all the way to the Supreme Court,” Boulware said at a hearing last year.
If the plaintiffs succeed, experts estimated total damages may be in the range of $2.5 billion to $5 billion.
“Now that the bout class has been certified, we look forward to vindicating the rights of the many hundreds of MMA fighter class members in this important case for the sport of mixed martial arts,” the plaintiffs’ attorney Eric Cramer said in an emailed statement.
A UFC spokesman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
The media company Endeavor and private equity firms Silver Lake Partners LP and KKR & Co. bought UFC’s parent company, Zuffa, for $4 billion in 2016.
The plaintiffs claim that UFC has created a vicious cycle by hounding rivals to sell their companies, and fighters to indefinitely sign away their right to work elsewhere: Other companies can’t recruit the workers they would need to credibly compete, and fighters lack leverage because they have no viable alternative place to work.
The company has denied the allegations and derided the lawsuit as baseless and dangerous. Earlier this year, its attorney called the case “a threat to all companies’ ability to grow and succeed.”
In court filings, the company has argued that its spending and savvy are what made mixed martial arts fighting a viable profession in the first place, attracting competition, not suppressing it.
Companies that take risks as UFC did “should be encouraged, not villainized,” Zuffa’s lawyer William Isaacson said. Zuffa has said it has plenty of competitors, and attracts fighters by offering them superior pay and opportunities.
The case is Le v. Zuffa, 15-cv-01045, U.S. District Court, District of Nevada (Las Vegas).
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.