United States: UFC wishes to negotiate a 10-year, $10bn TV rights deal (press)

The Ultimate Fighting Championship, the American MMA organisation, is reportedly seeking a deal for its TV rights in the US market worth $1bn a year (€970m) over a ten-year cycle (2026-2035), according to the US business and financial news website Bloomberg on 10/01/2025.

American group ESPN (The Walt Disney Company) acquired the media rights to UFC events in the United States over the 2019-2023 cycle for an annual fee of $300m ($1.5bn/€1.46bn in total), and then extended those rights for a further two years until 2025.

While exclusive talks between the UFC and Disney for an extension of the rights will take place from January to April 2025, streaming platforms Netflix and Prime Video (Amazon) as well as video platform YouTube (Google) have expressed interest in the rights, according to Bloomberg. Warner Bros. Discovery, which will no longer broadcast the NBA in the US from 2025, is also among the candidates.

"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…