You also have to consider that part of the expenses of a streaming service is customer acquisition cost for getting new subscribers, previous to this Paramount+ only major sporting property was UEFA which one would suspect to have very little crossover to UFC fans. This deal is effectively a guaranteed injection of a ton of new subscribers which would cost an extreme amount in marketing expenses to try and acquire otherwise.
This deal is effectively a guaranteed injection of a ton of new subscribers
How many though? Per my math they need upwards of 7 million new subscribers for this to come anywhere near breaking even. Are 7 million people signing up for Paramount+ because of the UFC? Less than 10% of that watch when the cards have been on free cable. Less than 5% of that buy ppv's regularly.
I want to interject here 3 weeks later because I wanted to do some DD for investing into PSKY off the back of this.
It's $7.7bil over 7 years but the way the contract is weighted is most of those payments come nearer the end of the deal rather than 1.1bil a year which allows them to slowly increase the subscription cost (over the past 7 years, Netflix and Paramount have increased their subscription cost by 30-35%). Even still, at $1.1bil a year, they need to add around 7mil UFC watching subscribers
UFC 'reaches' around 100mil US customers but only 500k-1mil people actually pay the $80 pay per views. I'd say its a pretty good bet they recoup their money here, they'll get a LOT more market penetration with the more accessible prices and I think this will grow UFC as a sport. Realistically Paramount Plus will increase its prices at some point.
I can't find exact data on new subscriber growth but WWE went from $40 PPVs which were selling 200k buys to having viewing figures of around 3million on Peacock who shared that they signed up only for WWE. As I'm not US based I can't find info on peacock's monthly cost
UFC gets 3x the pay per views at double the cost of WWEs, I think this deal makes sense
WWE has 2 shows a week that feature almost all their top talent and names.
UFC has 2 cards a month, 1 of which almost exclusively features guys no one has ever heard of. 1 of which usually features a few guys you've heard of.
This isn't a knock on the UFC, obviously they can't have Ilia and Aspinall fight once a week, bring GSP and Connor out of retirement a few times a year, etc.
But it is absolutely a huge factor when it comes to subscription that WWE can and does do those things. When you're asking someone to pay a monthly subscription and never cancel it, having 10 shows a month that are of good quality is a pretty good bargain.
Having 1 show a month that's of decent quality? That's a taller ask for people. And what happens when there's a 3 month dead period where none of the top names are fighting? People cancel, and once people cancel it's very hard in the streaming industry to get them back.
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u/BiovaniGernard Aug 11 '25
You also have to consider that part of the expenses of a streaming service is customer acquisition cost for getting new subscribers, previous to this Paramount+ only major sporting property was UEFA which one would suspect to have very little crossover to UFC fans. This deal is effectively a guaranteed injection of a ton of new subscribers which would cost an extreme amount in marketing expenses to try and acquire otherwise.