A UFC antitrust love letter to Dana White & Lawrence Epstein

You're doing a magnificent job of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. I'm proud of you.

Dear Dana & Ike,

Thank you for providing all of the content and material I need to write an extra year’s worth of columns.

We’ve been having to work extra hard to generate reader interest because your UFC matchmaking is an abomination, but your incompetence and arrogance is an inspiration on both a personal and professional level.

Sure, you have hundreds of millions of dollars at your disposal.

Yachts. European vacations. Women. Sword collections. Sponsors. Card tables at the casino. Champagne wishes and caviar dreams. You have it all.

UFC ownership, past and present, has made billions of dollars off the backs of fighters while paying a sub-20% revenue rate. Having banks, investors, and private equity lavishing you with billions of dollars via corporate debt is truly the American Dream.

And yet you are entirely determined to throw it all away. It’s quite a compelling story and I’m here for the ride.

You never quite planned for a scenario in which someone would hold you accountable for the collateral damage on the way to building your empire. You couldn’t imagine in your wildest dreams that there would be someone you couldn’t make a deal with to erase your troubles.

Now you have five very interesting months before you have to have to decide your fate in a Las Vegas Federal court room.

You thought you were in control of the process. Now you lack any control over many of the variables that could determine the fate of your company and how much more cash you can extract from UFC before you hit the exits.

Let me personally thank you for the many ways in which you’ve managed to screw up an antitrust legal case that you have assured your rich and powerful benefactors would never get in front of a jury.

Misreading the room

Your entire antitrust legal strategy appears to have been based around a hard-and-fast $335 million dollar proposed settlement that you would have structured over three separate pay periods. No permanent injunctive relief on contracts, either.

What judge could say no to that?

A judge that believes you are in violation of antitrust laws. His name is Richard Boulware.

Since granting class certification to 1,200+ fighters in the antitrust litigation, Judge Boulware has expressed great skepticism about your business practices. No coded language, either.

He’s flat out insinuated in court hearings that you are likely violating the legal rights of fighters and distorting the marketplace for competition.

Normally, defendants in such a court case would take notice of what the judge was saying and cut a respectable-enough deal for everyone to save face. That’s not what you had in mind, however.

You’ve telegraphed every move in this antitrust litigation. Even outsiders have a good read on your strategy.

Team UFC had one play: offer a decent enough settlement but not a penny more.

If the Judge says no, too bad — we’ll win at trial and fighters will get $0.

And if we lose at trial, we’ll still win on appeal and scare everyone away.

At no point since class certification have you publicly elaborated on a scenario in which you could lose. Can we really call this due diligence?

I’ve bet you had some really interesting phone calls with your real boss — Ari Emanuel — since screwing up your settlement strategy.

Your strategy is putting his free cash flow cow at risk. Why? Because you didn’t propose a good enough settlement.

Then you decided in your infinite wisdom to publish your own documentary called Fight Inc. on Roku, which flaunted the excesses of UFC management’s lifestyle.

Your business, legal, and financial practices are still as exploitative and manipulative as ever and you decided it was a brilliant idea to put it on film before Judge Boulware ruled on any proposed settlement.

It’s as if you feel you feel invincible. You’ve never done anything wrong.

‘Who are you looking at, us?’

Your office has made several statements in interviews over the last four months that have added fuel to the fire. You’re going to make awesome witnesses on the stand, aren’t you?

Wait until you make a statement one day and then get asked the same question in court the next day after e-mails and videos are entered into evidence at trial. Can you keep your answers straight?

You’ve done a magnificent job of convincing institutional investors that there is little risk to negative exposure from an antitrust trial.

This sentiment goes against every trend right now by both judges and juries in courtrooms across America to throw the book at big corporations in antitrust.

You just happen to think that you’ll get the same lucky outcome as the NFL did in the Sunday Ticket case.

You always get your way. You always bully the opposition into submission. You’re tougher, smarter, and better-financed. No one else can do what you do.

