Paramount's $7.7B payoff to Ari Emanuel for UFC media rights

On Sunday night, Nate Wilcox & Zach Arnold recorded a podcast regarding WWE heading to ESPN and the relationship between Ari Emanuel & Paramount. Parts of the free podcast may be dated but most of the content turned out to be rather important and relevant. Listen and find out for yourself.

Now we know the terms and conditions for Paramount’s penance to Ari Emanuel in helping smooth over negotiations for US Federal approval of Skydance’s merger with Shari Redstone.

According to Alex Sherman at CNBC, the new Paramount is going to be paying $7.7 billion USD over the next 7 years to UFC for all US media programming rights.

43 yearly events (at least). No more PPVs. UFC PLEs, Fight Nights, and whatever else is generated at the APEX warehouse.

Looks like TKO’s haughty prognostication to Bloomberg about getting a billion dollars yearly for UFC proved to be correct. What no one understood was the pathway to get there.

Now we can guess how this whole charade played out. Welcome to monopolies, mergers, and acquisitions in Trump’s America.

Kissing the Ring

At The MMA Draw newsletter, we have been warning our readers for several months about the political relationships building between Oracle boss Larry Ellison, “King of Hollywood” Ari Emanuel, and US President Donald Trump.

When we tell you that you need a background in politics, business, finance, and law to understand what is happening in the fight business in 2025, we’re not lying.

Paramount’s romancing of US President Donald Trump (with the help of Ari Emanuel) has been one of the biggest media stories of 2025.

Nate Wilcox’s radar on the Paramount front has been spot on. As he recently wrote on The MMA Draw, No one navigates Trump 2.0 better than Ari Emanuel.

Ari Emanuel is one of the five most powerful political figures in the United States in 2025. We stand by this assertion. Every single day, there is a new development that is adding to our confirmation bias.

The next step in building his TKO empire is to monopolize boxing through an amendment to the Ali Act.

Once Nick Khan can establish dominance in the boxing space, TKO will have complete and total control of the three major legs of the combat sports stool — wrestling, boxing, and MMA. They will also have control of all the major media distribution pipelines.

When Zach Arnold wrote about Gangster Government for UFC media rights, he framed the article content around the concept of network executives paying for (perceived) political protection during Trump 2.0.

Today’s announcement about Paramount paying $7.7 billion USD for UFC media rights over the next 7 years provides some key clarity about where things stand in the American marketplace.

Who really wanted UFC?

There is no sugar-coating what a loss of face it is for ESPN to swap out baseball and UFC media rights for WWE rights. WWE has growth potential, for sure, but for a veteran sports executive, content that is perceived as “legitimate sports” is valued at a premium over sports entertainment like the WWE.

ESPN clearly had a set budget for a certain portion of UFC media rights. Now that is gone.

ESPN executives will be hurting this week. The mood will not be pleasant. But in the long run, UFC abandoning them for Paramount may prove to be a blessing in disguise. Now it’s Paramount’s problem to try to get fight fans to watch 43 events a year.

The biggest question for ESPN is whether or not they play ball with Nick Khan for Zuffa Boxing rights. They should explore other options, in our opinion.

As for Netflix, this is a really interesting development. In the end, there was a lot of (purported) smoke but not as much fire as expected. The floated UFC White House event was something that fit right up Netflix’s alley, but given UFC’s current lack of star power, how many mega events could the promotion put on to draw tens of millions of viewers? The Jon Jones saga had to be a bitter pill to swallow.

The promotional machine for the Canelo-Crawford fight in September has been, so far, rather lackluster. We’ll see how the international numbers play out on Netflix. If this fight disappoints, it certainly could chill TKO’s boxing aspirations — even with Nick Khan’s velvet voice.

As for Amazon & Apple, these are two huge platforms with a ton of cash to spend but a lot of unanswered questions. Combat sports might be a low priority for traditional stick-and-ball sport suits, but it is an exciting entry point for live event programming. There may need to be a readjustment in their spending strategies.

As for Paramount, let’s call a spade a spade. Larry Ellison overpaid for UFC media rights because he can. UFC is the proverbial Ferrari for his son. When you’re one of the richest people on the planet, you can binge spend. May as well do it while you are alive and kicking. But even rich people don’t like losing money, which is why former Goldman Sachs executive and current Redbird Capital financier Andy Gordon has his plate full in financing Paramount’s aggressive expansion. Andy Gordon and Gerry Cardinale will be busy bees making all of this pay off. If they can make the math work, their power in professional global sport will explode in size and scope.

Paramount paid a pretty price to Ari Emanuel for UFC media rights and got its merger approved by the FCC. Trump 2.0 politics are transparent and in your face.

The NFL Factor

During this week’s MMA Draw podcast, Nate Wilcox & Zach Arnold discussed the emerging symmetry between TKO and the NFL.

The NFL has a proposed 10% equity stake in ESPN. They have an equity stake in Paramount, although the size of that stake is currently unknown.

The NFL has much larger visions of expansion. They reportedly see themselves as competing with Google and Apple.

TKO’s portfolio lines up nicely with the NFL for shared business interests. OnLocation for VIP service, ESPN, Paramount, and WWE ventures (via Fanatics). The development of TKO’s closeness with the NFL is a loss of face for Tony Khan and All Elite Wrestling. One of the calling cards that Tony Khan could always rely upon for business credibility was being part of a very exclusive ownership club. TKO has exposed that other NFL owners are more interested in doing business with them.

What does all of this mean for PFL?

Paramount's paying $7.7 billion USD for UFC media rights is both a blessing and a curse for Donn Davis.

On the fundraising front, this could be a big lifeline for PFL and open up some new doors — especially for fundraising in Emerging Market funds.

However… PFL has a very delicate situation on its hands for media rights. How can they expect to get even 5% of what UFC is projected to pull in media revenue? How can PFL soften the blow of losing UFC media rights to ESPN executives and convince ESPN that signing up for a long-term deal with PFL is not viewed as some sort of psychological step-down from UFC programming?

John Martin has his work cut out for him.

The TKO python strategy we have highlighted over the last two years in various MMA Draw articles is very real and now extremely dangerous. It is getting very difficult for any potential upstart or current rival to make headway with a media platform that is currently doing business with TKO.

Which is why, in our brand new podcast, we make the case that in order for future opportunities against TKO, you have to hope that there is some sort of combustible civil war between the Nick Khan and Mark Shapiro factions. Barring that circumstance, Big Monopoly in America is savaging smaller prey. Ari Emanuel has never enjoyed a better political climate. Perhaps he has a date with destiny against Casey Wasserman over control of the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games?

The rest of us are just trying to earn a living.

Zach Arnold is the lead opinion writer for The MMA Draw Newsletter on Substack. You can e-mail him at fightopinion - at - protonmail dot com.

Nate Wilcox founded Bloody Elbow in 2007 and sold it in 2024.