How Do Champions Get Paid Differently?
For most of the promotion's recent history, champions and select top challengers earned additional income through PPV points, typically $1 to $3 per pay-per-view buy once a card crossed a sales threshold. On a well-selling event, that could triple a champion's base purse, but the arrangement only applied to a small number of fighters at the top of the card.
That changed with the shift to Paramount as UFC's broadcast partner, which began with UFC 324 in January 2026. Under the new structure, champions have moved toward guaranteed purses in the $2 million to $4 million range, replacing the old PPV points model with a fixed number that does not depend on buy-rate performance.