The plaintiffs will have to waive the white flag at some point, right? They’ve haven’t gotten paid in a decade. Time is on your side.

Or is it?

The courts are ready to confront SCOTUS on antitrust

At the August 19th status conference hearing with Judge Boulware, he set a hard deadline for trial — February 3rd. Super Bowl week.

A lot of eyes will be in Las Vegas. Perhaps some media types will be in town who could cover the beginning of your antitrust trial? You never know who might show up.

You have five months to figure out how to prepare for a trial. You have a much shorter time frame to figure out a new settlement. I’ll address your genius on that later on in this love letter.

Right now, you’re facing a tsunami of trial decisions and case law that is going against you on antitrust — especially in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and various state courts on the West Coast (like the California Supreme Court).

Ever since the Supreme Court’s 2019 Schein vs. Archer & White Sales decision to bolster the supremacy of the Federal Arbitration Act, big business has been jumping for joy.

It didn’t take Endeavor very long to start rolling over fighter contracts into new deals with arbitration clauses and class action waivers. Contracts that Judge Boulware sees as adhesive and one-sided in nature, I might add.

In their infinite wisdom, SCOTUS didn’t realize how bad the public backlash was going to be regarding arbitration. The public is getting sick of these types of contractual clauses real fast.

Buy a new appliance lately? Once you cut open the cardboard box for your new purchase, have you automatically waived your right to a jury trial for buying a lemon that doesn’t work?

Hey, it’s only cage fighting, so who would care about a bunch of dumb fighters waiving their legal rights to punch each other in the face?

Let me introduce you to two recent court cases that might give you some heartburn.

Last month, the California Supreme Court (Angelica Ramirez vs. Charter Communications) decided to address the issue of severability in contracts that contain arbitration clauses. Did you read this?

Defendant was sued by a former employee and unsuccessfully moved to compel arbitration. The trial court and the Court of Appeal concluded the arbitration agreement contained unconscionable provisions and declined to enforce it. We too conclude that certain provisions are substantively unconscionable. The next question revolves around remedy. Should the courts have refused to enforce the agreement, or could they have severed the unconscionable provisions and enforced the rest?

Last week, the Ninth Circuit (Ronderos vs. USF Reddaway) ruled on whether or not a corporation can compel arbitration based on the grounds of unconscionability both procedurally and substantively in a contract. The Court said arbitration shouldn’t be compelled and that severability doesn’t apply to salvaging the rest of the agreement.

You can be assured that your friends at SCOTUS will likely take this case on certiorari. I’m sure you believe SCOTUS will write an opinion in response like this:

Dissenting, Judge Bennett would hold that the district court abused its discretion because it misapplied California law in declining to sever the collateral provisions from an arbitration agreement that includes a severability clause. It should have severed those provisions and granted Reddaway's motion to compel arbitration.

Judge Bennett wrote that both the majority and the district court decisions evince the type of "judicial hostility to arbitration" that led Congress to pass the Federal Arbitration Act ("FAA"). Viking River Cruises, Inc. v. Moriana, 596 U.S. 639, 649 (2022). Judge Bennett also wrote that both decisions are directly contrary to "the FAA's edict against singling out [arbitration] contracts for disfavored treatment." Kindred Nursing Ctrs. Ltd. P'ship v. Clark, 581 U.S. 246, 252 (2017).

But, hey, you are the UFC.

‘Our deals are under Nevada law. We’re not guilty of Federal antitrust violations. And, besides… the Ninth Circuit is a punchline to SCOTUS, just waiting to get overturned (again).’

Are you really sure that pinning your hopes on a bunch of individuals in black robes is going to save you if a jury says you’re liable for antitrust violations? Seems like a risky strategy to me. I wouldn’t be so confident with my friends on Wall Street.

You’ve made some bad political miscalculations

It feels as if much of your legal strategy in 2024 has been based on a political strategy. Your boss happens to be a political kingpin in American politics. Democratic Party royalty.

