The UFC is getting into a essential interval with its broadcasting rights, as widespread hypothesis continues in regards to the group’s subsequent main distribution associate. UFC’s present contract with ESPN, which started in 2019, is approaching its conclusion, prompting trade watchers to investigate doable shifts – together with a major transfer to a streaming-first platform like Netflix.
Dana White on the UFC Broadcast Future
UFC President Dana White has acknowledged the quickly altering media panorama and signaled {that a} main shift could possibly be on the horizon. “The world’s going to vary rather a lot within the subsequent 12 months with our rights offers. Relying on the place we find yourself, I imply, however greater than probably we’re going to finish up with a platform that’s far more international than we at the moment are,” White mentioned in a latest media look.
The UFC’s tv journey has traditionally adopted trade developments: starting on Spike TV, then shifting to Fox, and most lately signing with ESPN. In White’s phrases, “Yearly that we’ve executed a deal, if you consider Spike TV, we began, from there, we went to Fox, from there we went to ESPN, it’s simply we’ve leveled up each single time and made the game larger and larger and larger.”
Netflix
Rumors about Netflix rising as a number one candidate for the UFC’s broadcast rights have gained traction, pushed by the streaming big’s enlargement into reside sports activities. Netflix’s growing funding in reside occasions, together with latest offers with different sports activities leagues, has led analysts to imagine that UFC could possibly be a beneficial addition to its content material lineup. For UFC, a cope with Netflix would current alternatives to faucet into the platform’s intensive international attain, which aligns with White’s imaginative and prescient for the group’s continued worldwide progress.
Addressing the shift from conventional pay tv, White commented, “Pay tv is dying rapidly. Satellite tv for pc’s dying rapidly. These streaming companies … Netflix, their inventory is larger than it’s ever been. They’re killing it.” He additionally harassed the dimensions of change forward: “The world’s going to vary rather a lot after we do our subsequent rights deal. Whereas we’re on this deal, the world will utterly change by the point we come out the opposite aspect of that deal.”
If a deal is struck with a significant streaming service like Netflix, the impression wouldn’t be restricted to distribution alone. The pay-per-view mannequin, lengthy a central income stream for the UFC, could possibly be essentially altered. Negotiations, in response to insiders, additionally embody situations through which UFC content material may seem on a number of platforms, not completely Netflix.
The subsequent broadcast associate is predicted to play a considerable function within the UFC’s international viewers progress. “There’s clearly sure platforms that might actually even simply develop the UFC much more, proper? Which might be insane… attain extra individuals,” White famous.
