It’s been a huge couple of months for UFC parent company TKO, who have been cleaning up on media rights deals for UFC and Zuffa Boxing.
The smart money for months was betting that TKO heads Ari Emanuel
and Mark Shapiro would take UFC from ESPN and move it to Netflix, who had already signed a massive multi-billion dollar deal for part of TKO’s other jewel property WWE. But in the end it was Paramount CBS that snagged UFC for $7.7 billion over 7 years, and Zuffa Boxing for an as-of-now undisclosed sum over five years.
In a new interview with Puck’s The Town podcast, Emanuel and Shapiro described the bidding process and their relationship with Netflix after they went all-in with Paramount CBS.
“We had presentations back and forth over months, months, months, months,” Emanuel said. “People then came forward and we started to have multiple conversations.”
How close were they to bringing UFC to Netflix?
“Very, very close,”“ Emanuel said.
“They didn’t want the volume at the end of the day,” he explained. “They wanted just the premium. In that case it was the numbered events, the pay-per-view dates every month. We would have had to do what the NBA did and break up the package. Mark and I were discussing that. Actually, I like the word discussing. What really happened was we were fighting about that the whole time.”
“You got the fight nights that are 30 dates, the numbered events are 13,” Shapiro said. “So that 30, if you could take it to one place, perfect. If you have to split it up, you have to split it up. Fortunately, we had a lot of folks interested in some of that 30. We at first were hoping Paramount would take the 30 and we would just do the premium with Netflix until CBS said ‘Forget it, we want the whole thing.'”
Emanuel was asked if they got any ‘nasty’ messages from Netflix content head Bella Bajaria after they ditched the Netflix offer for Paramount.
“No. I mean, they were disappointed,” he said. “And let’s just be very clear, Bella and [Netflix co-CEO] Ted [Sarandos] have been incredible to Mark and I and the agency and TKO with boxing. They are incredible executives. But at the end of the day, David [Ellison] and Jerry Cardinal and Jeff [Shell] and Larry [Ellison] said, ‘Studio, streaming and live sports.’ They want to be in that space. So then they came to us and said, ‘Here’s what we want.’ OK, great.”
With UFC and Zuffa Boxing locked in for Paramount CBS, there seems like little left that Netflix can grab from TKO’s slate of programming. But Emanuel did tease more big deals coming down the pipe.
“We have our super boxing matches,” he said, and while it was implied on the podcast that those were part and parcel of the Zuffa Boxing deal, we wouldn’t be surprised if those promised two to four mega-events with massive names and large Saudi paychecks are a separate thing which could end up with Netflix, just like Tyson vs. Paul and Canelo vs. Crawford did.
