If the early indications for both UFC 324 and 325 tell us anything about TKO’s experiment with Paramount, the news looks good.
This week’s edition of The MMA Draw podcast breaks down the good, the bad, and the ugly right now for streaming media platforms like Paramount, Peacock, and ESPN Unlimited. The race is on to find out who can survive and finish in third place.
Even with a likely loss against Netflix in acquiring Warner Brothers Discovery assets, Paramount has some options to explore to build out inventory for their subscriber platform. They still have NFL media rights for a few more years. If Paramount is going to win the bronze medal, UFC has to be a key reason for their success.
According to TKO-friendly Sports Business Journal, over 600,000 Paramount+ same-day app downloads (for a total of one million weekend downloads) indicated strong interest in UFC 324. The event drew an estimated five million viewers. (You can read Paramount’s internal memo about UFC subscription numbers here.)
UFC 325 reportedly drew one million searches on Google. Both UFC 324 + 325 drew reported gates of over $10M dollars.
So far, so good for both TKO and Paramount. As you can see in this e-mail’s embedded video, Paramount management is very supportive of UFC and will be expanding should programming options in the near future. Unlike ESPN, Paramount seems actively committed in promoting UFC events.
Whether Paramount can recover their $7.7B seven-year investment with UFC remains to be seen, but UFC is giving Paramount+ a fighting chance at grabbing a younger male audience.
Nate wrote an article last week arguing that UFC is not currently in a position to grow the sport of Mixed Martial Arts and that today’s trajectory simply doesn’t hold up to past historical performance. Fair enough, but we’re living in a ruthless environment where everyone is trying to grab a life preserver to stay afloat.
Paramount and UFC want to make things work. So far, so comfortable. The same cannot be said about other streaming platforms who have committed massive amounts of money for live sports.
This Hollywood Reporter headline about Peacock tells the story: Peacock Posts $552 Million Loss as Subscribers Rise to 44 Million
Peacock has gone all-in with live sports, buying NBA and MLB packages. The platform wants to dominate Sunday nights in America with sports. The question is whether or not they can come anywhere close to breaking even from their live sports expenditures.
Then there’s the Disney story. You have to separate Disney’s numbers from ESPN’s.
Disney’s roll-out of ESPN Unlimited is turning out to be a rather confusing mess, especially for YouTubeTV subscribers. There were many angry fans who apparently could not watch the Royal Rumble WWE PLE. Former Nick Khan CAA client and current media ally Bill Simmons expressed his exasperation with ESPN Unlimited integration with his cable provider.
This Disney dumpster fire has Bob Iger reportedly heading for the exits early, despite getting paid nearly $46 million in 2025.
Can’t keep up with how fast the media landscape is changing and where combat sports fits into this picture? Subscribe to The MMA Draw and let us do the dirty work for you.
Other topics on this week’s MMA Draw podcast: Why did Turki Alalshikh run a major boxing event at Madison Square Garden on the same day as WWE’s Royal Rumble event in Riyadh? More intriguingly, why did one of the world’s most famous wrestling fans — and front man for bringing Wrestlemania 43 in 2027 to the Kingdom — skip the WWE show?
Longtime online publication Slate published a brutal article about Mark Shapiro’s TKO value extraction tactics on WWE. It’s a head-turning article that is spreading years worth of MMA Draw discussion points.
The Black-letter law definition of TKO is simple: They are an advertising agency that functions as both a political mercenary and government contractor.
These three elements define the mission of Egon Durban at Silver Lake and Mark Shapiro at TKO. Everything is a profit center with these guys. With all of TKO’s major properties now locked into guaranteed media rights deals, the full-blown conversion of UFC & WWE into advertising agencies is accelerating. As Rich Greenfield of Lightshed Partners recently noted, TKO has extra rocket fuel now that blue chip sponsors are signing up to do business with UFC on Paramount.
Thomas Hauser’s article on TKO/Zuffa Boxing in The Guardian is devastating news for US legacy promoters.
UFC contractual tactics with even sharper promoter-friendly clauses should scare away boxers but it isn’t. Zuffa Boxing, which Mr. Hauser reports is a 60/40 SELA-TKO Joint Venture, is signing some very interesting talent for 2026 fight cards.
Bottom line? TKO didn’t really need Congress to launch the Ali Revival Act but they did anyway… because they can. They influence Washington D.C. and you don’t. There’s even a bizarre UFC-related connection to US President Donald J. Trump’s new Board of Peace.
TKO lives in an alternative universe and world from the rest of us.
Learning about TKO and The Epstein Files gives you a glimpse into the rise of the United Arab Emirates and their vast influence in American politics. It’s also the kind of knowledge that provides context to the vastly complicated relationship between the Emirates and Saudi Arabia. This is the wave that Silver Lake and TKO has been riding to generate billions of dollars in revenues.
At The MMA Draw, we interpret the extremely dark world of fight sport politics and deliver our discoveries in an easy-to-understand format with some old-fashioned gallows humor.
You can check out The MMA Draw Podcast on Substack via the following feeds:
Nate Wilcox is Editor-in-Chief of The MMA Draw. He founded BloodyElbow.com in 2007 and sold it in 2024.
Zach Arnold is a lead opinion writer for The MMA Draw on Substack. His archives can be read at FightOpinion.com.
