Can UFC and ESPN renew their vows or are we headed for divorce court?

ESPN+ screwing up UFC 313 might indicate irreconcilable differences

Looks like 313 wasn’t anybody’s lucky number this past Saturday.

Despite notching an impressive (some might say unbelievable) $10M gate for Saturday’s UFC 313 and Justin Gaethje winning his 14th Fight of the Night bonus, virtually everything that could have gone wrong did, for both TKO/UFC and Disney/ESPN+.

Everybody at fault at UFC 313

On the UFC side, we saw their most beloved champion, Alex Pereira, lose an ugly (if predictable) decision to Magomed Ankalaev, in a fight that won the new champ few new fans and had Jesse on Fire proclaiming the event a disaster (“I was there, the entire fucking arena was booing. I was booing and I never boo fights.”) and The MMA Guru heaping insults and abuse on Ankalaev’s name and expressing shock and fury that clinching against the cage was allowed in the UFC.

Dana goes all-in Tate Bros on Power Slap

We also saw Dana White make the ugly decision to give accused human traffickers Andrew and Tristan Tate a big bro-style welcome cage-side at the event and at Power Slap the night before. While Tate may or may not have the support of President Donald Trump, this was a controversial enough move to generate a mountain of press:

Here’s how The Associated Press covered it:

White was seen shaking hands and hugging Tate and his brother, Tristan, on Friday, when the UFC president and CEO could be heard on a viral video saying: “Welcome to the States, boys.”

The New York Times covered the alleged split between pro- and anti-Tate conservative influencers:

Mr. White has built a multibillion-dollar business safe for figures who say outrageous and sometimes odious things. A shrewd cultural figure, he has helped define a new, masculinist American mainstream where major brands, right-wing YouTubers and celebrities mix freely.

But by welcoming the Tate brothers — long seen as the misogynistic outer edge of the so-called manosphere and accused of crimes against women — Mr. White has thrown open the tent to such an extent that even some prominent internet commentators who vigorously support Mr. Trump expressed shock.

“I’m done with @ufc,” John Cardillo, a conservative influencer, wrote on X. “If @danawhite can’t draw a line and disassociate from trash who bragged on video about grooming and raping teen girls, it tells me all I need to know.”

The Misfit Patriot, an X account that supports Mr. Trump, posted a video of Mr. Tate discussing marrying and having sex with 16-year-olds and commented “Hey .@danawhite, this is the guy whose hand you just shook last night.”

Yeah, yeah, I get that we’re in a novel political environment after Trump’s re-election. Things are so upside down that Calfornia Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom invited former Trump advisor Steve Bannon on his podcast for some “friendly sparring” that resulted in the two men “finding common ground.”

Nonetheless, this is not the kind of publicity that Disney CEO Bob Iger has historically welcomed and Andrew Tate is the kind of figure Disney has always kept far away from its famously family-friendly brand.

Between the decision to profit off of Bryce Mitchell’s incoherent pro-Hitler statements, Sean Strickland’s vile mouth, and Dana White welcoming the Tate Bros, UFC is becoming less and less acceptable to a family-friendly audience.

Is this by design to intentionally drive a wedge with Disney?

The UFC can push the boundaries and debase itself, but ultimately they have to be able to deliver the proverbial drug and if there’s one thing that is costly to UFC it’s ESPN’s failure to do what even the Bulgarians running penny stock Triller can do — livestream a damn show.

The consequences are not only brutal for the Endeavor/Disney marriage, it’s also a brutal sign for the future prospects of ESPN+ now that the Venu jumbo streaming sports package model has died.

It might look like UFC has max leverage now but they won’t if ESPN continues to plummet. The TKO brass is swinging on a trapeze over an abyss, they’ve always made it safely to the next one in the past, but like the Magnificent Seven of NASDAQ, they could fall much farther, much faster than anyone expects.

What does all of this mean for you as a customer?

ESPN+ fails to deliver

Meanwhile, on the ESPN+ side of the ledger, they could not have effed up the event any worse if they tried. There were so many fans unable to stream the event that ESPN+ offered an unprecedented free stream the next day.

How much money did this cost ESPN? More importantly, how much did it cost UFC? By airing it for free, even more people got to see Alex Pereira lose ugly. Talk about adding insult to injury.

Dana White commented at the post-fight presser, “Yeah, there were problems buying (the PPV) on ESPN+. I don’t know what happened with their platform tonight, but yeah, there are a lot of pissed-off people.”

This is a complete failure to perform on the part of ESPN+ and infuriated everyone on the TKO side of the table, so much so that someone inside TKO rushed to The NY Post to leak just how pissed they were.

Where does this leave the UFC media rights deal?

Endeavor cut the current ESPN/UFC deal in 2018 (it was two deals one cut in March and the other in May of 2018) and ESPN+ has been streaming their events since 2019. Initially, a five-year, $1.5 billion deal gave ESPN the rights to air 30 UFC Fight Nights per year, with 10 main cards on ESPN TV and 20 streaming on ESPN+. In 2019, the two sides added two more years to that deal along with pay-per-view broadcasts which were not included in the initial deal.

