Mark Shapiro, the president and chief operating officer of media and sports giant Endeavor and TKO, is hopeful that the UFC mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion will be among the “hot” sports properties that generate major media rights value after securing a huge deal for wrestling's WWE with Netflix.
UFC's rights deal in the US will be up for renewal next year but an extension with ESPN will be the priority as the Disney-owned broadcaster has an exclusive period of negotiations.
Shapiro was speaking at The Summit, part of Leaders Week London, and said that “first things first, the negotiation will be with ESPN, they have an exclusive window, we’re only talking to them.”
He also confirmed that the exclusive period spans across the first quarter of 2025 (January – March) and running into April 2025.
“We see a long-term future with ESPN,” Shapiro said, adding that the emergence of ESPN Bet, the broadcaster's sports betting arm, and the “hundreds of millions of dollars” that it has put into marketing the UFC has strengthened the partnership while also making MMA a “mainstream sport, not a niche.”
Although Shapiro left the door open on the possibility of having other broadcast partners alongside ESPN widen the organization’s distribution net, he reaffirmed Endeavor’s loyalty to the Disney conglomerate, stating: “We're open to having multiple partners, but we prefer to keep it all within the Walt Disney Company because inside that you have multiple partners - all those ESPN channels, ABC, Hulu, Disney+, it’s one company, one platform, and they're selling and marketing it that way.
“So we'd love to keep it there, but we do know there are other platforms that can help us grow our sport and [are] maybe more aligned with a certain strategy, meaning premium or volume [sports events], and UFC offers both. So we're willing to entertain and have those conversations, but we have to first have this exclusive window with ESPN.”
ESPN also owns UFC’s extensive historical video catalog.
Earlier this year, Netflix acquired rights to stream WWE's Monday Night Raw in several major global territories, taking the flagship program away from linear TV for the first time.
Netflix has reportedly paid around $5 billion for the rights to Raw, which at 31 years old is one of the longest-running weekly episodic sports TV shows in the world.
Basketball's NBA also recently concluded an 11-year, $76-billion domestic media rights deal with Disney, NBC and Amazon which continued to illustrate the value of live sports.
Shapiro believes this value will not diminish for the biggest properties and hopes UFC can enter this category.
He stated: “The truth is you're going to have some properties that are challenged …. And then you're going to have other sports properties, like you've just seen with the NBA, like you'll always see with the NFL, that are going to be hotter than hot. And WWE fell into that. And I'm hopeful that UFC will be in the hot category.”
“Don't take for granted that is's going to be like this forever. It's not. Sports right now is the only thing flat out working across linear and digital. Because it's live, and because of the competition, the rooting history, the equity many of these sports have with their fan bases and different countries and universes and followings.
“So, sports is on its own. It's a unicorn. And that's why you see so many deals where the platforms are putting more and more sports on non-traditional platforms, or putting them in windows that are unorthodox. Sports works, and it is the magic serum. I'm not saying there's a bubble coming, but different strokes for different folks on a lot of these sports and leagues. So some will stay hot and some will cool off to warm, but they'll never be less than warm.”
Netflix's WWE deal will begin in January 2025, with the streaming heavyweight to broadcast the weekly three-hour live Raw show both domestically in the US, as well as Canada, the UK, and across Latin America. More regions will be added to the deal during its length, which is rumored to be as long as 10 years.
Outside of the US, Netflix will also be the dedicated broadcaster of WWE’s Friday night Smackdown and NXT weekly shows in the territories covered by the agreement, and will broadcast WWE’s slate of premium live events (PLEs), including the iconic WrestleMania annual event.
Although it has an established popularity and global reach, Shapiro views the 10-year Netflix deal as a significant moment for WWE.
He said: “Given that Netflix is fast approaching 300 million global subscribers, it's a great move for us. It's a first move, it's a leadership move. It's an innovative move, and we're really excited to do that at the beginning of next year, and having those rights be locked in sustained for 10 straight years, and another option beyond that makes investors confident that the growth is going to be there on the media rights from that standpoint.”
“It's shown on [previous OTT broadcaster the NBC-owned] Peacock to not just be a huge driver for acquisition, but incredible on the retention side of things because it's every single week, and therefore churn is reduced, at least given the WWE fans in universe.”
