In 2007 it looked like the UFC was headed to HBO in a big move for the growing fight company. Now White is detailing why the deal fell apart.
Dana White often says the public only know a tiny percentage of what’s really going on behind the scenes at UFC. Well, today we know a little bit more because White shared some wild stories about business deals gone wrong during an interview with FOX News.
According to White, the UFC had a deal signed, sealed, and delivered in 2007 to broadcast events on premium cable network HBO. Then the suits tried to meddle with the UFC product.
“We did a deal with HBO where we were gonna put fights on HBO,” White recalled. “HBO came in and started going, ‘We’re gonna have to turn this music down, this is gonna have to—’ No. Nah nah nah no. You guys are not running our production and telling us what to do.”
“We had already signed a deal. We were done! So I literally called Lorenzo [Fertitta] and said ‘We can’t do this deal.’ He’s like ‘What do you mean we can’t do this deal, the deal is done.’ ‘We gotta get out of this deal.’ And Ari [Emanuel] got us out of the HBO deal.”
That’s Endeavor head Ari Emanuel, who bought the UFC in 2016 and continues to hold executive control over the promotion through TKO Group Holdings. Emanuel has been involved with UFC since he represented them during a 2007 contract renewal with Spike TV. And how did he land UFC as a client? By getting White a meeting with HBO Sports.
White has no regrets about pulling the plug on the HBO deal.
“I believe if we had let HBO do what they wanted to do, it would have hurt us and hurt our brand,” White said. “It would have made it stale and old and like boxing was.”
It wasn’t the only time White effectively vetoed a big business deal. He says a $1 billion dollar offer from CBS to buy UFC fell apart after he got into a big fight with CBS-owned Showtime executives during a conference call.
“I was on the call early, and the Showtime guys were on the call early,” White said. “I didn’t know they were gonna be on. I thought we were talking to [CBS head] Les Moonves. So by the time Les and Lorenzo got on the phone, me and Showtime were fighting, going at it. Literally, F you, F you, and they got on and heard us going back and forth, and the call, literally, that was the end of it.”
“So Lorenzo calls me right back immediately, goes, ‘I guess we’re not doing a deal with CBS.’ I said, ‘Yeah. Sorry.’ We got into it a little bit. I hated the guys at Showtime. A bunch of those guys worked for the UFC when we first started out. I thought their production sucked, I thought they were terrible at what they did, and I was very vocal about it.”
“And then it just so happens we’re talking about CBS making us a one billion dollar offer to possibly buy the company,” White said with a laugh. “And by the time Lorenzo and Les Moonves get on, full blown war on the phone.”