In retrospect, adding the additional two years may have cost the UFC dearly.

The original deal would have expired in 2023 and the UFC would have gone to market in 2022 — the peak of the streaming boom. Here’s The BBC on the boom & bust cycle:

For over a decade, business was booming in Hollywood, with studios battling to catch up to new companies like Netflix and Hulu. But the good times ground to a halt in May 2023, when Hollywood’s writers went on strike.

Sure, 2021 would have been even better because Wall Street was all-in on legacy media companies like Paramount, Comcast (NBC/Peacock), Warner/Discovery, and Disney:

Nonetheless, 2022 was still an environment much more likely to trigger a bidding war-feeding frenzy for the UFC rights than 2025.

In February, John Ourand of Puck reported that ESPN would let their exclusive negotiating window lapse on April 15:

1. UFC-ESPN talks start slow: It’s becoming clear that both ESPN and UFC will allow their exclusive negotiating window to lapse on April 15 without reaching a deal. The window opened about four weeks ago, and I’m told that the two sides have yet to have formal talks, nor are any scheduled.
   

   ESPN hasn’t soured on UFC, but the league needs a stalking horse bid in order to trigger any significant increase over the current deal. Right now, ESPN pays UFC around $550 million per year for about 30 fight nights and 12 pay-per-view events. In fact, the network would likely try to keep the pay-per-view rights, particularly since it’s launching its direct-to-consumer service later this year. Meanwhile, UFC should expect some interest on the open market—both Netflix and Amazon Prime have expressed a willingness to talk. And Netflix recently started carrying the WWE, which obviously shares its parentco, TKO, with UFC.

Last fall, TKO bragged that execs from multiple suitors would be in Vegas for The UFC 306 show at The Sphere in Las Vegas and Sports Business Journal later claimed that those suitors included Netflix and Amazon.

Here’s how Sports Business Journal saw the landscape as of late January:

Owner TKO Group Holdings is eyeing more than $1 billion per year in its next deal, more than double its current deal. Consensus is UFC’s rights will end up being split between ESPN and a streaming property — Amazon Prime Video, or more likely, Netflix.

“ESPN loves the brand and has done wonders for that brand,” said David Levy, Horizon Sports & Experiences co-CEO and former head of Turner Sports. “The price may be just too high. I think it ends up on a streamer. I’m not sure it’s Amazon. It could be Netflix. Netflix has a relationship already with TKO in their WWE [deal]. Would it be a double hit with the UFC? I don’t know if ESPN is coming up with a billion dollars.”

In 2024, UFC — represented by sister outfit Endeavor — wanted $800 million annually, according to a source with knowledge of the matter. With increased interest in the UFC, and a landmark WWE deal with Netflix, the UFC likely feels confident in going for the much higher target.

“That is, for sure, a big number,” said a media consultant. “I don’t know how they get there, unless they split the rights and Netflix spend gobs of money, as they did on WWE.”

As of late January, the TKO crew were feeling their oats, having talked Netflix out of $5B over 10 years for rights to stream WWE Monday Night Raw.

That kind of talk had Morgan Stanley upping their expectations for the UFC’s media rights sale price in late February.

That was then, this is now

Unfortunately, according to Wrestlenomics, viewership for WWE Raw peaked with its debut episode:

The Entertainment Strategy Guy concurred that viewership was “flat or maybe even down.”

This possibly triggered Netflix CFO Spence Neumann’s comments to Deadline last week that “…not all live content works for us … and being in the business of regular season, of full seasons of big sports, we haven’t found that yet to be something that we necessarily need to deliver.”

Considering that ESPN has been paying mad money for 15 UFC shows a year from the Las Vegas warehouse they call The APEX, this can’t be a bullish indicator.

Who would pay $20 million to air a UFC APEX show? What is an APEX show worth on the open market in 2025? $1M? How could any media operation make their money back on airing that at the prices Shapiro has been talking about?

If Netflix doesn’t want the slop, will Amazon? If Amazon doesn’t overbid for the UFC “regular season”, who’s left? DAZN?

It seems extremely unlikely that DAZN could afford anything close to what ESPN is currently paying, much less the 2x number Bloomberg reported they were seeking in January.

On a March 3 Morgan Stanley call, Shapiro denied those reports, per MMA Fighting:

“All I would say on this — this isn’t so folks can get hot under the collar or get cold or take it as ‘he’s encouraged, he’s optimistic, but he’s not bullish.’ We don’t have to read between the lines here,” Shapiro said. “It’s simple. Of course, we’re going to maximize value. Of course, we think we’re undervalued — not because we did a bad deal — because seven years is a long time and the decks shuffle. But I think, name your analyst, there’s a lot out there.

