The Ultimate Fighting Championship started all the way back in 1993 with the entire sport being completely different to the way it is currently.
The event was a tournament style bracket with it being a completely open weight class.
Poster for the upcoming UFC 324 event in Las Vegas on January 24th. The first event on Paramount+ (Credit: UFC)
In order to get access to watch the event you had to buy it through the pay-per-view (PPV) method with it being at around $9.99 at the time.
Fast forward to the present day, streaming giant Paramount bought the rights to stream the UFC on its Paramount + service.
The service now completely cuts out the PPV model which has been around for so long and it brings up a lot of questions for fans and even fighters about what the future of the UFC is going to look like.
Former title challenger Mark Hominick, who fought legends such as Jose Aldo and the Korean Zombie Chan Sung Jung has many questions about the deal especially when it comes to fighter payment.
“So my big question is how does the money trickle down to the fighters? With the UFC receiving this big payment I don’t see how it trickles down to the fighters because there’s nothing in the contract that says directly that the fighters are going to benefit at all.”
Hominick continues, “In the old pay-per-view model fighters would get 1% of the pay-per-view sales, so say a massive event happens on Paramount, I don’t see how the percentage gets trickled down to the UFC because they’ve already received their money.”
The one benefit to this new partnership is that a lot of UFC fans are expected to not illegally stream the fights anymore as the UFC was losing a ton of money due to the illegal streaming but thanks to the affordable pricing of Paramount + many fans are finally expected to pay for the fights.
The one disappointing thing about this partnership for Canadian viewers is that it is not currently available for the country and it is only available for US streamers.
Former UFC title challenger and coach at Adrenaline MMA, Mark Hominick in 2010
(Credit: UFC.com)
Lifelong superfan of the UFC Noah Thorogood expresses his disappointment on it being a US exclusive deal.
“With me being such a big UFC fan and being with the sport for who knows how many years now, it’s definitely a little heartbreaking i’m not going to lie. It would have been great if Canada could have gotten this deal but obviously now, with it being in America, it’s kind of hard for us to get anything.”
With Canadian viewers not being able to watch the UFC through a cheaper subscription service Will we see a rise in pirating and illegally streaming the fights? Will we see Canadians buy the PPV events? Or will we see a lot of Canadian fans invest in a VPN and buy the Paramount subscription?
The first UFC event in this new partnership is happening on January 24th with it being UFC 324 with Justin Gaethje fighting Paddy Pimblett for the interim Lightweight championship belt with former Bantamweight champion Sean O’Malley fighting Song Yadong as the co-main event.
If you would like to find more about the future of the UFC, tune into the Almost 107 podcast on Spotify.