Sports · UFC Media Rights · May 23, 2026 · 10:30 AM ET

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$7.7 Billion.
Seven Years.
Pay-Per-View Is Dead.

On August 11, 2025, Paramount Skydance and TKO Group announced a seven-year, $7.7 billionmedia- rights deal — an average of roughly $1.1 billion per year— for the entire US footprint of the UFC. All 13 numbered pay-per-view events and all 30 Fight Nights, 43 cards a year, move to Paramount+ on a single subscription. Select numbered events also simulcast free on CBS broadcast. The pay-per-view model that built modern combat sports is over in the United States.

ESPN, which had paid roughly $300 million a year in base rights since 2019 — closer to $500 million a yeareffective once ESPN+ PPV exclusivity was layered on — was outbid by a Paramount- Skydance entity that had only existed in its merged form for a matter of weeks. Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and YouTube were reported as the other losing bidders. The price-per-year roughly tripled.

Nine months later, the actual wildcard is what the deal doesn’tcover: the international rights are still unsold outside Latin America and Australia, Dana White is publicly teasing a “way more global” partner (analysts read it as Netflix or Amazon), Zuffa Boxing just landed its own Paramount+/CBS deal in May, and fighter pay remains stuck at roughly 17% of UFC revenuewhile the company’s media-rights revenue triples.

• $7.7Bdeal7 years, avg ~$1.1B/yr, weighted back-end
• 43events/yr13 numbered + 30 Fight Nights, all on Paramount+
• ~$500Mespn (out)Effective annual incumbent rate including PPV
• 17%fighter shareUFC revenue paid to fighters vs ~50% NBA/NFL/NHL
• $1.502Bufc fy25UFC segment revenue, +7% YoY · TKO 10-K

On August 11, 2025, Paramount Skydance and TKO Group jointly announced the largest single-promotion combat-sports deal in US history. Seven years. $7.7 billion total. Average annual value $1.1 billion, weighted toward the back end of the term. The Paramount press release calls it a “historic” agreement. The TKO investor announcement calls it a “landmark.” Both descriptions are, for once, defensible.

The structure is straightforward in a way US sports rights rarely are: every UFC card in the United States — all 13 numbered pay-per-view events and all 30 Fight Nights, 43 cards a year — streams exclusively on Paramount+, the subscription service that runs $7.99 to $12.99 a month. Select numbered events also simulcast free over the air on the CBS broadcast network. No cable bundle. No separate $80 pay-per-view fee on top of the subscription. The pay-per-view model the UFC built its modern business on, in the US market, ends January 1, 2026.

“The historic deal with Paramount and CBS is incredible for UFC fans and our athletes. For the first time ever, fans in the US will have access to all UFC content without a Pay-Per-View model, making it more affordable and accessible to view the greatest fights on a massive platform.”

Dana White, UFC CEO and President · TKO Group official release · August 11, 2025

“This is a milestone moment and landmark deal for UFC, solidifying its position as a preeminent global sports asset.”

Ari Emanuel, TKO Executive Chairman & CEO · August 11, 2025

On the Paramount side, the deal is the signature swing of David Ellison, who took over as CEO of the merged Paramount Skydance days before the announcement. The Skydance- Paramount merger closed in August 2025; the UFC deal landed within weeks. Ellison’s public framing — that “rarely do opportunities arise to partner on an exclusive basis with a global sports powerhouse like UFC” — reads as a strategic statement of intent: Paramount+ is going to compete with Netflix and Disney+ by anchoring to live sports it owns outright, not by chasing scripted hits.

“I couldn't be more excited to join forces with Dana, Ari, and Mark. Rarely do opportunities arise to partner on an exclusive basis with a global sports powerhouse like UFC.”

David Ellison, Paramount Skydance CEO · August 11, 2025

ESPN held UFC’s US rights from 2019 through the end of 2025. The 2018 contract was announced as five years, $1.5 billion base — $300 million a year — with ESPN+ exclusivity for the pay-per-view layer. CNBC later reported the effective all-in number, including PPV revenue share, landed closer to $500 million a year. Whichever of those numbers you use, Paramount’s $1.1 billion a yearroughly doubles the high end of ESPN’s effective rate and more than triples the base.

ESPN, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and YouTube were all reported as bidders, per ESPN’s own reporting on the deal and Variety’s follow-up. Netflix already runs WWE Monday Night Raw under a separate 10-year, $5 billion deal (~$500M/yr) effective January 2025. Amazon Prime Video, run by Mike Hopkins, holds Thursday Night Football ($1B/yr). YouTube, through Google, has NFL Sunday Ticket exclusively ($2B/yr). Each of them had a credible reason to want UFC; none of them got there.

The Paramount-UFC deal is the clearest single signal yet of where premium US sports rights are headed: away from cable, away from pay-per-view, and into subscription streaming at a Netflix-style $8–$13 monthly price point. The same week the deal was announced, NBA TV-rights negotiations were rebalancing toward Amazon and NBC’s Peacock; the NFL was preparing its first Christmas-Day exclusive on Netflix; the NHL was sitting under Rogers’s $7B+ Canadian streaming deal. The UFC deal is the cleanest single number because it covers an entire property, every event, no cable carve-outs.

For the US fan, the change is binary. Under ESPN, a hardcore fan who wanted every numbered card paid the cable-or-streaming subscription plus roughly $80 per pay-per-view event for the 13 numbered cards a year — on the order of $1,000 to $1,200 annually. Under Paramount+, the same fan pays the subscription — closer to $96 to $156 a year— and that’s it. The drop in customer cost is real and is the consumer-facing case Dana White made on the announcement call.