You’ve helped promote Donald Trump at UFC events. Obviously, you want Trump back in the White House, right?

So, why did your boss decide to remove a weakened Joe Biden and help the Party swap him out with Kamala Harris? If the point was to help propel Trump back into power, why take out Biden?

Why did your boss help encourage turning off the financial spigot to President Biden’s co-chair, Jeffrey Katzenberg? Why did your boss, along with Reid Hoffman and Nancy Pelosi, make the switch to VP Kamala Harris?

Because Mr. Hoffman let the cat out of the bag when he said that he wanted Lina Khan out at the FTC. Jonathan Kanter, working antitrust at DOJ, is not a favorite of big corporations either.

What was the whole point of your boss removing Joe Biden? Playing both sides against the middle and guaranteeing the exit of Messrs. Khan and Kanter by inserting VP Harris into the mix?

How is that gamble looking to you right now after the recent Democrat National Convention in Chicago?

If there’s anyone who knows the risks involved in Convention season, it’s you Dana. The 2024 RNC in Milwaukee was supposed to be an audition of sorts for you.

A chance for you to show your chops to the world that, hey, maybe this guy right here could become the next Governor of Nevada. Maybe some sort of political position under Trump as an exit strategy from UFC.

Unfortunately for you, your speech at the RNC was a dud. And you got out-shined by Hulk Hogan. Whatcha going to do, brother?

Dana White, 2024 politician, hasn’t played out the way you thought it would. Your appearances on Hannity for Bud Light and Power Slap have backfired terribly.

Your boss took a hundred million from Bud Light. Then you lectured Hannity’s audience that they should forgive Anheuser-Busch and go back to drinking Bud Light. It’s obvious that no one is doing that. Your Power Slap shtick is also a road to nowhere.

Now, with Trump’s prospects of winning not as strong vs. Kamala Harris as they were vs. Joe Biden, you’re suddenly back-tracking on Trump-a-mania.

As you recently told Ben Fowlkes of Yahoo! Sports, suddenly you’re a man of the right, the left, and independents.

Whatever political stripe you say you are catering to, there’s one audience I know right now that feels really burned by you.

You’ve burned your Las Vegas customers

If I was trying to piss off a local jury pool for a Federal antitrust trial, how would I have behaved any differently than UFC has in 2024?

You were supposed to deliver Conor McGregor vs. Michael Chandler at UFC 303 in Las Vegas and you didn’t. Whether it was in your control or out of your hands, you didn’t deliver a fight worth $20 million dollars at the gate.

You embarked on a journey that was supposed to be the Show of all Shows. UFC at The Sphere for UFC 306. This was going to be the equivalent of PRIDE’s version of Otoko Matsuri at Saitama Super Arena or K-1 with 70,000+ people at the National Stadium in Tokyo.

Instead, The Sphere is quickly becoming your Waterloo. A spending spree of all spending sprees.

So much so that your bosses had to obtain “sponsorship” from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. A Riyadh Season event on 9/11 week supposedly in the name of Mexican Independence Day running head-to-head against Canelo Alvarez.

Ticket sales for The Sphere event are priced out of everyone’s range and Sean O’Malley can’t figure out why you won’t promote his fight hard enough.

Diplomacy!

Between a canceled Conor fight, The Sphere, and your glut of APEX events, it’s not been the most enrapturing of seasons for Vegas UFC fans. The company town isn’t feeling it so much right now. Or, as Kamala HQ would say, where’s The Joy?

In political parlance, your favorables are sinking. All you can do now is tank your enemy’s favorables and make them lower than yours. But you got a big problem with that strategy.

You’re running out of time

Five months. You have five months before you head to trial in Las Vegas for the antitrust case.

If you want to settle the case, you will likely have to reach a settlement before Thanksgiving to gain Judge Boulware’s preliminary approval.

