Why Paramount's $7.7B overpay of UFC was both crazy & necessary
We'll know much more after Conor McGregor's return.
Paramount finally released the complete viewership numbers for UFC Freedom 250 this week and it brings some clarity to a question that has been hotly debated about their deal with the UFC:
What were Larry & David Ellison thinking?
Initial reports that the event averaged 7 million viewers in the U.S. (per Nielsen in the U.S. and Adobe Analytics in Latin America) had some critics howling that the $7.7 billion deal was a bust.
But this week’s announcement from the UFC that the event drew 34 million viewers globally might be changing the debate yet again. From the press release:
UFC Freedom 250 reached a record-breaking 17 million total viewers on the platform across the U.S. and Latin America (according to Nielsen in the U.S. and Adobe Analytics in Latin America.), UFC today announced that viewership in additional countries, including Australia, China, India, South Korea, New Zealand, and the U.K., has doubled the reported audience and increased total global viewership to an estimated 34 million people, making the landmark White House card one of the most-watched events in UFC history.
The Ellisons ended up twice as much as the rest of their media frenemies for UFC media rights. Was it really worth it?
Does Paramount know what they’re doing with the UFC?
At The MMA Draw, we’re asking that question as to why Paramount hired Glenn Jacobs & Matt Kenny from ESPN to oversee whatever-it-is-they’re-doing right now.
As Nate recently pointed out on our latest MMA Draw Podcast, it is crazy that same-day UFC Freedom 250 Paramount subscribers are going to get Conor McGregor’s return fight in the same billing cycle.
Notwithstanding the total chaos and disorganization within Paramount’s UFC production middle management, there obviously was a method to the $7.7B overpay for UFC media rights madness.
As reported in August 2025 by Sports Business Journal, Mark Shapiro first choice for the UFC’s new media partner was Netflix. So much so that he gave Netflix a 45 day exclusive negotiating window after the ESPN exclusive negotiating window expired.
It turns out that both Paramount and Mark Shapiro were desperate parties for different reasons. Ever since consummating the $7.7B deal, it’s all anyone in TKO-land can talk about.
No, Dave, UFC is not an overpriced AEW
Earlier this wee, a Twitter flame war involving Fred Garvin, Dave Meltzer, and Robert Joyner caught our attention regarding who should get the blame or the credit for the Paramount-UFC marriage and whether there is a mutually beneficial arrangement (or not).
Fred Garvin had the hater’s take:
“It will go down as the worst deal in sports history. Not even the merger justifies the bath Paramount is going to take.”
Dave Meltzer piled on with a contention that Paramount overpaid horrifically for UFC media rights (correct) and that Tony Khan’s AEW wrestling promotion offers a much better value in terms of dollar spent by Warner Brothers Discovery for weekly pro-wrestling programming.
Rob Joyner pointed out that there’s more to the deal than just the financial:
AEW is a distant second to WWE in terms of revenue generation and brand power. AEW should have developed a larger European footprint by now, but that’s another story for another day.
The Ellisons are playing a whole ‘nother ball game
When Paramount overpaid for UFC, they did so from a position of both weakness and strength (and a separate political agenda)
Weakness because Paramount is far behind the other US streaming platforms.
Strength because Larry Ellison wouldn’t finance his son David’s venture off the back of Oracle debt financing if he wasn’t able, willing, and ready to go all-in.
The hidden agenda was revealed most explicitly by respected Israeli news outlet Haaretz last fall in a piece that discusses the Ellisons’ reasons for wildly overpaying for Bari Weiss’ Free Press, but has eerie echos of their over pay for the UFC:
Paramount Skydance's acquisition of The Free Press, and her subsequent installation as editor-in-chief of CBS News, raised eyebrows for multiple reasons. Some questioned why Paramount would put Weiss in a newly created top role at the network news channel when she has zero broadcast experience. Others wondered why Paramount would pay $150 million when The Free Press generates drastically less – an estimated $20 million – in annual revenue.
…
"They also saw what Elon Musk did with Twitter and Jeff Bezos with The Washington Post and thought, 'We can do that with our properties. You can spend money influencing elections, or you can just buy a media outlet'", said Zaid Jilani.….
“CBS is part of this whole huge media empire that the Ellisons are acquiring. They can afford to lose money on these decisions. What they want is power,” said Nation columnist David Klion.
The UFC deal, while less obviously political, is still part of the Ellison’s power-first media business strategy.
Paramount overpaid for UFC media rights because it was also buying access to Ari Emanuel and his unmatched connections in Hollywood, the Trump White House, and all of the major key Middle Eastern Sovereign Wealth Funds.
Endeavor/TKO’s business overlaps with the same political and business partners as the Ellisons have relied on in building their new media empire: President Trump, Jared Kushner, Khaldoon Al Mubarak (UAE), the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.
Larry Ellison overpaid for UFC media rights on Paramount because he had to. He also could do it when no one else was positioned to do so. It was a bold and necessary move.
The Ellisons have everything to lose, including Oracle
It was also an act of desperation but as you could see by recent headlines on media mergers & acquisitions, totally necessary. What other sports property was available to rent in the United States on the size and scale of UFC? This was one of the key prongs of Scott Barrett’s TKO bull thesis as a monopoly in the beginning stages.
