Comments Thread For: ESPN, UFC Announce and Outline Huge Multi-Year Deal

[Scipio2009]

I wonder if Top Rank and UFC can place nice together under the same roof. Or maybe Top rank and UFC will form an alliance. Either for whatever reason I have a strange feeling this could possibly lead to competition between the two

There's no competition; ESPN just laid out $350m a year for the UFC, and the number is nowhere near that for Top Rank Boxing.

UFC is the alpha, and Top Rank is the beta, with that not changing anytime soon.

[Eff Pandas]

If I see Stephen A. Smith or some other MMA/Boxing novice commentating on the UFC... smh..

Oh man lmfao that would be awful & hilarious at the same time.

I almost wanna see that just for the UFC crowd memes that would pop up over the hilarity of nonsense SAS would surely say.

[bballchump11]

This deal will be much more likely to succeed than DAZN. It's only $5 a month and the UFC is a known brand with the best fighters in MMA.

Even if Hearn gets half of the PBC, he still wouldn't have a lot of the top guys even on the p4p list.

[lanker rom]

Oh man lmfao that would be awful & hilarious at the same time.

I almost wanna see that just for the UFC crowd memes that would pop up over the hilarity of nonsense SAS would surely say.

this lol ahahahahahah

[lanker rom]

There's no competition; ESPN just laid out $350m a year for the UFC, and the number is nowhere near that for Top Rank Boxing.

UFC is the alpha, and Top Rank is the beta, with that not changing anytime soon.

Im on my rick grimes Ish man theres got to be something after ……. a tv deal

[Mitchell Kane]

Only way this ESPN+ works if if NBA, NFL and MLB go there too. But can't see that happenning.

It's going to be really interesting to see how the NFL/ESPN relationship develops under the new guy, Pitaro.

It completely deteriorated under John Skipper.

The NFL kept the Wild Card game with ESPN this year, but they have the option against next year to move it to FOX if they don't like the way ESPN is going.

https://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/.../ESPN-NFL.aspx

And the Monday Night Football contract ends after the 2021 season.

It's not out of the question that ESPN has no NFL games in a few years.

[Mitchell Kane]

Why?

ESPN has this longterm deal with the UFC, and they have the rest the rights deals already under the Disney portfolio (ACC Football being the clearest one to come to mind, but picture the rest of the sports that you see actually on ESPN).

When the time comes for the deals to be redone (assuming that there's something in the contracts to bar things now), roll everything on to ESPN+ (ie ESPN/ABC figure out what ACC games to air during the week, with the rest of the ACC games aired exclusively on ESPN+).

With the major sports tied to the main broadcasters (NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, etc), major boxing tied to Showtime/CBS, Bellator FC with Viacom, and a few other similar deals, ESPN+ could become the home of everything else (leveraging the sports content already with ESPN/ABC)

It's going to be interesting to see how much of the sports-watching audience follows over to streaming services like ESPN+, especially when the price starts increasing from $5.

Also curios to see what happens to those Regional Sports Networks that are part of the Disney/FOX deal.

Comcast is supposedly willing to offer up to $10 billion more than the current Disney offer, so Disney may have to up it's offer significantly...plus there's the regulatory angle to it...

http://www.latimes.com/business/holl...523-story.html

Analysts speculated that the price for the Fox assets — which include the prolific 20th Century Fox film and television studios, 22 regional sports networks, FX and National Geographic channels — just increased by at least $10 billion.

That is because Comcast's bid is expected to top $60 billion, an amount that probably will force Disney to up its ante — a prospect that Fox investors probably would welcome.

In addition, Disney already bills itself as the "worldwide leader in sports" because of its majority stake in the sports juggernaut ESPN. Adding Fox's 22 regional sports networks, including Fox Sports West and Prime Ticket in the Los Angeles region, could trigger antitrust concerns.

[Mitchell Kane]

I wonder if Top Rank and UFC can place nice together under the same roof. Or maybe Top rank and UFC will form an alliance. Either for whatever reason I have a strange feeling this could possibly lead to competition between the two

I would think they can co-exist.

It sounds like the new guy at ESPN, Jimmy Pitaro, is intersted in "combat sports", not just the UFC, and Kevin Iole wrote that ESPN may look to extend or expand the Top Rank deal....perhaps "significantly extended".

https://www.mediapost.com/publicatio...-of-brand.html

“We will focus on rights that appeal to our core [audience], but also focus on rights that will resonate with a younger generation. We have a deal with Top Rank boxing, we now have the UFC partnership,” he said. “Combat sports in general is interesting to us, and we are pretty confident that we are and will continue to be the destination for combat sports.”

https://sports.yahoo.com/ufcs-new-1-...202249806.html

That is on top of an eight-month old deal with boxing promoter Top Rank, and it wouldn’t be a shocker to see that deal significantly extended.

The common thread in the deals is Pitaro, who is now the president of ESPN. The two deals essentially locked up the combat sports space for ESPN and are a huge win for the consumer. Pitaro inherited the original Top Rank deal, but is the driving force behind the potential extension and/or expansion of it less than a year in.

Critics have moaned about the dilution of UFC content, and expect to hear more about that in light of the deal with ESPN. And they’ve ravaged Top Rank about the age of its demographic, even though the fights it has produced on ESPN have attracted an audience very similar in median age to the UFC crowd. Top Rank’s cards have demonstrated an ability to attract a far younger fan base than anyone, even those in the TV business, believed possible.

[Scipio2009]

It's going to be interesting to see how much of the sports-watching audience follows over to streaming services like ESPN+, especially when the price starts increasing from $5.

Also curios to see what happens to those Regional Sports Networks that are part of the Disney/FOX deal.

Comcast is supposedly willing to offer up to $10 billion more than the current Disney offer, so Disney may have to up it's offer significantly...plus there's the regulatory angle to it...

http://www.latimes.com/business/holl...523-story.html

The Disney/FOX stuff only really has me on edge with what's likely to happen with Sky (and how having Matchroom Sport as the boxing provider for Sky Sports, with Top Rank being the provider for ESPN; with the dynamic being what it is, logically you'd have Matchroom Sport take over the boxing package for both Sky Sports and ESPN, but then the DAZN deal complicates that further).

In terms of the RSN, I read an article a little bit ago that was pretty interesting, in that the RSNs would basically be used to revamp Sportscenter; a smaller core of Sportscenter talent overviewing things, with the regional networks being called on to dive in on specific stories (ie Fox Sports Wisconsin becomes ESPN Wisconsin; the Sportscenter crew would give the general overview of what happened to that basketball player before sending it to ESPN Wisconsin to tell the national audience more about the player, the incident in the community, and how the people are taking it, etc).

In a way, kind of what NBCUniversal ended up working to after booting Olberman; opinion from basically 5-10pm on MSNBC, but the rest of the news day (and when opinion needs to back up a topic) filled with sources/talent from NBC News, CNBC, The weather channel and NBC Sports when needed, and the local NBC affiliates across the country.

Comcast jumping in and winning the deal would ease the boxing worries (namely keeping Sky and ESPN separate; NBCUniversal has yet to really make that move towards streaming anyway), and you'd basically end up with 30 regional networks under one banner (rather than joining everything like the ESPN model seems set to try, you'd have 30 channels focused solely on local sports).

[sicko]

"and The Walt Disney Company"

UFC about to become PG-13 no more McGregor and Nate Diaz Rants and Out-Burst anymore they're going to censor all that ****!