With all of the politicking from your boss, Ari Emanuel, you are now at the mercy of the 2024 Election Results. If Trump wins, you likely say screw a settlement. Let’s go to trial. If Kamala wins? Your motivations to settle will grow quickly.

How long will it be before we know the results of the Election? By the time the dust is settled, the timeline to enter into a settlement agreement may be too late. Judge Boulware has hundreds of cases on his schedule.

Do you rush into a new settlement with the hopes of evading Federal oversight under a Kamala Harris administration?

The last few months have seen Judge Boulware beat down plaintiff’s attorney Eric Cramer in court. Now there’s light at the end of the tunnel for Mr. Cramer and the plaintiffs.

The calendar is a major factor in mounting a defense for UFC. Your boss, Mr. Emanuel, will naturally have the instinct to go on the attack. It’s what he knows and what he does best. The problem is that his impulsiveness — and your impulsiveness — will work against you.

For the longest time, Team UFC has been able to benefit from their enemies engaging in their own various civil wars. Now you face the same dilemma.

How do we launch a strong negative campaign against the plaintiffs and Judge Boulware to poison the jury pool and create conditions for jury nullification?

You floated one of the most humorous attempts at a political attack by launching the Bishop Gorman High School conspiracy theory.

Your claim that Judge Boulware had some sort of lifelong personal vendetta against you because he went to the same high school as you landed as flat with the public as a dummy version of a Scud missile.

Mysteriously, your side didn’t raise the Bishop Gorman conspiracy to Judge Boulware at the August 19th court hearing. Why didn’t your lawyers didn’t file any legal motions asking for recusal?

With the clock ticking, you have to make a critical decision on launching the negative campaign. How and when do you give Judge Boulware — directly or through intermediaries — the sandpaper treatment and rough up his image? It’s Election Season and people are already sick of political ads.

By the time the US Presidential Election happens, we’ll be head-first into NFL and holiday season. By the start of the trial, it’s Super Bowl week. If you’re going to start a flame war against your enemies to poison the jury pool, you have to start right now.

What will you do?

If you launch a negative campaign against Judge Boulware, then you’re attacking a man who has great sway over the jury selection process. You would be attacking a man who can control the speed and tenor of testimony at trial. You would also be attacking a man who will have great influence over jury instructions and post-trial motions.

Judge Boulware is going to be in the legal position of Big John McCarthy at trial.

Meanwhile, your lead counsel in the case — Mr. Chris Yates — is facing one hell of a time crunch. He supposedly has a big court case in New York in January. By the time this New York court case is finished, Mr. Yates and his team will be under the gun. The turnaround time for Mr. Yates to work your UFC antitrust case is going to be brutal.

No one is going to be playing the violin for you or the expensive white shoe law firms that your boss has hired to handle this UFC antitrust trial.

The pre-trial process has been exceptionally loud and noisy for those involved on both sides. You’ve managed to control the narrative beautifully in the mass media because so many people are either scared of Endeavor’s power or are too stupid and lazy to do their jobs and actually cover the biggest trial in the history of combat sports.

Are you ready to take the stand and get grilled at trial? Do you even understand what your affirmative defenses are? What kind of story are you going to tell the jurors?

Do you even have a strategy that looks remotely different than the ineffective campaign you’ve launched over the years in the press?

You can’t defend your case on the merits

Lost in all of the public discussion about the UFC antitrust case is one major factor:

You haven’t mounted much of a defense against the case on the merits.

It’s been difficult for you to figure out how to attack the retired fighters in the Cung Le class and the mixed active/retired fighters group in the Kajan Johnson class.

How do you defend against the fact that UFC ownership has extracted billions of dollars in self-serving payments in the form of corporate loans from big banks?

How can you defend your UFC rankings system that has artificially controlled matchmaking? Or the champion’s clause that has directly impacted booking of title fights?

I sure don’t hear you barking any more about delivering the fights that others can’t in prize fighting. The quality of UFC fights has gone downhill as your ownership has paid itself bigger salaries and bonuses.

