You might catch a UFC special on HBO sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n
Paramount-Skydance recently closed a massive $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. and all of the company\u2019s assets, including networks like HBO, TBS, TNT, and many others. While the UFC\u2019s broadcast deal with Paramount that kicked off at the start of 2026 landed the majority of the organization\u2019s programming on the Paramount+ streaming service, this merger opens the door to all sorts of possibilities.<\/p>\n
TKO Group Holdings president and COO Mark Shapiro revealed on Wednesday that talks are already ongoing about the merger and the UFC\u2019s potential expansion to different networks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re in conversation as we speak with Skydance about the best way to maximize audience across the Skydance platform,\u201d Shapiro said during a TKO financial call. \u201cWe have a great partnership with the entire team there. I used to work with David Berson, who\u2019s the head of Skydance Sports, from our days at ESPN. He\u2019s super creative.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will be maximizing HBO, TNT, Paramount+, CBS, all in the name of expanding eyeballs, expanding viewership, growing audience, and increasing engagement. Fully aligned strategically with Skydance and, frankly, they made a huge investment in UFC, and we want to see that we help them maximize their returns.\u201d<\/p>\n
The UFC inked a huge seven-year, $7.7 billion deal to move from ESPN to Paramount at the start of 2026 while simultaneously eliminating pay-per-view broadcasts, with every event now airing exclusively on the Paramount+ streaming service.<\/p>\n
While the merger between Paramount and Warner Bros. is complete, the full integration for all the various properties is still underway. Eventually, Paramount+ is expected to merge with HBO Max, and that immediately increases overall subscriptions and viewership.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no telling how much Paramount plans to feature the UFC on the different platforms, but obviously it sounds like that kind of programming could be happening in the near future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You might catch a UFC special on HBO sooner rather than later. Paramount-Skydance recently closed a massive $110…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":675257,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[93,61,60,385,282,548,23843],"class_list":["post-675256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-latest-news","tag-tv","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=675256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/675257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}