“I’m not saying we’re not going to get two-times [as much], whatever it might be, that’s generally just word of mouth. That’s not coming from the company.”

Morgan Stanley’s expectations don’t seem to account for the reality that ESPN recently “sought to cut its rights payment to the league by $350 million — from $550 million to just $200 million,” causing MLB to jump ship and continue the “National Pastime’s” long slow descent into complete irrelevance.

It’s clear the media feeding-frenzy for sports streaming rights is over.

Is time catching up with the TKO deal-makers?

While I’ll never bet against Ari Emanuel and Mark Shapiro’s ability to talk media companies out of more money than might seem reasonable, perhaps “the disastrous” UFC 313 card marks a turning point.

With Pereira’s loss, the UFC possibly has its weakest-drawing roster of champions in the modern era.

Let’s run through ‘em:

Women’s champs:

• Strawweight Zhang Weili
  Weili is a legitimate international draw given her fan-friendly style and status as the only ever Chinese UFC champ. Unfortunately, she’s 35 years old and has 29 fights under her belt.

• Flyweight Valentina Shevchenko

  No evidence that Shevchenko moves the needle. She hasn’t headlined a UFC PPV since 2017 and likely never will again.

• Bantamweight Julianna Peña

  Women’s bantamweight was one of the UFC’s marquee divisions back in the glory days of Ronda Rousey. Too bad that was a long time ago. Currently, Pena seems to be holding the belt for Kayla Harrison but it remains to be seen if Harrison will be a draw (or will even be able to consistently make the weight cut).

Men’s Champs:

• Flyweight Alexandre Pantoja

  Men’s flyweight has never been a draw and Pantoja is no exception.

• Bantamweight Merab Dvalishvili

  He headlined UFC 306 at The Sphere and headlined a $9M gate at UFC 311 but it was on the back of Armenian fans who wanted to see Arman Tsarukyan. That’s probably not replicable. Plus, it was Steve Ballmer’s new arena on a grand stage. Future shows won’t have the same aura.

• Featherweight Ilia Topuria*
  There’s an * here because Topuria gave up the title to move up to lightweight but I’m including him here because he’s showing signs of being a major draw…in Europe. That doesn’t suit the UFC’s current model, so unless they end up on DAZN which has a big European presence, or they talk Barcelona or Madrid out of some massive sight fees that puts a limit on how much money Topuria can make the promotion as they currently stream European PPVs at an ungodly late hour in local time so they are on in US prime time.

• Lightweight Islam Makhachev
  Makhachev is a legitimate draw but given the paucity of UFC PPV buy numbers in the ESPN era, we don’t know how big of a draw he is. I’m confident in saying he’s the second biggest draw on this list but he’s never going to reach GSP or Jon Jones levels, much less Conor McGregor or Ronda Rousey-type stardom.

• Welterweight Belal Muhammad
  One of only two Americans (Palestinian-American in Belal’s case) to currently hold a belt, Muhammad is not a draw and never will be.

• Middleweight Dricus Du Plessis
  Not currently a major draw although he’s useful for headlining Australian cards and might allow the promotion to finally do a PPV in Africa (an opportunity they pissed away when they had 3 African champs in Usman, Adesanya, and Ngannou).

• Light Heavyweight Magomed Ankalaev

  Not a draw, never will be.

• Heavyweight Jon Jones
  Jones likely only has one fight left before he retires. He wants big money to face interim champ Tom Aspinall (who is something of a draw in the UK, see comments on Topuria above) and presumably, they are saving that fight for their new media rights partner which means Jones won’t fight in 2025.

There’s some debate among MMA pundits that relatively old dudes like Zach, Brian Campbell, Luke Thomas, and myself have an “old man yelling at cloud” perspective and that our memories of the UFC glory days are irrelevant to the current Zoomer fanbase.

The current UFC demo is a 20-something who got into MMA during the pandemic and likes APEX slop, the Dagestani reign of supremacy, bad kickboxing, and expects attending a UFC live to be an activity reserved for the wealthy as status symbol “experience economy” viewing.

That’s great, but it’s obvious to anyone (except maybe media executives with bigger corporate checkbooks than brains) that the promotion peaked in popularity in the Conor McGregor/Ronda Rousey era around 2016.

Mssrs. Emanuel and Shapiro have chosen to wed the promotion’s fortunes to promotional gimmicks like Donald Trump and while that might have been the shrewd decision in 2016 (and looked even smarter last November), it’s less clear how wise that decision will look over time.

Especially with Ari’s big brother Rahm talking trash about running against Trump in 2028 and an ever-increasing possibility of consumer backlash against companies associated with Trump.

Whatever happened to focusing on delivering the best television experience possible for the fans? ESPN+ certainly hasn’t impressed any UFC fans and maybe the UFC is starting to disappoint their regular customers as well.

Nate Wilcox is Editor-in-Chief of The MMA Draw newsletter on Substack.