You argue that you’ve supposedly paid fighters more money each year you’ve been owners of UFC. Yet, you can’t argue that you’ve paid fighters a higher percentage of the revenues in a market you control. In front of a jury, you will struggle to explain about keeping fighter pay at a certain percentage level — under 20% — in order to maintain UFC’s status as a cash flow cow and asset that was rich enough to bail out Ari Emanuel and Endeavor during COVID.

What are you going to say about the infamous World Fucking Domination summit in 2013?

How will it look to a jury when they see you holding a picture of a tombstone of dead promotions in your office?

How will that e-mail from attorneys on the purchase of PRIDE look?

And wait until a jury gets to directly see your own words about fighters and managers in various internal e-mails.

What are you left with as a vigorous defense? Glazing over the eyes of jurors with economic regression models?

“I’ve made people millionaires!”

That's not good enough. Yes, it might be good enough as a prevent defense strategy to stop a unanimous decision from a jury. You only need one juror to say that UFC is not liable, but you're swimming against the current tide of judges and jurors in American courtrooms.

But your monopoly is for the public good. You’ve given the fans what they’ve wanted, right?

So much of the UFC’s marketing pitch has been to convince fans that your one-size-fits-all business model delivered the fights that no one could get, especially in boxing.

Can you still argue that in 2024? The bigger UFC has gotten, the worse the quality of matchmaking has gotten. Of course, you’ll argue that it’s a subjective metric. Look at the big gates. Look at our government contracts. We have insatiable demand.

Maybe you’ll gain some headway with that process argument. Substantively, you know deep down that the product you’re offering sucks compared to what UFC represented in the past.

Your matchmaking stinks like a skunk and your rankings system is even smellier.

Not only have you diluted the legal rights of fighters, but you have also managed to distort the market and dilute the quality of the produce that fans purchase.

That is, of course, if you consider fans to be your primary customers (which you don’t).

A lot of key decisions have to be made very quickly on your side of the aisle. One mistake and you could find yourself losing home-court advantage.

With all due respect…

Your office needs an intervention very quickly.

What made you successful in the past has created conditions that currently cause you to misjudge the public mood.

Your office lacks the discipline to mount a united defense against the biggest threat to your business model.

You could bully Tito Ortiz on reality TV with boxing. You could muddy Frank Shamrock’s reputation. The same with Randy Couture. You could win a PR battle with Rampage Jackson.

Those tactics aren’t going to work in a Federal courtroom in 2025.

I’m sure that you think you’ve done nothing wrong. You’re UFC. No one else can do what you do. Our entertainment competition is the Raiders, the Aces, the Super Bowl, and March Madness.

‘Our matchmaking is great. Look at all the fight charts on our walls!’

And you have no idea how you currently sound to the public.

Your obsession with living a “grind house” environment has created a permanent echo chamber that resonates with less of the public each day. Your boss has been more focused on turning UFC into a government contractor and a political shop.

Lost in the plot is that you need UFC to validate both your personal and professional life. You’ve treated the plaintiffs and the class of fighters that they represent with such a lack of regard that it really feels like a managerial race to the bottom. It’s what you know how to do.

You’ve never tasted a major legal defeat in your entire life. You’ve won every battle. You think the same thing is going to happen in 2025 with this Federal antitrust case.

Every day you don’t settle this antitrust case, the price tag to settle it increases.

It would be a lot easier for you to pay $500+ million right now to settle the Cung Le case if it means keeping the gravy train going long enough to borrow a few extra billion dollars from big banks to pay yourself lavishly in the future. Jay Powell’s getting ready to lower those interest rates just in time, too.

But what do I know?

You couldn’t have done a better job at lowering your odds of fending off this UFC antitrust case if you had intentionally tried to do so. It warms my cold and hardened heart.

Zach Arnold is a lead opinion writer for The MMA Draw on Substack. His archives can be read at FightOpinion.com.