The NFL is widely recognized as the biggest ratings driver among all the major sports but the league is expected to seek even more money for its broadcast rights after the UFC and NBA recently inked historic increases in separate deals.
Right now, the NFL is early in a deal worth more than $110 billion that runs through the early 2030s with CBS, FOX, NBC, ESPN, Amazon Prime Video and Netflix among those paying hefty fees to air football games during the year. But with the NFL expected to hit $25 billion in revenue
in 2026, the league is expected to revisit those broadcast deals in the near future.
In late 2025, the UFC inked a massive seven year, $7.7 billion deal to move from ESPN to Paramount with the vast majority of events now airing on Paramount+. The new deal was worth more than double what ESPN was paying the UFC under a previous seven year contract.
As part of the deal with Paramount, the UFC did away with the pay-per-view model and now every event airs at no additional cost to subscribers with packages running between $8.99 and $13.99 per month.
The NFL and its 32 owners obviously see that deal along with the NBA, which signed a huge 11 year deal with multiple broadcast partners worth $76 billion, and realize that the league should be making more money than what’s currently being paid.
“As we look around at the incredible viewership we had this year, and we look at this sports rights marketplace, we think the value of NFL rights have only increased,” Hans Schroeder, the NFL’s executive vice president of media distribution, told the New York Times.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has spoken about the expanding the current rights deals for the league, especially considering all the new players in the space since signing the last contract in 2021. At that point, Netflix wasn’t even streaming live sports and YouTube wasn’t involved in major deals.
“We’ve all seen the media landscape is changing dramatically,” Goodell said at a press conference ahead of Super Bowl LX. “New platforms that didn’t exist five years ago — 10 years ago, for sure — exist. That’s where our fans are in many cases, particularly the younger demographics.”
When the UFC was negotiating a new rights deal in 2025, the promotion was deep into talks with Netflix after the streamer was interested in obtaining the 12 to 13 major “pay-per-view” events per year after getting into the boxing business with several marquee fights including Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson and the Canelo Alvarez vs. Terence Crawford card.
In the end, Paramount swooped in at the 11th hour to offer $1.1 billion per year to land the UFC’s entire broadcast rights package, which some critics believed was overpaying. But Paramount celebrated the deal after UFC 324 — the first event to air on Paramount+ — brought in nearly 5 million viewers, which was a new record for an exclusive live event airing on the network.
Obviously, the NFL’s ratings dwarf every other sporting event in the United States, which is why the league takes such a close look at what other sports are being paid. During the 2025 season, the NFL was averaging 18.7 million viewers, which was the biggest audience for the league since 1989.
Paramount also has a deal with the NFL and it’s expected the network will pony up whatever increase is needed to keep football airing there for the foreseeable future.
“As soon as they indicate they want to sit down and have a legit conversation about the future, we’ll be excited to sit down and have those conversations and figure out how we can further strengthen the partnership,” David Berson, the president of CBS Sports, told the New York Times.
While the UFC’s $7.7 billion deal isn’t anywhere close to what the NFL makes, that doesn’t mean the increases paid to the MMA promotion doesn’t affect what other sports may seek in future negotiations.
Between the UFC and NBA reaching historic heights with new broadcast deals, the NFL is likely to reset the market with rights fees growing even higher if these new deals get locked down before the 2026 season kicks off.
