During an end of year industry survey, media insiders pegged Netflix as the UFC’s new home as the promotion’s broadcast deal with ESPN ends next year.
2025 is a big year for UFC as its broadcast rights deal with ESPN ends in the dying months of the year. The UFC could end up in a new home — or multiple homes — if a big money deal to stay with ESPN isn’t reached. And according to media experts approached by business news outlet Bloomberg, they expect that to happen.
Bloomberg Screentime shared the results of an industry poll delivered to knowledgeably insiders with some surprising results. UFC’s current partner ESPN didn’t come in first. They didn’t even come in second. Instead, they came in third most likely to land the UFC’s broadcast rights.
First place was Netflix, which isn’t a shock given UFC parent company TKO Group brokered a $10 billion deal to bring WWE to the streaming company starting in January.
Second place was Amazon, which is a bit more surprising considering what happened between Endeavor executive chairman Patrick Whitesell and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos right around the last time the companies were negotiating UFC rights. Bezos and Whitesell’s ex-wife are rumored to be getting married next week!
Bloomberg Screentime asked media experts, ‘UFC’s TV rights come up next year. Who will take them?’
Top Answer: Netflix pic.twitter.com/nkhdYrRZNb
— Jed I. Goodman © (@jedigoodman) December 24, 2024
In third place is ESPN and Disney, who clearly need UFC to keep ESPN+ stable and help launch two new ludicrously expensive streaming packages for some reason in 2025.
ESPN doesn’t just have a traditional broadcast deal with UFC. It bought the exclusive rights to sell UFC pay-per-views behind the ESPN+ paywall in the United States. That’s why you might have noticed an oh-so-slight drop in the quality of UFC PPV undercards — the company gets paid the same amount per event no matter what, so why stack events when you’ve got so many to provide?
So where will UFC end? Let this media expert tell you: Netflix and ESPN and maybe somewhere else as well. We expect the promotion to carve up their content into several packages because the only thing better than one multi-billion dollar deal is multiple multi-billion dollar deals.
UFC has an exclusive negotiating period with ESPN that lasts until March/April. After that they’re free to field offers from all comers, but don’t think there isn’t a whole lot of informal chatting going on. We expect an announcement by May or June. Fingers crossed the deals that get made are good for fans and don’t just add to the number of $20 a month streaming packages we have to buy.