{"id":751406,"date":"2026-06-21T19:23:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T19:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/751406\/"},"modified":"2026-06-21T19:23:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T19:23:09","slug":"dana-white-believes-nfl-had-strong-reaction-to-ufcs-deal-with-paramount","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/751406\/","title":{"rendered":"Dana White believes NFL had strong reaction to UFC’s deal with Paramount"},"content":{"rendered":"

The NFL\u2019s effort to pump up the money received from its broadcast partners apparently traces to the 11-year, $76 billion collection of TV deals the NBA did in 2024. Another deal quite possibly made the NFL even more determined to get more.<\/p>\n

Via Drew Lerner of Awful Announcing, UFC CEO Dana White believes the NFL wasn\u2019t thrilled<\/a> to learn that his cage-fighting operation finagled a seven-year, $7.7 billion deal from Paramount in 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know this to be true, but I fucking guarantee you it is,\u201d White said. \u201cThe day we announced that we did a $7.7 billion deal, the executives at the NFL said, \u2018How the fuck did we not get this money, and how did we not know that kind of money was sitting over [there]?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

White\u2019s comments came in connection with his claim that the UFC is now competing not with other fighting operations but with the premier American sports<\/a> \u2014 \u201cthe NFL, the NBA, Major League Baseball, and the NHL.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, the UFC isn\u2019t exactly competing with the NFL, despite the braindead notion<\/a> that more people watched UFC Freedom 250 than watched the Super Bowl. (The event fell short by only 117.4 million viewers<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s all the more reason for the NFL to be saying WTF!?! If the UFC is worth $1.1 billion annually to Paramount, how is Paramount paying only $2.1 billion per year for the NFL package on CBS?<\/p>\n

The NFL went back to the table with CBS earlier this year, following the sale of Paramount to Skydance. To date, no new deal has been done. John Ourand of Puck recently reported that \u201cnothing is imminent<\/a>\u201d in that regard.<\/p>\n

The NFL could have pulled the plug on the CBS deal and re-bid the remaining years, given the ownership change. But who would buy the CBS package? Fox already has a bundle of Sunday afternoon games, and NBC, ESPN\/ABC, and Prime Video have their own prime-time packages. Unless an existing partner would be inclined to double up, the NFL would have to find someone else.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where the hot-button topic of the broadcast antitrust exemption comes into play. The CBS package would have to go to a streamer, which would make the political pressure on the NFL even greater by removing key Sunday afternoon windows from free TV.<\/p>\n

Regardless, White\u2019s point is valid. The NFL is much bigger than the UFC. With Paramount paying the NFL not even twice the amount it\u2019s paying for the UFC, the NFL has left a lot of meat on the broadcast-rights bone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NFL\u2019s effort to pump up the money received from its broadcast partners apparently traces to the 11-year,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":751407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[64,63,593,85],"class_list":["post-751406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=751406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/751407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=751406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=751406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=751406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}