The UFC inked a massive seven year, $7.7 billion deal to move from ESPN to Paramount in 2026, but the new company led by David Ellison wasn’t initially in the lead to land the biggest events for the mixed martial arts promotion.
Prior to reaching an agreement with Paramount, TKO Group Holdings — parent company to the UFC — were deep in talks with Netflix after already signing a 10 year, $5 billion deal to move WWE’s Monday Night Raw there in 2025. TKO president and chief operating officer Mark Shapiro
previously revealed that a potential deal with Netflix largely fell apart after it was clear that the streamer with more than 300 million global subscribers only wanted the biggest UFC events, which currently air on pay-per-view.
That obviously didn’t account for the 30-plus UFC Fight Night events that take place every year.
“They didn’t want the volume at the end of the day,” Shapiro told The Town podcast. “They wanted just the premium. In that case it was the numbered events, the pay-per-view dates every month.”
TKO CEO Ari Emanuel classified talks with Netflix as “very” close to a done deal before the two sides just couldn’t come to an agreement.
The sticking point really came down to whether or not the UFC broadcast rights would all end up with one partner or get broken up among multiple networks.
“We would have had to do what the NBA did and break up the package,” Emanuel said. “Mark and I were discussing that, actually I like the word discussing, what really happened fighting about that the whole time.”
Emanuel added that it’s still going to be a wait and see approach for the future of the NBA when it comes to viewership after the basketball league signed a new broadcast deal worth $75 billion but the games are now split between three partners at ESPN/Disney, Amazon and NBC.
The UFC has traditionally only ever had one broadcast partner after moving from Spike TV to FOX and then ESPN before signing with Paramount.
The biggest difference now are plans to shift away from the traditional pay-per-view model with all UFC events — including the marquee numbered cards — all airing on Paramount at no additional cost to subscribers.
Ideally, the UFC hoped to stay with one broadcast partner again, which effectively eliminated Netflix from the running to land the overall deal.
“They were disappointed,” Emanuel said about Netflix’s reaction to losing the UFC deal. “Let’s just be very clear, [Netflix chief content officer] Bella [Bajaria] and [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, [Paramount CEO] David [Ellison] and Gerry Cardinale 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.”
When Netflix was still in talks with the UFC, Shapiro noted that there was hope that Paramount or another buyer might potentially just take the Fight Night events but that didn’t happen.
“We at first were hoping that Paramount would take the 30 [UFC Fight Night events] and we just do the premium with Netflix,” Shapiro said. “Until CBS ultimately said forget it, we want the whole thing.”
Obviously it all worked out for the UFC with the company more than doubling the previous broadcast deal with ESPN to move to Paramount starting in 2026.