An upcoming renewal of AEW media rights for Warner Brothers Discovery might have made sense had Paramount not bought them out.
AEW works fine for TNT & TBS. The problem is that the erosion in cable is accelerating in speed. What is the current value of a second-place pro-wrestling company for carriage fees?
AEW is not a media property that can make-or-break a streaming platform. It’s a nice product to have but it is not a subscription driver in 2026. Perhaps that can change moving forward but right now it is what it is.
If Larry Ellison is going to leave his son David with the inheritance of a lifetime, he has to finance it off the back of Oracle stock. During this inflated AI boom cycle on global stock markets, Oracle has gone all in with various forms of mixed shelf debt-and-stock financing to the reported amount of $50 billion dollars.
It is a massive race against the clock for Oracle to finance and maintain their massive global expansion plans for AI data centers. Oracle is one of the most leveraged companies as an AI-dependent play. Either this is going to be the biggest boom or bust out of all the major players involved. It will make volatility on the South Korean stock market with companies like Sandisk and SK Hynix look like child’s play.
Oracle’s stock price has been on a roller coaster since backing Skydance’s acquisition of Paramount in 2025:
Any business in that kind of financial situation, has to go big and do it fast. There is no time to ask questions. Break a few eggs, then clean up the mess later. Creative destruction.
Is it crazy that Paramount paid $7.7B for seven years of UFC media rights?
Yes.
It’s a lot crazier to bankroll a streaming platform like Paramount off the back of your family fortune.
If you think the AI business is inflated and cutthroat, try the media business. It’s why Netflix and Paramount both got punished by investors on the stock market during the bidding process for Warner Brothers Discovery.
A collective ugh.
The moves by Larry & David Ellison, in conjunction with Gerry Cardinale of Redbird Capital, to grab both Paramount & Warner Brothers Discovery is a big sign of consolidation in the streaming space.
Someone had to do it.
The Ellisons did it.
If they are going to make Paramount work, UFC will be an essential reason for their success. We have plenty of reasons to be skeptical about it, but that’s the bottom line calculation.
Consolidation and concentration of power is quickly here in American media.
Who is going to get the bronze medal?
We know who 1A and 1B are in the American streaming landscape: YouTube and Netflix. Two very different business models.
Netflix has an unquestioned algorithm and brand presence. YouTube is like high-end cable access and YouTubeTV is the closest thing to a digital cable package you can find.
The question is who is going to grab third place in the States.
Paramount, Peacock, Tubi, Disney/ESPN, and Roku are fighting it out to see who can generate positive Free Cash Flow without burning major reserves on live sports programming.
The Murdoch media empire recently made a huge move to set the stage to attack both the content and pipeline avenues by purchasing Roku in a $22 billion dollar stock-and-cash deal. As The Ankler noted, Lachlan Murdoch’s purchase puts Fox in a major position of strength in regards to data and advertising:
Fox
Fox News
Fox One
Fox Sports
Tubi (100M users)
Roku (100M subscribers).
Roku puts the Murdoch empire on so many more televisions screens and positions Fox for both advertising and control.
Paramount has valuable CBS assets (and soon WBD properties) but is still reliant upon allies like Sky to have their app available in the UK market.
Matt Strauss of NBCUniversal recently claimed that Peacock would turn cash flow positive in Q2 of 2026. We’ll find out shortly how right (or wrong) he is. Peacock overspent significantly to acquire NBA and MLB sports rights, only to see both entities catch fire with great 2026 games. 11 years, $76 billion dollars. It makes Paramount’s $7.7B play for UFC look prudent in comparison.
Disney and ESPN find themselves caught in no-man’s land. It’s going to cost them more to retain their current sports programming inventory. Such as reports of ESPN negotiating with Ari Emanuel client Pat McAfee for a reported $60 million-per-year production deal.
As Bay Area sports announcer Brodie Brazil recently discussed, ESPN may have little choice but to pay their own version of the Ari Emanuel tax.
Putting all of this information into a cohesive storyline, we are witnessing a chaotic race to see who can place third in the US streaming wars by the end of this decade.
Did David Ellison get snookered out of $7.7 billion dollars for seven years of UFC?
Yes.
He may have had little choice and looks like child’s play compared to the Ellisons’ $100 billion dollar-plus acquisition of Warner Brothers Discovery.
Paramount bought into one part of the TKO double-monopoly and could perhaps be a beneficiary of a third monopoly if the Muhammad Ali American Boxing Revival Act passes the US Senate.
Paramount overpaying for UFC media rights is pretty insignificant compared tohow the hell David Ellison is going to (mis)manage brand names like CBS and CNN moving forward. (See: 60 Minutes.)
The Murdoch family made the smarter play with Roku but the Ellisons not only went all in with Ari Emanuel, they went all on with the same backscratching business partners in Washington D.C. and Abu Dhabi who hold the keys to the AI race outside of mainland China.
Whoever would have thought that UFC would be a part of such a complicated geopolitical Rubik’s cube?
Everyone is right and everyone is wrong at the same time.
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. Contact Zach: fightopinion at protonmail dot com.