The judge presiding over the UFC’s big antitrust lawsuit has turned down a proposed settlement agreement between fighters and the promotion, meaning the multi-billion dollar class action lawsuit will likely be heard in court later this year.
During parent company TKO Group Holding’s Q1 earnings call, big boss Ari Emanuel was extremely confident that a $335 million settlement deal would go through and that would be the end of things.
“We settled all claims in the UFC antitrust lawsuits, bringing that matter to a close without introducing any further changes to our existing business operations,” he said.
But on Tuesday July 30th, Judge Richard Boulware denied approval for the settlement and ordered the Le vs. Zuffa case (covering all UFC fighters from 2012-2017) placed back into trial schedule with a tentative start date of October 28th. A status conference will be held on August 19th to work out the details.
This isn’t something the fighters, the lawyers representing the fighters, or the UFC wanted. They were happy with the current settlement, which was set to pay out over $100,000 to nearly 500 of the 2000 fighters represented in the case. A trial win requires a unanimous jury verdict, and it must survive years of appeals, possibly up to the Supreme Court, before money starts being paid out.
“They’d be better off both taking the money, getting the injunctive relief,” fighter lawyer Eric Cramer told Boulware during a hearing on the proposed settlement. “The world where that doesn’t happen is not in that fighter’s interests because I would tell that fighter if they were in my office, ‘You’re likely to lose. You’re likely to get nothing.’”
But Boulware clearly had issues with how little injunctive relief was offered in the settlement, leaving current UFC fighters locked in a situation where they had few abilities to exit the promotion once signed.
Arbitration clauses and class action waivers added to newer UFC contracts would keep them from ever getting to this legal point again, and he didn’t like the idea of accepting a settlement that paid out retired fighters and lawyers, leaving little for the more recent class of fighters from 2017 onward.
There is still a chance another settlement agreement could be offered up that will get Boulware’s blessing. But he is very convinced by the fighter’s arguments that UFC is using monopsony power to unfairly manipulate the market, and without significant changes in the settlement that will stop that, he seems committed to going to trial.
