The UFC are ‘in the home stretch’ of finalising a new broadcast deal.
That’s according to one of its owners, Mark Shapiro, who has provided a fresh update on the promotion’s lucrative rights deal.
Shapiro is president and chief operating officer at TKO Group Holdings, which is the company that was formed when the UFC merged with WWE in September 2023.
In June, reports suggested that ESPN appeared to be ‘furthest along’ in renewing their deal with Dana White‘s promotion, having held the UFC’s rights to pay-per-view and Fight Night events for seven years in a $1.5 billion deal.
However, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and a new wildcard in Warner Bros. Discover were also at the table in terms of negotiations.
“What I can tell you on UFC is we are in the home stretch,” Shapiro said on Wednesday, as originally reported by MMA Fighting.
“We will provide an update on the UFC’s rights when we have something to announce.
“Our mission remains finding a balance between maximising monetisation and reach.
“And as evidenced by our WWE-ESPN deal, the market for premium content, especially big event programming remains strong and it will remain strong with ESPN as well.”
On Wednesday, WWE agreed a whopping $1.6 billion rights partnership with Disney to stream PPV events on ESPN.
The five-year deal, which will begin in 2026 – just like any new UFC deal – includes the American streaming rights to all of the wrestling giant’s premium live events, such as WrestleMania, SummerSlam, and the Royal Rumble.
As WWE and the UFC are owned by the same company now, some fans were led to believe the professional wrestling outfit’s billion dollar deal with ESPN may impact the MMA side of things.
However, Shapiro confirmed the WWE deal has had no effect on the UFC’s broadcast deal, and responded ‘unequivocally no’ when questioned if there’s been any difficulties in negotiations.
“As far as the timing goes, we’ve been in the market with essentially five properties at the same time,” Shapiro continued.
“The UFC – which could be seen as one or two or three depending on how you look at it- [with] the numbered events and the Fight Nights.
“That’s what ESPN has, two deals. Then you’ve got the WWE and Zuffa Boxing, our new boxing promotion and then you have Professional Bull Riders …
“So we’ve been in the market really with all five. Where they come, how they slot, where they sequence, that just happens to be where we are in terms of the stage of each of the deals and each of the conversations.”
How much did Dana White buy and sell UFC for?
White, alongside Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta bought the UFC for $2m in 2001.
Their remaining stakes in UFC sold at a $5 billion valuation in August 2017.
This left White’s ownership at 9% under the new agreement, which is said to have made him $360m.
White spoke about his promotion’s new broadcast deal in November last year.
“Lorenzo and I, when we first got into this, we used to dream about a day where everybody could watch the same fight on the same channel at the same time,” the 56-year-old.
“And that’s happening over the next several years. I don’t know who the players are gonna end up being…is it gonna be Amazon? Is it gonna be YouTube? Is it gonna be Disney?
“I have a really good relationship with ESPN. We’ve sort of caught our stride and I’ve been happy with the relationship. So we’ll see how this thing plays out.”