Dana White wants $10 billion for the UFC’s next media rights deal, and he said so with the current one still running through 2032.
The UFC CEO laid out the number during an appearance on The Diary of a CEO podcast, as reported by MMA Mania. The promotion is currently in year one of a seven-year, $7.7 billion contract with Paramount, a deal that surprised plenty of industry experts who called it above market. White isn’t treating that as a ceiling.
“Now, my job over the next five years is to make sure we do that because guess what I want? I want 10 billion after we get out of this deal,” White said.
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The job he’s describing there is proving Paramount right. White said the streamer paid what it paid because it believes the UFC can have a real impact on its business.
The NFL bit
White also claimed the Paramount deal rattled the people who run the NFL. His phrasing deserves to be read in full, mostly for the second sentence.
“We did an 8 billion deal with Paramount. Right now, I don’t know this for a fact, but I know this for a fact. The NFL are a bunch of animals, right? As soon as that deal was announced, all the powers that be at the NFL got in a room and said there was $8 billion out there that we didn’t get,” White said.
So he doesn’t know it, except he does. Also, the deal is $7.7 billion, which White rounded up to eight on the podcast before using the actual figure a few minutes later. That’s the kind of rounding you do when you’re the one cashing the check.
This comes on the heels of White’s recent claim that the UFC now sits among the top four sports leagues, a statement MMA Mania called outlandish.
Why Paramount paid
White asked why Paramount went to $7.7 billion. Several business experts had already floated an answer: that Paramount deliberately overpaid the UFC to help smooth the way for a separate $110 billion merger. White didn’t address that theory in the quotes reported.
The broader money is real, though. The NBA is sitting on a $77 billion media rights deal, and the NFL is reportedly looking to opt out of its $110 billion contract to chase an even bigger number. The UFC also has the advantage of owning basically the entire market for MMA, so there’s no rival league for a network to shop with instead. White and his bosses at TKO know that.
The catch is the product. The UFC scrapped the pay-per-view model under the Paramount arrangement, and the criticism since has been that the company is booking to hit an event quota rather than building genuinely big shows. A $10 billion ask gets easier if the cards feel like must-see TV and harder if they feel like inventory.
My take: the $10 billion number is less crazy than the top-four-league stuff, and the streaming arms race gives White plenty of runway to make the pitch. But Paramount bought the Saturday nights, not the press conferences. If White wants a 30% raise in 2032, he needs five years of fight cards that make some other network’s executives get in a room. That one he’ll actually have to know for a fact.
