The UFC could be heading to HBO. TKO Group Holdings president and COO Mark Shapiro said Wednesday, during a TKO financial call, that the company is already in talks with Skydance about spreading UFC programming across the networks Paramount-Skydance picked up when it bought Warner Bros. That $110 billion acquisition brought in HBO, TBS, TNT and a long list of other assets, and the UFC now sits inside a much bigger media building than the one it signed with.
“We’re in conversation as we speak with Skydance about the best way to maximize audience across the Skydance platform,” Shapiro said on the call.
He also named the channels. “We will be maximizing HBO, TNT, Paramount+, CBS, all in the name of expanding eyeballs, expanding viewership, growing audience, and increasing engagement,” he said. Shapiro described TKO as fully aligned with Skydance on strategy, and he framed the push as payback on a big bet, saying “they made a huge investment in UFC, and we want to see that we help them maximize their returns.”
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That investment is the seven-year, $7.7 billion deal that took the UFC from ESPN to Paramount at the start of 2026. The deal also killed pay-per-view. Every UFC event now streams exclusively on Paramount+, which is where the bulk of the promotion’s programming has lived all year.
The Warner Bros. purchase changes the math. MMA Fighting reported that the merger itself is done but the work of folding all the properties together is still going on, and that Paramount+ is expected to eventually merge with HBO Max. A combined service would put UFC cards in front of a much larger subscriber base on day one, before anyone even talks about linear TV slots.
There’s a personal thread here too. Shapiro said he worked with David Berson, the head of Skydance Sports, back when both were at ESPN. “He’s super creative,” Shapiro said, which reads like a guy who expects the pitch meetings to go smoothly.
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MMA Fighting’s Damon Martin summed it up on X, writing that fans might see the UFC on HBO and other Warner Bros. platforms sooner than later. What nobody has laid out yet is the actual programming. Shapiro didn’t say which events, shows or time slots would move, or when. MMA Fighting noted there’s no telling how much Paramount plans to feature the UFC across the new networks. For now, “in conversation” is the whole status report.
My take: Don’t waste HBO on a numbered main event that’s already sitting on Paramount+. Use the reach for the stuff that builds fighters. Put a fight-week special on HBO. Throw a stacked prelim card or a Contender Series night on TNT, where somebody flipping channels stumbles into a debutant from a 20-person gym fighting for a contract with his whole life on the line. That’s how casual viewers turn into people who know the undercard by name. Shapiro keeps saying “eyeballs.” The prelims are where you earn them.
