Paramount, ESPN deals with UFC, WWE bring out steel chairs in sports streaming cage match
Ellison told the top folks at TKO Holdings – including TKO CEO Ari Emmanuel, TKO president Mark Shapiro and UFC founder Dana White – the long-term plan to transform Paramount into a media leader once Skydance acquired the company, which includes CBS.
Advertisement
'It lifted our eyebrows a little,' Shapiro told The Athletic.
This week, Ellison officially stepped into the ring for what is becoming one of the most engaging business stories of the next decade – how fans will watch their favorite games and sports events.
By taking all of UFC, doing away with pay-per-view and forking over double what the incumbent ESPN is paying with a $1.1 billion per year price tag for U.S. distribution rights, Ellison is transforming Paramount/CBS and putting down a stake in the new world order of sports rights. When you talk about the biggest players for rights in sports, you better put Paramount/CBS on the list, and maybe at the top. Everyone paying attention should have their eyebrows permanently lifted when it comes to Paramount.
The idea that Amazon, Netflix, YouTube and Apple were just going to dominate all of sports viewing brings to mind a favorite saying of retiring college football TV icon, Lee Corso: Not so fast!
Paramount is not alone in fighting back against the new digital players.
ESPN has spent the last week reimagining how it will continue as the center of sports fans' universe as it introduces its 'Next Era' direct-to-consumer product on Aug. 21. It made what essentially were four deals with the NFL, adding three more regular season games to increase its total to 28 per year, taking in the NFL Network, bringing in RedZone and keeping the NFL Draft. There was more to come.
ESPN also brought in WrestleMania and the rest of WWE's premium live events. Like UFC, WWE seemed as if it might be headed for Netflix, Amazon or YouTube. (Netflix already has global rights to WWE's top weekly event, 'Raw' on Monday nights.)
On top of that, ESPN has continued the Great Rebundling, as its new service will cost $29.99 per month but can be combined with Fox One (which has all of Fox's sports, including owned-and-operated channels like FS1 and the Big Ten Network) for $40. It is a $10-per-month saving as Fox One is $19.99 per month on its own.
Advertisement
While ultimately these companies and leagues want to keep the money flowing, they are beginning to answer some of the post-cable problems for sports fans. It begins with The Great Rebundling, which ESPN, Fox and TNT Sports tried with the ill-fated Venu. Now, they are giving it another go – and you can see directionally where it is headed.
Bundling services, greater simplicity to find what you want to watch, slight (but real) cost efficiencies for fans, like UFC packaged into the monthly cost of Paramount+, rather than an $80-per-event add-on.
The ESPN-Fox Sports One deal doesn't deliver all of college football to fans, but ESPN's Senior VP of Research, Flora Kelly, tweeted that 84 percent of college football games that earn a Nielsen rating are included. This doesn't solve the issue for everyone (especially if you want to watch the top SEC game of each week on CBS or Notre Dame home games on NBC), but it does show where things could move for a lot of fans as you can have all the SEC, Big 12, ACC and most of the Big 10 teams represented within this combo.
The UFC has now followed WWE's lead by moving from Pay-Per-View to Pay-Per-Month. WWE first did this with NBC and Peacock and now with ESPN, where there is no extra charge for the biggest events. That is the case starting next year that instead of paying $11.99 for ESPN+ and then another $80 for big events, fans will just pay for Paramount+, which currently can be had for $7.99 per month with ads or $60 if you pay for the entire year up front. That's for all 43 events UFC puts on every year. This will also fight piracy, where UFC estimates it loses 20,000-30,000 subs per event.
'Simply, the price was too high,' Shapiro said of the $80-per-event fee for casual fans.
Shapiro believes that the total addressable market for UFC is unquantifiable at this point. There will be some broadcast windows on CBS for major UFC events, as well. Meanwhile, WWE has the legacy brand of ESPN as it goes into its next phase and is excited to see how it is promoted.
Advertisement
'We've got our very own Super Bowl,' Shapiro said, referring to WWE's signature annual event, Wrestlemania.
So does sports media. Disney is throwing everything at keeping ESPN on top. With Ellison, Paramount and CBS have Netflix-level money and ambition. NBC/Peacock and Amazon have the NBA coming in the fall. YouTube seems to be revving up with its first NFL game coming the first week of the regular season. Fox just bought part of Indy Car. TNT Sports has added more and more college football. DAZN is out there, aggressively bidding. Netflix is Netflix.
It's a battle royale cage match for the future of sports media. Ellison and ESPN have been bringing the steel chairs into the ring.
It is supposed to be a Netflix, Amazon, YouTube and Apple world. The old players, Disney, Paramount, Fox and NBC were supposed to just pass the baton. But, a funny thing has happened, within the next phase of sports streaming wars – the old contenders have new life and have no plans of going anywhere.
Deal after deal, with the NFL, WWE and UFC in the middle of it all.
