Dana White looked at the Los Angeles Lakers selling for $12.5 billion and decided the UFC is worth four times that.
The UFC CEO did the arithmetic out loud on The Diary of a CEO podcast, starting from the $2 million the Fertitta brothers paid for the promotion in 2001. “Let’s be honest here. The UFC was purchased for $2 million,” White said. “And if the Lakers sold for $12.5 billion, then the UFC is worth 50 billion, okay?”
He didn’t stop at a number. White said his real rivals are no longer other fight promoters. “Nobody’s nipping at my heels,” he said, before naming the competition he actually sees: “my competitors are the NFL, Major League Baseball, the NHL, and the NBA.” He went further and said the UFC is “part of the four major sport organizations in the United States,” which is a tricky claim, since that list already has four members.
Then came the best line of the interview, delivered without a flicker of irony. “Right now, I don’t know this for a fact, but I know this for a fact,” White said, before calling the NFL “a bunch of animals” and claiming league power brokers got in a room after the UFC’s Paramount deal and lamented the $8 billion they didn’t get.
The Lakers money
The sale White is riffing on has a strange backstory. The Buss family sold the Lakers to Dodgers owner Mark Walter for $10 billion in 2025. Walter then flipped the team to Bob Iger and Josh Kushner in August for the record $12.5 billion. MMA Mania noted Walter is under federal investigation for alleged fraud, which reportedly played a role in the quick sale.
Team values are climbing across the board. Sportico has NBA franchise values up 21% year over year, with the Golden State Warriors at $14.5 billion and the New York Knicks at $12.8 billion. The Dallas Cowboys sit above all of them at $15.5 billion.
Where the comparison breaks
White pointed to the UFC’s seven-year, $7.7 billion media rights deal with Paramount as proof the promotion belongs with the big leagues. He rounded it to eight. As MMA Mania laid out, some experts called that deal a deliberate overpay, and Paramount has been accused of leaning on the UFC’s ties to Donald Trump while chasing a $110 billion deal of its own.
The revenue gap is ugly. The UFC brings in under $2 billion a year, most of it from Paramount. The NHL, the smallest of the four, sits around $8 billion annually, and the NFL is near $23 billion. The NBA’s U.S. media deal alone is $77 billion, so the UFC’s entire seven-year package is roughly one season of basketball TV money. The NFL’s media deal is $110 billion, and the league is reportedly eyeing an opt-out to get more.
Pay is where it gets embarrassing. The four leagues have collective bargaining agreements that send roughly half of revenue to athletes. MLB’s minimum is $750,000. Undrafted NBA rookies get $1.3 million and tenured veterans have a $3.9 million floor. Entry-level UFC fighters are scraping by on $12,000. MMA Mania suggested Major League Soccer as a fairer comparison, and even MLS out-earns the UFC at $2.5 billion while paying its players better.
White is right about one thing. Nobody in MMA is close to the UFC, and the antitrust lawsuits the company has settled (with more still pending) show how tight that grip is. But a $50 billion valuation tossed out on a friendly podcast, with zero follow-up questions, is a sales pitch with a microphone in front of it. The day a UFC fighter opening the prelims earns the $750,000 a baseball rookie is guaranteed, White can start comparing himself to the NFL.