For TKO and its shareholders, the math is just as direct. Per the company’s FY2025 10-K, UFC media- rights, production and content revenue came in at $907.7 millionfor the year — the last full year of the ESPN deal. The Paramount deal begins in 2026 at a roughly $1.1 billionannual run-rate, which would push UFC media-rights revenue past WWE’s ($1.0006B FY2025) inside the same TKO portfolio.

TKO Group Holdings — the company formed by the September 2023 merger of Endeavor’s UFC and WWE businesses — reported FY2025 total revenue of $4.735 billion in its Q4 release. The segment breakdown:

“The successful launch of Zuffa Boxing last month sets the table for even further long term value creation.”

Mark Shapiro, TKO President & COO · Q4 2025 earnings call

The deal tripled UFC media-rights revenue. The portion that goes to the fighters did not move. Per expert reports filed in Le v. Zuffa— the long-running antitrust class action settled for $375 millionin March 2024 — UFC has historically paid out roughly 17% of company revenue to its athletes. That figure has held steady through the Paramount-era jump.

The major US team-sport leagues run roughly 50% revenue share with their unions: NBA, NFL and NHL all sit there under collectively-bargained agreements. Boxing promotions, where talent has real leverage and no exclusive long- term contracts, run closer to 67%. UFC sits at roughly a third of that.

The structural reason for the gap, the plaintiffs in Le v. Zuffa argued, is that UFC fighters sign exclusive multi-fight contracts that lock them out of competing promotions. There is no functional second buyer for top-tier MMA talent in North America. The settlement closed that complaint without changing the contract structure. A second case, Davis v. Zuffa, is still active and seeks to cap UFC contracts at one year — the closest thing to an open- athlete-market intervention the courts have so far been asked to order.

Run the math on the Paramount deal at the prevailing share: a jump from roughly $300M/yr to $1.1B/yr in US media-rights revenue lifts the fighter-pay pool by about $135M/yr at 17%. Anchor the same business to a 50% NBA-style share and the lift would be closer to $400M/yr. The gap between those two numbers is what the open antitrust case is arguing about.

The August 2025 deal covers the United States. It does not cover the world. Paramount’s footprint has since expanded to Latin America and Australiavia secondary agreements late in 2025, but the most lucrative international territories — the United Kingdom, continental Europe, MENA, and Asia-Pacific outside Australia— remain unsold as of May 2026. Those are the rights Dana White is publicly teasing.

“The world's going to change a lot in the next year with our broadcast rights deal… more than likely, we're going to end up with a platform that is way more global than we are now.”

Dana White, UFC CEO · Pat McAfee Show, post-deal (2025)

“Way more global than we are now” is, in industry shorthand, a Netflix-or-Amazon read. Both lost in the US bid; both have the scale to write a single global-rights check that local broadcasters can’t match. Netflix already proved the template with its $5 billion / 10-year WWE Raw deal, which began in January 2025 in 170+ countries. Amazon Prime Video has built out a sports verticals in roughly the same geographies. A single international partner for UFC would mirror that structure.

May 2026.Zuffa Boxing — the new boxing promotion operated jointly by Dana White, Nick Khan (WWE President), and Turki Alalshikh(Chairman of Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority) — landed its own US media- rights deal with Paramount+ and CBS. The arrangement covers 12 boxing events in 2026, with the first card staged inside the same Paramount+ ecosystem now hosting the UFC.

For Paramount, two combat-sports anchors in one subscription service. For TKO, a second revenue line on a brand-new property built on the same media-rights template that worked for UFC. For the legacy boxing business — built on PPV economics through Showtime, HBO and DAZN over the last decade — the same pay-per-view extinction event that hit UFC in 2025 is now arriving inside its own sport, just nine months later.

Dana White’s relationship with Donald Trump dates to the late 1990s, when the UFC was effectively blacklisted from cable and Trump’s casinos — Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City in particular — were among the few venues willing to host UFC events. White spoke in support of Trump at the Republican National Convention in 2016, 2020, and 2024. The relationship has been one of the longest-running, most public CEO-politician alignments in modern American sports.

On July 11, 2026— the weekend of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence — President Trump is hosting a UFC card on the White House South Lawn, branded as UFC Freedom 250. The event is the first full-card combat-sports event ever staged on White House grounds. The fights will air on Paramount+ under the new contract; the CBS broadcast simulcast carries the event into millions of US households for free. The political-branding convergence is hard to overstate.

The seven-year, $7.7 billion deal Paramount struck with TKO in August 2025 is the clearest single signal yet of where premium US sports rights are headed: away from cable, away from pay-per-view, and into subscription streaming at a Netflix-style $8–$13 monthly price point. ESPN, which paid roughly $300M/yr base(with PPV multiples), was outbid by a Skydance-Paramount entity that had only existed in its current form for weeks — a sign of how aggressively David Ellison is willing to spend to anchor Paramount+ in live sports it can own outright.

The deal triples UFC’s US media-rights revenue while fighter pay holds at roughly 17% of company revenue(versus 50% in NBA/NFL/NHL and 67% in boxing), a gap that two antitrust cases — Le v. Zuffa and Davis v. Zuffa— argue is the product of UFC’s monopoly position. And politically, the deal lands Dana White, one of President Trump’s most loyal allies through three campaigns, in control of a streaming megaphone reaching every Paramount+ household in America the same year he stages UFC Freedom 250 on the White House South Lawn — a convergence of sports, broadcast, and presidential branding without recent precedent.