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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief Just a few months ago, Dana White and the UFC unveiled plans for a toy line with Jakks Pacific to be released in late 2009. Well, that line will be without some key UFC fighters, as the upstart company Round 5 MMA has already locked in a number of UFC fighters to exclusive contracts for a toy line that's already on the shelves.
Figures for Anderson Silva, Wanderlei Silva, Rich Franklin and Sean Sherk were all a part of the recently released second line of figures, and there will be many more lines rolling out for Round 5 before the UFC even gets onto shelves with theirs. Many of these licensing deals were struck many months before the UFC even announced that they were making a toy line. You can also be sure that these contracts are much better for the fighters financially than what the UFC would have offered them.
You just have to go back to the fiasco with Jon Fitch last week over the terms of the video game contract to see the big difference here. These Round 5 deals not only give the fighters a share of the profits from the sale of these figures, but they were also allowed to sell spots on their figures gear for their sponsors, netting them even more profit per figure sold. On that same level, this also makes you understand why the UFC would play the card they did with EA Sports reportedly making a game of their own. They need their guys under their contracts or they lose money, like they are sure to be doing with this toy line. Money's going to be left on the table for them because many of their guys are already locked up with the Round 5 deals.
Denny Burkholder at CBSSports.com has the story, where he interviews Round 5's president and co-founder Damon Lau. Lau says the action figure line started over a dinner with Randy Couture. After Lau threw out a comment about making MMA action figures during that dinner, he said "[w]e both sort of paused for a second...He said to me 'Damon, that's actually not a bad idea. If you ever do anything like that, let me know.' And that's actually how the whole thing started. He ended up being the first license that we signed."
Lau also stated that there are a number of the Jakks Pacific prototypes that will not be able to go into production; those being the fighters under deals with them. He does believe, however, that once the UFC/Jakks toys hit shelves, there will be room enough for both companies. He says their figures are more on the collectible end, geared towards older customers, whereas the UFC figures will be truer action figures marketed towards kids.
Either way, the fighters that got in on this thing early on are going to benefit immensely just in the financial sense, as they stand to actually make money off of their likeness here. Without knowing the specifics, it's likely that with the added sponsorship money added in there this a substantially more lucrative deal for the fighters than they would have received from the UFC. Again, though, it's deals like these from outside companies that in a way force the UFC's hand. Sure, they could be less hard headed about things, and of course there are better ways to handle talent relations, but the basic premise of wanting to lock in your guys exclusively makes plenty of sense. This is just a prime example of why.
Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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