The UFC signed a massive seven-year, $7.7 billion deal to move from ESPN to Paramount in 2026, but David Ellison’s new company wasn’t initially leading the charge to host the mixed martial arts promotion’s biggest event.
Before reaching the deal with Paramount, UFC’s parent company, TKO Group Holdings, had already signed a 10-year, $5 billion contract for the WWE move and was deepening negotiations with Netflix. monday night raw TKO president and chief operating officer Mark Shapiro previously revealed that a potential deal with Netflix had all but fallen apart after it became clear that the streamer, which has more than 300 million subscribers worldwide, only wanted the biggest UFC events currently airing on pay-per-view.
This obviously doesn’t include the 30+ UFC Fight Night events that take place each year.
“They weren’t looking for volume at the end of the day,” Shapiro said. The Town Podcast. “They just wanted premium, in which case it was numbered events and monthly pay-per-view dates.”
TKO CEO Ari Emanuel classified negotiations with Netflix as coming “very” close to an agreement before the two sides were unable to reach an agreement.
The biggest issue was whether the UFC’s broadcast rights would ultimately go entirely to one partner or be split among multiple networks.
“We would have had to do what the NBA did and unpack the package,” Emanuel said. “Mark and I were talking about it. Actually, I like the word talking, but we kept fighting about it and what actually happened.”
Emanuel added that there remains a wait-and-see attitude regarding the NBA’s future after the basketball league signed a new broadcast deal worth $75 billion. However, the games are currently split between three partners: ESPN/Disney, Amazon, and NBC.
The UFC has traditionally had only one broadcast partner, from Spike TV to FOX to ESPN before signing with Paramount.
The biggest difference now is the company’s plan to move away from the traditional pay-per-view model and air all UFC events, including marquee numbered cards, on Paramount at no additional charge to subscribers.
Ideally, the UFC would have liked to work with one broadcast partner again. This effectively eliminated Netflix from being a candidate to win the overall deal.
“They were disappointed,” Emanuel said of Netflix’s reaction to losing its contract with the UFC. “Let me be clear: (Netflix chief content officer) Vera (Bajaria) and (co-CEO) Ted (Sarandos) have been great to Mark and I and to the agency and TKO in boxing.
“They’re great executives, but at the end of the day,[Paramount CEOs]David[Ellison]and Jerry Cardinal, Jeff[Shell]and Larry[Ellison]said, ‘Studio, streaming, and live sports.’ They wanted to be in that space, so they came to us and said, ‘This is what we want.’ Okay, great. ”
When Netflix was still in negotiations with the UFC, Shapiro said there was an expectation that Paramount or another buyer might take on the Fight Night event outright, but that didn’t happen.
“We were originally hoping that Paramount would be a part of the 30th (UFC Fight Night event), but they’re just going to offer premium on Netflix,” Shapiro said. “We want everything until CBS finally says forget about it.”
Apparently, everything went well for the UFC, which more than doubled its previous broadcast deal with ESPN to move to Paramount starting in 2026.