Paramount buys UFC rights in $7.7 billion, 7-year deal
Rıyadh, Saudi Arabia – February 01: (RL) Michael Page, England, on February 01, 2025, Riyadh punched the Shara Magomedov from Russia during the UFC Fight Night event in Saudi Arabia. (Photo: Chris UNGER/ZUFFA LLC)
Chris Unger | UFC | Getty Images
Days after completing the merger with Skydance, Very big USA obtained its rights TKO group Starting from 2026, UFC for seven years.
Companies, Paramount, UFC’s 13 Marquee event and 30 “fighting nights” for full Arduvaz pay an average of $ 1.1 billion dollars per year. All matches and events will be published in the United States via Paramount+and distinguished events will be simulstan at CBS. Agreement payments have been weighted, the paramount pays less than $ 1.1 billion in the early years of the agreement.
Paramount does not charge any additional fees for access to events by eliminating the payment model per imaging that ESPN+ uses for certain premium UFC events. Disney ESPN paid an average of $ 500 million for five -year UFC rights. This agreement ends at the end of 2025.
“The payment model is in the past,” Mark Shapiro, the president and business officer of TKO Group, said in an interview. He said. “Now what to pay per imaging? Now boxing
It’s been a few days for both paramount and TKO. Paramount officially sold the company’s control to Skydance Media on Thursday and brought a new leadership led by General Manager David Ellison. In addition, last week, TKO signed an agreement with a five -year $ 1.6 billion with ESPN for the US’s rights for WWE’s Premium live events. UFC and WWE united to be TKO in 2023.
Shapiro believed that TKO leadership would start only 30 “fighting nights” activity and premium numbered activities to another media partner. When the Skydence-Paramount agreement closed on Thursday, the two sides negotiated this agreement within 48 hours.
In an interview, it was important for Ellison to buy the entire UFC package, given the scarcity of sports rights present in the coming years. Formula 1 with rights Probably allocated for Apple And Major League Baseball will not have many top shelf sports assets to be released for Paramount’s acquisition, waiting to reorganize large media packages until 2028.
In an interview with Ellison, “UFC, the presence of a unicorn horse that emerges once a year,” he said. Ellison described himself as a fan of UFC.
UFC activities are desirable for pennants, because they take place throughout the year and pay less than other sports to cancel seasonal subscriptions for monthly subscriptions. There are 43 live events per year consisting of 350 hours of live programming.
The company said Paramount is interested in acquiring international rights of UFC’s US rights. These rights emerge on a rolled basis, which is about one third of each year. UFC matches are currently available in more than 210 countries.
Shapiro said Paramount will have a special 30 -day negotiation window for each country’s rights when they are ready to renew.
