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Two recent deals demonstrate the immense power of live sports.One company may just have killed pay-per-view forever
A pair of monumental streaming deals have likely ended the chances of two major brands ever appearing on pay-per-view again.
In recent years, sports fans have typically only dished out cash for pay-per-view events if they were for boxing, mixed martial arts, or professional wrestling.
'It’s an outdated, antiquated model.'
Fans of the latter two have been left frustrated in recent years, as events they would have simply paid a one-time fee to watch in the past now get locked behind subscription paywalls.
Rope a dope
When the UFC inked a deal with ESPN in 2019, the fight promoter abandoned standard PPV and made its events purchasable only through ESPN+, which requires a separate subscription. Viewers, now effectively required to pay for the opportunity to pay for an event, were understandably miffed.
Meanwhile, WWE, also owned by TKO Holdings along with UFC, has until now been showing its premium events through Comcast's subscription-based streamer Peacock, without an additional fee.
Now, in the span of a week, TKO Holdings may have eliminated this hurdle — and the business model — forever.
As part of its new rights deal, UFC will abandon a PPV scheme, as viewing options slowly creep toward looking like traditional TV again.
Down for the count
Last week, TKO signed with ESPN to provide the WWE's biggest live events to the Disney-owned network, which will shift ESPN+ to a direct-to-consumer model. Simply put, WWE events will either appear on the ESPN app or on television and the app at the same time.
As for UFC, it will depart ESPN for Paramount, which on Monday acquired the rights to UFC events for $7.7 billion over seven years, per CNBC.
All 13 marquee UFC events along with 30 "Fight Nights" will appear on the Paramount+ app, but it will not charge subscribers an added fee the way ESPN+ did.
Fight club
What is left are two gigantic brands, no longer on PPV models, with some of the biggest wrestling events of the year appearing on ESPN's cable channels.
"The pay-per-view model is a thing of the past," Mark Shapiro, TKO Group's president, said. "What’s on pay-per-view any more? Boxing? Movies on DirecTV? It’s an outdated, antiquated model," he told CNBC.
"When [fans] find out, 'Wait, if I just sign up for Paramount+ for $12.99 a month, I'm going to automatically get UFC's numbered fights and the rest of the portfolio?' That's a message we want to amplify."
For now, subscription models may reign supreme, but it seems entirely possible that premium products may wind up being free for viewers on whichever type of screen they choose to view it on, even if it is the dreaded living-room TV.
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Almost two dozen New York Yankees games for the 2025 season will air exclusively on Amazon Prime.
It did not take long for Amazon to pounce on the opportunity to announce the partnership, which came just days after MLB and ESPN announced a mutual split between the two brands at the end of the season.
While the majority of Amazon Prime viewers will also need a subscription to MLB TV to see the 21 games, all games will be available to those in what is considered the Yankees' home market. This includes New York State, Connecticut, North and Central New Jersey, and Northeast Pennsylvania, according to Amazon.
Amazon Prime has continued to collect more and more broadcasting rights to live sports, including pulling in Bally Sports NBA broadcasts and streams of NHL games. The deal from 2024 signals a continuing trend toward live sports on streaming apps, as audiences have seen with Netflix successfully airing the NFL on Christmas during the past few seasons.
MLB and ESPN had announced their intention to part ways just days earlier, as the two companies opted out of their contract that was slated to run through the 2028 season.
As reported by Investopedia, ESPN wanted to lower the fees for broadcasting rights from the $550 million it had been paying on average.
League officials were allegedly displeased with the amount of coverage, or lack thereof, given to MLB across ESPN's talk shows. The league subsequently called ESPN's request for lower fees "simply unacceptable."
ESPN claimed it was simply following through on its fiduciary duties by exercising "discipline and fiscal responsibility" through the decision.
ESPN also reportedly is set to end its broadcast deal with Formula 1 racing, which has cost the network approximately $90 million per year.
The Disney-owned sports network has been in the news for its poor numbers in NBA viewership this season, dropping an apparent 18% year over year toward the end of 2024. However, ratings bumped back up by another 5% after a successful Christmas season, according to Front Office Sports.
The NHL's 4 Nations Face-Off in February also brought in record viewership, outpacing any non-Stanley Cup finals hockey game in the last five years. The game saw a whopping 4.4 million viewers on average, with a peak of 5.2 million viewers.
A 2019 playoff game between the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Boston Bruins on NBC averaged 4.5 million viewers.
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