ESPN’s UFC Streaming Woes Arrive at a Pivotal Moment in Rights Talks

Timing is often everything in sports media dealmaking, and a key question has arisen of whether ESPN has had a major technical breakdown at perhaps the worst possible moment.

UFC 313 suffered a significant streaming breakdown on ESPN+ Saturday night, with the pay-per-view event marred by widespread buffering and purchasing issues. Immediately after the event, UFC president Dana White did not mince words with his frustration with the situation.

“Yeah, there were problems buying [the pay-per-view] on ESPN+,” White said. “I don’t know what happened with their platform tonight, but yeah, there are a lot of pissed-off people.”

Roughly 36 hours later, tensions had calmed somewhat, according to industry sources—in part due to some proactive steps made by ESPN. The event is being replayed for free to any ESPN+ subscriber, not just the pay-per-view buyers, and the network issued an apology statement.

Because many of the issues were resolved before the main event between light heavyweights Alex Pereira and Magomed Ankalaev, though, ESPN did not issue refunds. 

“Unfortunately, we experienced a technical issue that impacted purchases of the UFC PPV on ESPN+ shortly after 10 p.m. ET [Saturday],” ESPN said in its statement. “Our teams identified and resolved the issue, restoring full functionality ahead of the main event. We apologize for the inconvenience and are taking steps to ensure a better experience in the future.”

Bigger Negotiations

The issues arose less than six weeks before the April 15 expiration of the exclusive negotiating window in UFC’s current rights deal with ESPN, which is up after this year. After that date next month, UFC will be free to strike agreements with other suitors.  

The agreement with ESPN is worth about $450 million per year, and includes about 30 fight nights and a dozen pay-per-view events annually. Multiple suitors are said to be interested in the rights, however, and UFC reportedly wants to more than double the current rights fees. It’s also worth noting that fellow TKO Group Holdings property WWE made its own industry-shaking splash by moving Raw to Netflix at the beginning of the year.

While discussing TKO’s new boxing venture last week with Front Office Sports, White also mentioned the recent split between Major League Baseball and ESPN, comments that may ultimately carry some parallels to UFC.

“Not only did they not come to terms, but ESPN tried to cut a lesser deal than they had. It’s fascinating times,” White said. “It’s time for everybody, even the major [sports properties], to get creative.”