110 Iowa L. Rev. 1949 (2025)
Abstract
Antitrust enforcement is entering a new age. It has long overlooked labor market monopsonies, instead focusing on product market monopolies. In recent years, though, empirical findings in economics literature uncovered that labor markets are far more concentrated than free-market economists theorized. Accordingly, former President Joe Biden issued a July 2021 executive order directing his administration to devote unprecedented attention to labor market competition. This Note argues that the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) should bring an enforcement action against the Ultimate Fighting Championship (“UFC”) to reform the labor market for mixed martial arts fighters. The UFC acquired monopsony power through a series of anticompetitive mergers, and it maintains its market dominance with exclusionary contracts that prevent competition for fighters’ services. The FTC investigated the UFC for antitrust violations twice in the 2010s, but each inquiry yielded no action under lax enforcement regimes. Pursuing a case now would demonstrate the failures of old policy. Monopsony neglect allowed firms to anticompetitively obtain and entrench labor market power. In turn, concentrated economic power suppressed workers’ wages far below what they would be in a market where employers compete for workers’ labor.