Paramount buys UFC rights for $7.7 billion, ending PPV occasions

Paramount simply acquired the US rights to UFC for seven years in a deal value $7.7 billion {dollars}, . This contract begins in 2026 and covers the group’s full slate of 13 marquee bouts and 30 Battle Night time occasions per 12 months. All matches and occasions will stream within the US on Paramount+ and choose fights will simulcast on CBS.

This ends the pay-per-view (PPV) mannequin that ESPN+ has favored for premium UFC occasions. “What’s on pay-per-view anymore? Boxing? Motion pictures on DirecTV? It’s an outdated, antiquated mannequin,” stated Mark Shapiro, president of UFC’s dad or mum firm TKO Group. Matches happen all year long, which is not true of different sports activities. This could preserve the UFC’s huge fanbase tethered to that Paramount+ subscription.

This occurred only a few days after and its subsidiaries for $8 billion. It is pretty wild that Skydance paid $8 billion to personal Paramount and its varied IPs in perpetuity and $7.7 billion to air UFC fights in a single nation for seven years.

“UFC is a unicorn asset that comes up about as soon as a decade,” stated TKO Group CEO David Ellison. Paramount can also be keen on buying the worldwide rights to air UFC matches and it is being given an unique negotiation window with every nation to just do that.

It has been reported that Paramount doubtless placated Trump in a number of methods to make sure the FCC permitted the acquisition. The corporate to settle a lawsuit with Trump after 60 Minutes interviewed Kamala Harris and reduce a solution for time, which is one thing televised interviews have at all times completed. Paramount will allocate that cash to Trump’s future presidential library and didn’t present a “assertion of apology or remorse.”

CBS, which is owned by Paramount, additionally canceled The Late Present With Stephen Colbert, which was seen by many as a . The president denies this, saying the to a “pure lack of expertise.”

Paramount has promised to finish all US-based Variety, Fairness, and Inclusion (DEI) applications and to for CBS Information to ensure that conservative voices aren’t drowned out by the fixed drumbeat of actuality. Trump has additionally publicly said that CBS shall be giving him for public service bulletins constant together with his ideological beliefs.