The one fight UFC should have never let go to the judges - Part 1

Dana White ignored his own advice. How will UFC fare in an antitrust trial in Vegas?

Artwork by Chris Rini

This is part one of a two-article series focusing on the prospects of what a jury trial would look like in the antitrust case filed by retired fighters against the UFC in Las Vegas Federal court. Part one will focus on the jury pool. Part two will focus on the substantive legal & historical issues raised by the trial attorneys.

How do you convince a jury to vote in your favor if it means admitting that what they love and support is flawed?

That’s the incredibly fascinating problem the attorneys representing retired fighters in their Sherman antitrust lawsuit against UFC are facing now that the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Zuffa LLC’s appeal last week.

It’s been a very long journey for Cung Le and the hundreds of fighters in the class action lawsuit filed against UFC in December of 2014. Almost nine years.

Under normal circumstances, an antitrust case like this would be ripe for settlement. The amount of time, money, and discovery involved would normally bankrupt clients. It takes millions of dollars in resources to bring a case like this to trial. The great irony for UFC is that if the parties involved in this case had reached this current stage of litigation in year three or four, settlement prospects would have been greater. But nine years later? After all the time and money that has been spent by the Plaintiffs and their legal counsel, settlement prospects have decreased.

It is still more probable than not that we will see some sort of legal settlement in this case. That alone will change the way future business is conducted in Mixed Martial Arts.

However monumental a settlement would be, the higher risk/reward scenario involves both parties going to trial.

How would both sides with high-powered law firms prepare for such a unique Federal court case involving a Las Vegas institution like UFC?

After reading recently unsealed documentary evidence from the Court, I decided to dive deeper into the massive challenges that both sides are facing in a trial scenario.

The Plaintiffs sued both for injunctive relief and damages under the Sherman antitrust act. Injunctive relief means a judge can determine future changes to an industry, such as the way fighter contracts are written. Duke Law has an excellent old-school article on this powerful tool.

Then there are the prospects of a jury determining damages.

The most unpredictable jury pool for an antitrust case

The Las Vegas jury pool that the attorneys will be selecting prospective jurors from makes this UFC antitrust lawsuit explosive and entertaining.

There are the casino workers and Culinary Union members. There are the Chael Sonnen types everywhere in town who love and worship UFC as a local sporting & entertainment pioneer. There’s the specter of Trump’s shadow thanks to UFC’s association with him. Despite a Democrat-leaning split of independent Nevada voters in state and Federal elections, the former President’s electoral prospects look very decent in 2024 against current US President Joe Biden. Then there is the growing professional class of business & legal graduates, both from state schools and those parachuting in from Ivy League schools.

Conventional politics for this case will be entirely scrambled like eggs. Try navigating this psychological & sociological minefield. This is why jury consultants make the big bucks.

If this case boils down to issues such as community standing, emotional civic pride & symbolism, dueling economists and white papers, UFC will likely prevail. If this case boils down to history and evidential discovery, the plaintiffs have a great chance of success.

The degree of difficulty for the attorneys in this UFC antitrust lawsuit is at least a 9 out of 10. This case is only worth hundreds of millions of dollars or potentially even billions in damages. No pressure.

As I started charting out the many different arguments for and against the fighters suing UFC in jury selection alone, I was taken aback by how many difficult roadblocks and affirmative defenses that will be raised in the forthcoming voir dire.

The Big Business of Vegas Sports = Social Policy