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 big, taking its flagship exhibit 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 an enormous $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, may we see Dana White and Co. observe swimsuit and produce their product to the world’s greatest streaming service?
It’s actually doable in accordance with MMA Preventing’s Damon Martin. In a current publish on X, the revered fight sports activities journalist supplied some perception from business insiders who strongly imagine 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 dad or mum firm—bought World Wrestling Leisure for $9.3 billion earlier than merging the 2 organizations below one company banner, TKO Group Holdings.
Netflix’s First Foray into Fight Sports activities Leaves Struggle Followers Annoyed
Whereas Netflix’s first dive into the world of reside fight sports activities rendered massive outcomes for the corporate, it left a whole lot of battle followers pissed off.
In November, Netflix was the unique dwelling to a boxing match between former heavyweight world champion ‘Iron’ Mike Tyson and YouTube star Jake Paul.
Whereas Netflix knew the battle would generate massive numbers, it’s protected to say that the viewers they drew exceeded all expectations in addition to their bandwidth.
In keeping with experiences, greater than 65 million folks live-streamed the generational conflict concurrently. Sadly, 1000’s of households had been left scrambling to observe the battle by way of various assets after the streaming web site crashed throughout 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.
