Things appear to be headed in the right direction for the plaintiffs in the years-long UFC antitrust lawsuit.
On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware, who’s presiding over the case, said he is “likely” to certify the class of fighters seeking damages from the promotion for anti-competitive practices.
Class certification is a crucial step for the plaintiffs – which include Jon Fitch, Cung Le and Nate Quarry – as Boulware said during last year’s hearings that he “couldn’t see the case proceeding” without it being granted. If granted certification, nearly 1,200 fighters would be grouped together to sue the UFC for estimated damages of approximately $800 million to $1.6 billion, looking to prove that the UFC possessed monopoly power to depress their earnings.
The case was first filed in 2014, with lawyers from both sides arguing in court.
Quarry, a former middleweight title challenger who fought for the UFC from 2005 to 2010, reacted to the latest development with an extensive Twitter thread:
UFC lawsuit update:
We plaintiffs allege that the UFC has monopolized the sport of MMA and artificially kept wages down. (Among other things)
We believe that this is a feature of the UFC and every fighter has the same story so we are working towards a class action suit.For that to happen we need Judge Bouleware [sic] to grant us class action certification.
That’s what we were hoping to get today.
The Judge did not give his judgement today.
However, he did make his opinion known and how we would most likely be ruling.Judge Bouleware [sic], “If the court certifies the bout class, which is most likely going to happen, what will your next steps be?” said to the lawyers.
This is HUGE for us.
Essentially he said, “I’m not going to say I’m siding with the plaintiffs but I’m probably siding w/ them.”And he didn’t say that just once. He made some form of that statement FOUR times.
Even asking if either team had anything new to present.
Why is a class certification so important? Because we will have one case representing over 1,200 fighters…Instead of having to file 1,200 individual cases.
I can’t stress this enough. We’re not trying to destroy the UFC. Why would we? They’re the largest promoter, by far, worldwide.
We simply want past, present and future fighters to get paid what they deserve in a free market.How does this effect the fans?
More money going to Fighters means better training camps, better healthcare and better fights.
Will PPV costs rise?
You never know but I will say this:
Why aren’t PPVs $5? Because you’ll pay $60.
Why aren’t they $100? You won’t pay that much.The UFC is going to milk every penny they can get out of fans. If they felt they could charge more and get away with it, they would.
This simply means fighters will also perhaps make life changing money.
Not just the promoters.We’re going to keep pushing forward until the sport is changed for everyone that wants to step foot in the cage with confidence that their success is dependent on their performance.
Not the whims of a promoter and willingness to “play the game”.
Fortitudine vincimus!Fin.
Judge ‘likely’ to grant UFC antitrust lawsuit plaintiffs class-action status