The MMA world awoke to some big news on Monday morning: the UFC’s ESPN era is set to end. Soon (January 2026), the promotion will head to streamer Paramount+, embarking on a new, uncertain journey that in the short term should be very, very lucrative and potentially very positive for fans.
Like any others following the sport, even those who do it professionally, the Cageside Press crew had a whole lot to say on Monday morning. Our normally reserved chat was a busy one, full of questions and opinions. Among them, where does this leave ancillary programming like Dana White’s Contender Series and The Ultimate Fighter, the fate of which remains unknown (only numbered events and Fight Nights were reported to be part of the 43-event deal announced by the promotion on Monday; a press release sent to media outlets including this one made no mention of the reality fighting shows)?
Will numbered events, which will no longer be Pay-Per-View or come with an additional cost, remain as stacked? How many shows will fans see on CBS, which will receive some events as part of the new broadcast deal, similar to ABC airing UFC cards under the current ESPN broadcast partnership?
Who wins in this deal? Who loses? What does it do for the sport of mixed martial arts over the next seven years? All very, very valid questions.
When the ESPN deal was announced (something we covered back in 2018 on our short-lived Drive In podcast), it was big, big news. The UFC, once maligned as “human cock fighting,” was set to debut on the premiere sports network in the U.S. EPSN didn’t just bring coverage, it brought legitimacy.
Seven years later, the move to Paramount+ announced this morning is about one thing: money.
Return on investment (ROI) is what it all boils down to. Endeavor put a lot of money up when they purchased the UFC in 2016, and they’ve managed to make an already lucrative business model even more profitable. While some will argue, rightfully so, that it has been done at the expense of the fighters, who haven’t seen a true raise in over a decade and are egregiously underpaid outside of a select few, the end result is the same. Now, the UFC is set to earn U.S. $1.1 billion a year over seven years. Nearly eight billion dollars from the U.S. broadcast rights alone, with Paramount+ expressing interest in international rights as they become available (currently, the UFC is tied up on SportsNet in Canada, and TNT Sports in the U.K., for example).
The short-term gain is obvious. Paramount was no doubt offering more than ESPN, more than Netflix. Some might argue they overpaid, but you won’t find Ari Emmanuel or Dana White among that camp. With the captive audience that saw MMA boom during the pandemic era gone, the promotion isn’t worried about the legitimacy either of those broadcasters, or even Amazon’s Prime Video, might bring. Which is why they settled with Paramount+, who rank around 5th among streaming services. Paramount+ paid. No doubt, Netflix (home to WWE, which has proven the streaming model can work) and ESPN made offers. Just not at $1.1 billion per year.
What do the numbers tell us? ESPN currently sits somewhere around 70 million homes on traditional cable TV, a sharp decline from several years back as the TV industry shifts to online, streaming formats. The numbers vary based on source, but it was right around 70 in 2023. Not helping things, ESPN+ actually lost subscribers in 2024, leaving it at 24.1 million. That’s roughly the same number of subscribers ESPN’s streaming service, built in large part through its partnership with the UFC, had in 2022. In short, ESPN+ isn’t growing.
Paramount+ (how about we stop just sticking + on things when launching streaming services?) on the other hand sits at over 77 million subscribers on the streaming side. Add in CBS, which will air select UFC events, and this feels like a sideways move in terms of available viewers. The ESPN family might have more overall depending on how many subscribe to ESPN+ only, but not enough to be concerned about. And the new deal is vastly more lucrative, given ESPN was paying 300 million a year dating back to 2019 for the non-PPV UFC cards. Paramount+ is clearly not a bad deal for the UFC, but the devil is in the details.
The money is great. Pay-Per-View is gone, and that’s a big win for fans. Fans might actually be the biggest winners with the Paramount+ deal. Gone are exorbitantly priced PPV cards which may or may not live up to expectations. Paramount+ plans range from $8 a month (with ads) to $12 (ad free, and including Showtime). Even if the price was jacked up to say, $15 or $20 a month, including UFC numbered events at no extra cost is a huge savings. And yes, there are those who stream the events free of charge from other sources, but for that price, why deal with a shady website full of malware, constantly blocking pop-up ads and hoping UBlock Origin does the trick? Pay a small fee, get it legally, and get South Park too?
Fans win, the promotion gets paid, the fighters get… probably nothing extra, but we can hope. Paramount+ no doubt hopes a lot of viewers will jump ship from ESPN+ to the UFC’s new home, potentially adding a few million subscribers (assuming there’s already some crossover, and that some might not make the switch).
The devil is in the details, we said, and here’s where things get interesting: what does this do for the growth of MMA? ESPN was a sports-based network. Paramount+ is not. When a tennis fan, or a golf fan, or a hockey fan, wants content, they go to ESPN, either on cable or online. The same can’t be said for Paramount+. The pool of sports fans was unquestionably larger with the ESPN family, even if the overall subscriber count isn’t all that far off with Paramount.
There is, of course, a bit of a link back to MMA on Paramount+. Once upon a time, Spike TV was the UFC’s broadcast home. That channel later became Paramount Network, broadcaster of Bellator MMA. Eventually, Bellator left for Showtime and CBS Sports Network and was eventually sold when parent company Viacom opted to get out of the MMA game. Now, the newly formed Paramount Skydance (formed through a merger of Paramount Global, formerly Viacom CBS, and Skydance Media) is getting back in the MMA pool. How much of the brain trust from past MMA broadcast deals remains isn’t clear, mind you.
There’s also the concern of creative decline as part of a deal that hands over guaranteed money with no need to sell Pay-Per-Views. With the broadcaster locked in, and live gates going up regardless alongside prohibitive site fees, the UFC might be tempted to just throw cards together willy-nilly. The reality is, however, they probably won’t. As bad as the promotion has been at actually promoting fighters, they’ve usually been fairly consistent with their marquee events. Watered down Apex Fight Nights are another story, and if you’re Paramount+, you perhaps insist at improving those – although that would mean doing something about the 40+ contracts being dished out on the Contender Series each year, and the promotion’s decision to release/not re-sign mid-card talents (Martin Buday being a recent example) prematurely in favor of cheaper bodies.
Will Dana White stick around long term, given he seems to skip the smaller shows these days, focused as much on PowerSlap and TKO Boxing/Zuffa Boxing or whatever the plan is to call it? Will the UFC remain interested in pushing into new territories like Africa, with so much money coming in at home? These, and the growth question, can only be answered over time. For now, though, the UFC has won something of a landfall, fans have won by keeping all UFC events in one spot for a single, affordable fee, and Paramount+ has taken the biggest gamble of all involved.
We’ll know in about seven years if that gamble pays off.
