Report: TMZ Paid $105K for Ray Rice Assault Videos

TMZ paid $105,000 for the videos showing Ray Rice assaulting his girlfriend in an Atlantic City hotel, according to the New Yorker.

The revelation comes on the second anniversary of the violent assault in an elevator. The February 16, 2016 incident witnessed Ray Rice slug then-girlfriend Janay Palmer and subsequently drag her from the elevator.

Rice, a three-time Pro Bowler, ultimately earned a release from the Baltimore Ravens and suspensions (for two, six, and then an indefinite number of games by the time Roger Goodell caught up with public opinion) from the NFL. Despite pleas for mercy from the woman he assaulted, Rice remains persona non grata in the league.

The New Yorker piece reads:

According to a former security supervisor at the Revel, nearly eighteen hundred cameras streamed video to a pair of monitoring rooms on the mezzanine floor. After guards responded to the incident in the lobby, several surveillance officers gathered and wondered aloud if a tape of Rice and Palmer could be sold to TMZ—the Web site that, since its inception, in 2005, has taken a merciless approach to celebrity news.

At around 4:30 a.m., one of the surveillance officers, sitting at a monitoring-room computer, reviewed footage from a camera that faced the elevator and, using a cell phone, surreptitiously recorded the screen. The officer then called TMZ.

That video of the video sold for $15,000, according to the article. A second, clearer, more complete video of the actual punch sold for $90,000.

The price TMZ paid pales next to the one paid by Ray Rice. While he escaped punishment from the law, Rice lost out on $8.4 million from a $35 million contract signed with the Baltimore Ravens because of the assault.