Is the UFC headed to Netflix after its present cope with ESPN expires?
On January 6, World Wrestling Leisure will make its long-awaited debut on the streaming large, taking its flagship showcase cable tv for the primary time since its inception greater than 30 years in the past. In early 2024, the sports activities leisure group revealed that that they had signed a large $5 billion deal to deliver Monday Night time RAW to Netflix for the following 10 years.
With the UFC’s cope with ESPN set to expire on the finish of 2025, might we see Dana White and Co. comply with go well with and produce their product to the world’s largest streaming service?
It’s definitely attainable in keeping with MMA Combating’s Damon Martin. In a latest submit on X, the revered fight sports activities journalist provided some perception from trade insiders who strongly consider that the UFC will be a part of its enterprise brother on Netflix in 2026.
“A lot of industry folks seem to believe Netflix is the leading candidate to land at least part of the UFC’s broadcast rights after 2025,” Martin wrote. “Next year is gonna be very big for the UFC.”
In 2024, Endeavor—the UFC’s guardian firm—bought World Wrestling Leisure for $9.3 billion earlier than merging the 2 organizations underneath one company banner, TKO Group Holdings.
Netflix’s First Foray into Fight Sports activities Leaves Battle Followers Annoyed
Whereas Netflix’s first dive into the world of reside fight sports activities rendered massive outcomes for the corporate, it left quite a lot of struggle followers pissed off.
In November, Netflix was the unique house to a boxing match between former heavyweight world champion ‘Iron’ Mike Tyson and YouTube star Jake Paul.
Whereas Netflix knew the struggle would generate massive numbers, it’s protected to say that the viewers they drew exceeded all expectations in addition to their bandwidth.
In response to reviews, greater than 65 million folks live-streamed the generational conflict concurrently. Sadly, hundreds of households had been left scrambling to observe the struggle by different assets after the streaming web site crashed through the co-main occasion rematch between Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano.
“Whenever we do live events, we want it to go smoothly for every single one of our members,” Netflix chief content material officer Bela Bajaria stated throughout a press occasion on Wednesday. “That’s really important—also, to put it in perspective, it was 65 million concurrent streams, right? It was a very successful night. A lot of people [watched], the scale was very big, which is great. There’s a lot of interest in it.”
After all, WWE’s chief content material officer Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque will fortunately look previous just a few bugs within the system if it means getting 60 million followers to tune into RAW each week.
“I’ll just say, if it blinks a couple of times and we do 60 million, I’m good with that,” Levesque stated with fun.
