UFC Release
ESPN Release
As you may have heard by now, the UFC has signed a long term deal with ESPN+ to provide up to 15 events a year starting in 2019. The events are:
- Dana White's Contender Series (Tuesday Nights in the summer)
- 15 UFC Events a year (All the Fight Paas cards now and some lower end FS1 fights)
- Weigh In's
- Classic fights, best of's, compliations, etc..
- Exclusive content before PPV bouts
The deal, thanks to the LA Times is $ 150 million/year for 5 years. Also according to them, the linear/higher end portion of the contract is still being discussed with FOX and NBC. A few things/
observations:
1. If the report re: NBC involved is correct, then how many events does NBC get? The article stated that nearly 20 events a year are still unaccounted for. Does NBC get a even ten? Do those
events schedule around FOX's other commitments on weekends?
2. FOX and NBC do work together in NASCAR to a degree so this isn't 100% shocking but I couldn't have pictured that NBC would have room to carry UFC cards with the broadcast network and only
one, 24 hour, national sports network. Particuarly when NBC has this already.
Notre Dame football
NASCAR XFinity and Monster Energy Series
NHL (Tuesdays/Wednesdays/Sundays)
IndyCar (A lot of those races occur on Saturday nights)
NFL (Sunday Night)
Cycling (Tour de France)
Olympics (August 2020)
Premier League (Most occur on mornings though)
Hockey East (Friday Nights January-March)
IMSA (Coming in 2019)
Good news for NBC, a large amount of UFC programming will occur at night while most of the motorsports will take place during the daytime hours. Not as congested as FOX but still could be many 10pm ET fights. Not suitable for a lot of fans to wait all day.
More will be written later when the deal with FOX and likely NBC are done in ink. Back to ESPN:
Can they air events on ESPN (The TV Network)?: Nope, doesn't look like it. I honestly don't blame Dana White here because it's very rare for ESPN to be open on Saturday nights at any point of the year.
Also, a possible indirect reason why ESPN and UFC didn't sign a higher end deal is that the fact that ESPN showcases the Top Boxing Champions on weekends frequently (I'm not a fan of Boxing
so I can't tell you much of the organization) but with that, maybe the UFC didn't like the possibility of going against another fighting championship. Just a personal thought.
ESPN has been widely panned for not treating MMA/UFC as a real, legitimate sport (As Dana actually pointed out in 2011) Several years ago, there was a show produced by ESPN called MMA Live. It aired on Fridays at 1am and often delayed even further with live action such as college football or arena football.
With the increased exposure that ESPN has given the UFC with more discussions and interviews with fighters on SportsCenter and other shows, this is ESPN's chance to live up to their word and air/promote that biggest growing sport out there.
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