One week after a significant technical failure stopped thousands of American customers from paying to watch UFC 313, a recent report reveals UFC CEO Dana White is keen to leave ESPN+ for a partnership with Netflix.
As reported by Jake Aryeh and Erich Richter from the New York Post, the Netflix agreement is set to commence next January following the conclusion of UFC’s contract with ESPN.
Numerous reports indicate that thousands were unable to buy UFC 313 — where Alex Pereira lost his light heavyweight championship to Magomed Ankalaev at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas — via ESPN’s streaming service. As reported by Sports Illustrated, some individuals who missed the fight were billed regardless, while others faced double charges.
“Oh yeah, it made it to me,” White said during the post-fight press conference. “I don’t know what happened with their platform tonight. There were a lot of pissed-off people.”
One of them was White himself, who directly broadcasted the start of the fight to 20K Instagram viewers using his personal, cage-side TV screen.
Moreover, it’s not solely the UFC looking to exit this agreement. Richter stated that ESPN was already dissatisfied with UFC’s PPV figures prior to UFC 313.
"The UFC gets [paid] 300,000 pay-per-view buys as a ‘buy-in’ from ESPN,” the reporter said on his Post YouTube podcast “There’s no way that ESPN is getting 300,000 pay-per-view buys out of every pay-per-view, from what I was told. So, this has been a bad marriage in the last couple years for both parties.
“UFC is frustrated that the technology that ESPN [uses] is not up to speed yet, and ESPN is frustrated because they’re not getting the pay-per-view buys that they had expected.”
The recent PPV partnership would align well as Netflix already possesses the rights to WWE events, which is owned by Endeavor, the parent company of UFC.
In May 2018, UFC granted ESPN the rights to broadcast its events in a deal valued at approximately $1.5 billion. The agreement — encompassing 30 events annually, with 20 on ESPN+ and 10 on ESPN's linear channels — initially committed UFC for five years, but discussions and prolongations extended it to seven.
It remains uncertain whether Netflix will offer free access to UFC pay-per-views.
Both the UFC and Netflix declined to verify the reports.
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