Is the UFC headed to Netflix after its current deal with ESPN expires?
On January 6, World Wrestling Entertainment will make its long-awaited debut on the streaming giant, taking its flagship show off cable television for the first time since its inception more than 30 years ago. In early 2024, the sports entertainment organization revealed that they had signed a massive $5 billion deal to bring Monday Night RAW to Netflix for the next 10 years.
With the UFC’s deal with ESPN set to run out at the end of 2025, could we see Dana White and Co. follow suit and bring their product to the world’s biggest streaming service?
It’s certainly possible according to MMA Fighting’s Damon Martin. In a recent post on X, the respected combat sports journalist offered some insight from industry insiders who strongly believe that the UFC will join its business 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 parent company—purchased World Wrestling Entertainment for $9.3 billion before merging the two organizations under one corporate banner, TKO Group Holdings.
Netflix’s First Foray into Combat Sports Leaves Fight Fans Frustrated
While Netflix’s first dive into the world of live combat sports rendered big results for the company, it left a lot of fight fans frustrated.
In November, Netflix was the exclusive home to a boxing match between former heavyweight world champion ‘Iron’ Mike Tyson and YouTube star Jake Paul.
While Netflix knew the fight would generate big numbers, it’s safe to say that the viewers they drew exceeded all expectations as well as their bandwidth.
According to reports, more than 65 million people live-streamed the generational clash simultaneously. Unfortunately, thousands of households were left scrambling to watch the fight through alternative resources after the streaming site crashed during the co-main event 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 officer Bela Bajaria said during a press event 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.”
Of course, WWE’s chief content officer Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque will happily look past a few bugs in the system if it means getting 60 million fans to tune into RAW every week.
“I’ll just say, if it blinks a couple of times and we do 60 million, I’m good with that,” Levesque said with a laugh.
