{"id":353409,"date":"2025-12-18T14:23:04","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T14:23:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/353409\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T14:23:04","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T14:23:04","slug":"7-7b-ufc-deal-listed-as-reason-paramount-cant-buy-warner-bros-discovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/353409\/","title":{"rendered":"$7.7b UFC deal listed as reason Paramount can\u2019t buy Warner Bros. Discovery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everyone knows that UFC owner Ari Emanuel does an amazing job of getting big money deals across the finish line, but did he go too big when he convinced Paramount CBS to pay $7.7 billion<\/a> for the combat sports promotion\u2019s broadcast rights?<\/p>\n

Paramount CBS recently merged with Skydance Media, and one of the first things CEO David Ellison did was announce the seven year UFC deal, which moves all numbered events and fight nights to Paramount+. That\u2019s a great way for the company to pump up its subscriber numbers, as UFC fans are excited to pay just $14 a month<\/a> and will stick around all year unlike off-season sports fans.<\/p>\n

But the $7.7 billion price tag caused a decent amount of heartburn amongst the PSKY investor class, with many noting the company paid too much<\/a> \u2026 and some wondering if the extra cream on top was grease on the wheels<\/a> for Ellison and the Trump administration. That grease was needed not just so Skydance could merge with Paramount \u2014 it\u2019d be needed if Paramount manages to buy Warner Bros. Discovery.<\/p>\n

Snapping up WBD is a key part of Ellison\u2019s plan to become a dominant figure in the US media landscape, but WBD head David Zaslav would rather Netflix buy them out.<\/a> Zaslav\u2019s board of directors released an extensive document laying out why stockholders should reject Paramount CBS\u2019s hostile bid to buy the company, and UFC\u2019s media rights were mentioned in a not-so-subtle way.<\/p>\n

\u201cPSKY has recently entered into multiple programming commitments that may further stress its financial performance,\u201d the WBD document read (via Awful Announcing).<\/a> \u201cIn the short period since the completion of the Paramount\/Skydance transaction, PSKY has signed above-market, multi-year programming and sports licensing deals, both domestic and international. Despite limited visibility into their long-term performance, PSKY will begin to bear significant fixed financial costs related to these agreements in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis, together with potentially higher costs associated with NFL rights given the league\u2019s right to renegotiate early, could create further headwinds to PSKY\u2019s financial profile.\u201d<\/p>\n

All of this is just part of the bigger problem WBD has with PSKY\u2019s offer: they just don\u2019t think Ellison has the liquidity to make things work. Netflix, they noted, has a market value of $400 billion to Paramount\u2019s $15 billion, and PSKY has \u2018a credit rating a notch above junk.\u2019 Purchasing WBD would leverage PSKY to the hilt with a debt ratio of 6.8, leaving them with no operating capital without massive cuts.<\/p>\n

So blame those rough numbers if the deal doesn\u2019t go through \u2026 although as WBD pointed out, UFC\u2019s massive $7.7 billion deal is part of that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Everyone knows that UFC owner Ari Emanuel does an amazing job of getting big money deals across the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353410,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,638,82,139445,702],"class_list":{"0":"post-353409","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-mma","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-ufc-on-paramount","14":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}