The UFC’s exclusive five-year streaming deal with ESPN is about to expire, and now Dana White and his team are working on securing a new one. In the midst of this, MMA scribe, Ariel Helwani has sparked excitement with his suggestion that the promotion could follow in WWE’s footsteps by landing a Netflix deal.
The UFC’s current broadcast deal with ESPN is set to run through 2025, and soon, the exclusive negotiating period will kick off. Word on the street is that the UFC is aiming for a big boost in their broadcast rights deal.
Back in 2018, they signed a five-year, $1.5 billion deal with ESPN for domestic rights starting in 2019. A little later, the agreement got extended by two years, with pay-per-view broadcasts added to the mix, now reportedly worth $450 million a year. According to Bloomberg, the company is now targeting a $1 billion per year TV deal with the broadcasting partner.
But with the streaming landscape constantly shifting, Helwani believes it’s possible the UFC could follow their sister company’s move of broadcasting WWE RAW on Netflix. Sharing his thoughts on what a new deal could look like, the journalist said,
“Oh yeah there is a strong possibility (Netflix). The biggest story for me in 2025 as far as the business of MMA is what happens to the UFC’s TV contract here in the United States because their deal with ESPN plus is up at the end of the year. And they’re going to make a boatload, it is going to be the biggest deal in UFC history.”
WWE, also owned by the UFC’s parent company, TKO, is currently on a deal with the streaming giant worth a whopping $5 billion. The Paul Leveque-headed wrestling promotion has been smashing records every week since the collaboration.
WWE on the rise with Netflix
According to Collider, WWE RAW’s January 27 episode raked in 2.9 million viewers, making its way into the Top-10 English language shows worldwide. While it has almost halved from the 5.9 million viewers who watched the program on its January 6th debut on the streaming platform, the trend shows that the viewership has stabilized.
A dip in viewership was expected from the Red Band program, especially since the debut was hyped to high heavens. It also helped that the first episode to stream on Netflix was graced by the likes of Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, The Undertaker, John Cena, Hulk Hogan, and others.
The show is now settling into its regular audience range and is expected to have minor highs and lows on a weekly basis, depending on the advertised storylines they have in store. RAW has also reportedly ranked amongst the top programs on the platform despite strong competition from the NFL playoffs, and NCAA college football championship games amongst other events.
The UFC will keep all this in mind if they intend to approach Netflix with any kind of deal. It should also be noted that the WWE is the only second sports entertainment event that Netflix has been interested in.
Earlier last year, it had hosted a boxing card main evented by Jake Paul vs Mike Tyson, which had broken world records, peaking at 65 million concurrent streams, with 38 million concurrent streams in the US.
Netflix would also help the UFC reach new audiences across the globe, who otherwise have to get through a million hoops to subscribe to multiple streaming partners across the globe.
