Examining the contenders for the next UFC media rights deal

When the NBA closed on its $77 billion of media deals earlier this year, that largely locked up major sports rights deals for the next few years. The NFL media contracts, worth $111 billion, run through 2033, though there is an opt out provision the league can trigger after three more seasons. The NHL media deals are up in 2028, and MLS has eight years remaining on its Apple deal. There is one exception to the barren landscape for sports media rights: UFC.

The fight promoter’s $1.5 billion ESPN deal expires after 2025 (the fights are largely streamed on ESPN+).  And while the next deal, or deals, won’t be anywhere in the NBA rarified air, it is an important one due to the mix of prospective platforms and the scarcity value of these rights. The savvy promoters at UFC parent TKO are sure to use that scarcity of major rights to potentially double if not more the rights fee,

Awful Announcing wanted to get a feel for which media companies are in the running, or thought to be, and why. So we talked to two sports media experts, William Mao, senior vice president, global media rights at Octagon, and former Fox executive Bob Thompson, to get their take on which outlet makes sense. The interviews were conducted separately and edited for clarity.

AA: ESPN is widely viewed as the frontrunner here, is that right?

Mao: From what I have seen and heard, there is interest on the part of UFC, or (parent) TKO to have ESPN remain a partner, but at the same time, I believe there have also been statements around the potential of multiple parties coming to the table in the next round of their deal.

Thompson: I would expect that they’re going to carve it up somewhat. I think ESPN certainly has a very big appetite. You know, with ESPN going with the DTC (direct to consumer) option (next year), they’re going to want to have that continue as part of their offerings.

AA: Netflix, because it has a deal with TKO’s WWE, is also seen as the streaming front runner, do you agree?

Mao: It feels like Netflix is the one that’s been talked about the most, and there’s a lot of reasons for that justification, one obviously being the fact that they are a new WWE partner going forward. Even when the WWE deal was announced, there was a little bit of an allusion to this being the first of potentially some other partnerships to come. If you look at what Netflix has done recently in terms of their live sports acquisition, obviously, the most recent comparable is the Paul-Tyson fight… all of these things are tent poles, and a lot of these UFC events, these cards are major tent poles. And so that could fit very, very well within their portfolio.

Thompson: Technical issues aside, they certainly show that they could draw a very large audience, willing to pay, who’s willing to pay for it, and is international in scope, which, for some of these guys, they spend a lot of money selling rights around the world to the extent you can just do one deal and cover the whole world that’s nice.

AA:  Warner Bros. Discovery is snapping up sports rights to fill in for the loss of the NBA after this season, are they a potential bidder?

Mao: Over the last couple of months, WBD has been reloading their portfolio. Examples include the slice of the CFP, they picked up the Big East rights, they picked up the Roland Garros rights. And in a number of those cases, it’s been reported that they paid up to acquire…that was a signal that they were trying to build a portfolio going forward in anticipation of that being a requirement and proposition to maintain the carriage value of their cable channels.

Thompson: Here’s the wildcard, and that is because they’ve got a few billion burn hole in their pocket, (WBD’s) Max and TNT Sports… I find it hard to believe that they’re going to walk in front of a cable operator, and they’re supposedly getting a couple bucks or something like that (per sub), and say that we added one or two CFP games. We added some Mountain West Conference… and we’re doing some one-off golf. You know, they picked up some NASCAR racing and things like that… so it would seem to me, while they certainly are talking like they’re not going to have a reduction (in sub fee), I would find it hard to believe that with their current lineup of sports, they would maintain that same license fee.

AA: What about Fox Sports, they once had some UFC?

Mao: They obviously have, not only the cable but the free to air platform that UFC could be seeking. As you may have read previously, one of the things that the UFC is hoping for, if they were to stay on with ESPN, is some more ABC exhibition. So that could be something that they could get through another major free to air.

Thompson: Fox had it for a while. I don’t know that anybody’s got the appetite for that, though, on the broadcast side of things, everybody seems to have pretty much filled out their dance card for the next several years on the network side. So I really think it’s a streaming thing and a linear cable thing.

AA: What happens to pay per view fights currently sold through ESPN+?

Mao: The aspect that I’ve been thinking about is prior to this ESPN deal… the Pay Per View aspect of it had been in house, right? They had been an in-house proposition, and so is that potentially something that could happen this time around, depending on how the different parties get put together from a puzzle piece perspective. So could the Pay Per View element of UFC and of MMA and combat sports in general be taken back in house or working with a third party in a more traditional format?

Thompson: No I don’t (think it will be brought back in house). They might argue for a long time on the split.

AA: What about NBC and Peacock?

Mao: They could be in the conversation in so far as a potential slice of the package. Again, it all comes down to volume relative to price that each of these parties are looking for. Quite frankly, the parties I have seen and read and personally felt were more potentially interested were Netflix and WBD.

AA:  Amazon Prime?

Thompson:  I would also expect, probably Amazon Prime, though they’ve tended to kind of concentrate on the mainstream sports. You know, baseball, football, basketball, hockey, they’ve got some regional baseball, but their national products and scope are the major sports, not so much UFC, WWE type stuff.