Spot the pattern. Connect the terms
Find the hidden link between sports terms
Play today's puzzle
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
a minute ago
- Yahoo
Target Reports Earnings Next Week. Investors Are Wary—or Worse—About Its Stock.
Can Target turn it around? That's the big question ahead of Wednesday morning, when the big retailer is set to report its latest financial results. Those numbers, along with whatever the company says about its outlook and the state of its business, could go a long way toward restoring investor confidence in a stock that's lost nearly one-quarter of its value this year while Walmart (WMT) has posted a double-digit advance. There's a simple enough reason investors have been cautious around Target's (TGT) stock, which fell in the wake of its first-quarter earnings report and has since crept gently higher. Executives in May clipped the company's outlook for 2025, setting investors up to expect declining sales and lower earnings per share than previously forecast. Wall Street is looking for revenue and adjusted net income to fall year-over-year in the second quarter, according to Visible Alpha data, with same-store sales also seen declining. One measure of the wariness out there: As of today, there's a sell-side analyst with a full-on bearish take on the stock. Bank of America on Friday downgraded the shares to "underperform"—the only such rating tracked by Visible Alpha—and a $93 price target more than 10 bucks below Thursday's close. The wider picture shows a number of analysts with neutral ratings on the stock, though a few still hold bullish ratings. Oppenheimer analysts on Friday suggested buying dips, as "volatile trading could continue until comps return to positive territory." Visible Alpha's consensus target around $104 in line with the stock's finish yesterday. Bank of America analysts said they're less concerned with next week's results than the broader story, citing worries about digital sales, the state of Target's digital advertising and third-party marketplace, and tariff concerns. They also pointed to competitive pressure from Walmart, which reports its own results on Thursday, and Amazon (AMZN), which this week pushed further into the grocery business. "Target's longer-term outlook," they wrote, "is becoming more uncertain." Read the original article on Investopedia
Yahoo
a minute ago
- Yahoo
Michigan football fined 10s of millions of dollars, coach Sherrone Moore banned for three games in sign-stealing scandal
ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) — Michigan football fined 10s of millions of dollars, coach Sherrone Moore banned for three games in sign-stealing scandal.
Yahoo
a minute ago
- Yahoo
Coach Parent Tapestry Navigates Tariff Pressures With Strong Core Business
Tapestry, Inc. (NYSE:TPR) shares are trading higher on Friday. On Thursday, the parent of Coach and Kate Spade posted fourth-quarter adjusted earnings of $1.04 per share, ahead of the $1.02 consensus, on revenue of $1.72 billion, up 8% year-over-year and above expectations. Coach saw strong handbag revenue growth, driven by a mid-teens AUR gain for the quarter and a low-double-digit gain for the reflects compelling innovation and broad-based traction across its leather goods offerings. Telsey Advisory Group analyst Dana Telsey reiterated the Outperform rating on the stock, with a price forecast of $125. For fiscal 2026, Tapestry expects revenue to approach $7.2 billion compared to the $6.96 billion estimate, reflecting low-single-digit growth from last year. Telsey noted that the earnings outlook factors in some current mitigation efforts, but believes the company has more options to drive upside, making the guidance appear prudently conservative. The firm expressed optimism over what seems to be a 'strong start to fiscal year 2026' and said the higher dividend boosts confidence ahead of the September 10 Investor Day, where an updated strategy and long-term outlook are expected. Tapestry is seeing more tariff pressure than anticipated, with the early end of the de minimis exemption adding to the impact, creating a combined $160 million profit hit, or 230 bps on margins, after mitigating 30% of a $235 million run rate. This equates to a 60-cent EPS drag, most of which was not in place last quarter. The exemption, once expected to end in 2027, was cut short by executive order. By fiscal year 2027 to fiscal year 2028, mitigation efforts are expected to aid gross margins. For fiscal year 2026, the analyst now projects revenue of $7.24 billion, up 3.2% from its prior $6.99 billion estimate, above the $7.16 billion consensus and in line with guidance of 'approaching $7.2 billion,' expecting Coach to outperform and Kate Spade to underperform earlier forecasts. Price Action: TPR shares are trading higher by 3.72% to $99.25 at last check Friday. Read Next:Image via Shutterstock Latest Ratings for TPR Date Firm Action From To Feb 2022 Barclays Maintains Overweight Jan 2022 Citigroup Upgrades Neutral Buy Nov 2021 Argus Research Upgrades Hold Buy View More Analyst Ratings for TPR View the Latest Analyst Ratings Up Next: Transform your trading with Benzinga Edge's one-of-a-kind market trade ideas and tools. Click now to access unique insights that can set you ahead in today's competitive market. Get the latest stock analysis from Benzinga? This article Coach Parent Tapestry Navigates Tariff Pressures With Strong Core Business originally appeared on © 2025 Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
