In a stunning turn of events to kick off 2023, Jake Paul revealed that he would be making his transition from the ring to the cage and signing with the PFL.
The league follows a traditional sports format with a regular season and playoffs, but only this time, it’s MMA-style.
With Jake Paul’s signing, a new weight division is being introduced with the ex-celebrity boxer at the forefront of it all, as it will be dubbed the PFL “SuperFight” division and see bouts air exclusively on ESPN+ pay-per-view, similarly to how 2022’s edition of the PFL Finals were viewed behind a paywall.
In a YouTube video posted by Paul a week ago Thursday, he revealed that he and the fighters would earn a 50-50 split of the shared revenue percentage. How that will all play out remains to be seen. For retired fighter – turned analyst Chael Sonnen, the pay structure in Jake Paul’s new deal is questionable. The former UFC title challenger brought up the deal on one of his most recent Bad Guy Inc. episodes.
“Part of that press release was to tell the world that it was a 50% split with the fighters. I don’t know you’re gonna get your bang for your buck for that,” Sonnen said. “The PFL does seem like very decent people. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard someone complaining. But if you’re doing a pay-per-view business, and you’re splitting it 50/50 and you let the world know that, then that means that you at least believe from a PR perspective you’ve done something cool, and you want some credit for it.“
While all of it sounds good on the surface, there still remains a lot of questions about Jake Paul’s new deal, including how the split in shared revenue will be put into practice.
“Okay, what does it mean? What does it mean? ‘We’re going to do pay-per-view, and we’re going to keep fifty of the revenue, and give (the rest) to you?” Sonnen continued. “There’s, traditionally speaking, five fights on a pay-per-view card. That means 10 athletes. So do those 10 athletes evenly divide the 50%?”
Quotes transcribed by MMA News.
To Sonnen’s remarks, this is not the first time that an MMA organization has made an attempt to pay the fighters the most money for one card alone. Affliction did not even make it a calendar year, as it slowly faded away into obscurity after Josh Barnet’s drug scandal and a myriad of financial troubles caused the promotion to go under for good in 2009.
Will the PFL learn from Affliction’s mistakes or is this the beginning of a collapse of yet another MMA promotion? What do you think of Jake Paul’s new deal? Let us know your thoughts in the comments, Penn Nation!