The UFC and its $175 million sponsorship partner, Crypto.com recently announced a new program to provide fan-voted bonuses during UFC pay-per-view events. The deal, which was rolled out during Saturday’s UFC 273 is set to pay out a total of $60k in bitcoin to 3 fighters as voted on by the fans, for each PPV event. And while all that sounds fine in concept, the reality leaves a lot of unanswered questions.
First and foremost, there’s the simple idea of access. The UFC usually plans 12-13 pay-per-view events per year and 28-30 Fight Night cards. With bigger name fighters getting more opportunities to fight on PPV cards than lower ranked and lesser known competitors, that means the Crypto.