Just after finalizing a big UFC deal, Paramount is in advanced talks to score another TKO property.

Sources told Front Office Sports that Paramount is the “front-runner” to land the rights for Zuffa Boxing, an upstart boxing promotion spearheaded by Saudi official Turki Alalshikh, UFC boss Dana White, and WWE president Nick Khan. 

Terms of the potential deal were not immediately available. Reps for Paramount, Endeavor, and TKO did not respond to requests for comment. 

Speaking about Zuffa Boxing, TKO president and COO Mark Shapiro said on last week’s earnings call: “This is a low risk and TKO receives a roughly $10 million fee for serving as the managing partner and providing day-to-day operational management oversight. And that’s all margin for us. TKO has no funding obligation.”

Alalshikh is the chairman of Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority and an advisor to the royal court. 

TKO/Zuffa will also promote 2–3 “super fights” per year with the Saudis, such as the upcoming Canelo Álvarez–Terence Crawford match that will air on Netflix on Sept. 13, Shapiro said on the earnings call. 

“Again, no risk to us on that deal. We get a fee to promote it, each one of these super fights. We get a fee to negotiate the media rights for each fight, which IMG does,” Shapiro said. “So another reason we’re strong and proud that we brought IMG into the fold of our flywheel. We get a fee for On Location to sell hospitality packages. And we will put Zuffa Boxing fighters on the undercard of each of these super fights. We expect to net on average another 10 million [dollars] for every super fight we manage and promote.” 

Earlier this week, Paramount and UFC announced an expansive seven-year deal—worth an average of $1.1 billion annually—for the MMA promotion to air its fights on Paramount+, with a number of events also slated for wide broadcast reach on CBS. UFC had previously aired on ESPN platforms.

RedBird Capital, a stakeholder in Paramount Skydance, is also an investor in Front Office Sports through RedBird IMI.

UFC’s dramatic move to abandon its longstanding pay-per-view model in the U.S. media-rights deal with CBS Sports parent Paramount was less about a philosophical shift than it was about working closely with a network partner. 

As UFC parent company TKO Group Holdings struck a seven-year, $7.7 billion rights deal with Paramount, UFC president Dana White tells Front Office Sports that he and TKO officials discussed a variety of potential deals with network suitors that both included and omitted a PPV model.

“Wherever I do a deal, my goal is to build businesses, mine and theirs,” White says. “In the past, we helped build Spike TV, we helped build Fox Sports 1, and we helped build ESPN+. Now we’re doing the same with Paramount Skydance, and this is how we’re doing it.”

Ultimately, though, White acknowledges that shifting away from the PPV structure beginning next year will expose UFC to far more potential fans. In the current ESPN+ deal, UFC numbered events are an add-on option at $79.99 per event. In the new deal, all the numbered events and Fight Nights will be available on Paramount+, with “select” simulcasts on the numbered events appearing on the CBS broadcast network. A Paramount+ premium plan that includes live streaming costs $12.99 per month. 

“It’s going to be huge, and we’re incredibly pumped about being in business with Paramount, the history of the company, and working with [Paramount chair and CEO] David Ellison,” White says. “We intend to be a big part of their global aspirations.”

A specific number of linear simulcasts has not been finalized, but White says, “We’ll be ready to go whenever CBS and Paramount want to.”

Market Reaction

Furthering momentum from initial Monday trading, TKO shares surged more than 10% for the day, ending the session at $180 per share and nearing a company high. The newly formed Paramount Skydance, conversely, fell nearly 4% as analysts are still looking to sort out the long-term meaning of the deal for the company.

“For TKO, the most important thing is that the numbered fights are no longer behind an expensive paywall. As we’ve said numerous times, the UFC’s PPV price point was way too high. In turn, not enough people were exposed to UFC’s best content,” wrote LightShed Partners in a research note. 

“Licensing UFC is the second bold content move in the past week for the new Paramount Skydance team, following the decision to shift South Park from HBO Max to Paramount+. Whether or not these are standalone accretive investments is TBD. However, they clearly signal how long-term and big team Ellison is thinking. … They are trying to create a long-term imprint on the future of the media industry to win,’” LightShed wrote.

White House Fights

Meanwhile, White says a much-discussed plan to stage a UFC event on the White House grounds next July is “definitely happening.” The high-profile fight card will be held in conjunction with celebrations of the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence, and White said the event will likely be shown on CBS. The developing effort is in part an outgrowth of the close relationship between White and U.S. President Donald Trump.

“I feel really good about how that’s progressing,” White says. “We’re actually heading [to Washington] at the end of August for meetings about it. Ivanka [Trump, the president’s daughter] is also involved in this. We’ll be making a presentation and then will look to hear back about what they like about it and don’t like.”

When Stephen A. Smith decided to rebrand his Know Mercy podcast as The Stephen A. Smith Show, the ESPN star spent nearly $2 million of his own money to build a state-of-the-art studio in New Jersey. When former Super Bowl QB Cam Newton decided to become a media mogul, he built a production studio in Atlanta, where he films his 4th&1 podcast/YouTube show. Shannon Sharpe films his Club Shay Shay in a stylish, high-tech set he had built at his home during the COVID-19 pandemic. The podcast expertise of Barstool Sports will be licensed by FS1 for a new weekday morning show. Like him or not, Pat McAfee set the template. He created a podcast/YouTube show, invested his own dough in an expensive Indianapolis studio nicknamed “The Thunderdome,” then licensed his bigger, better show to ESPN for $15 million a year.

Don’t look now, but top sports podcasts resemble sports TV shows and vice versa. The days of sports talent podcasting from studios the size of a closet are ending. Today’s top sports podcasts boast the production values of primetime talk shows filmed in Hollywood or New York. With their sprawling sets, stars can do just about anything their late-night counterparts do on ABC or NBC. The only things missing are live studio audiences. That’s next if Smith has his way.

Sports podcasts are being watched on TV screens as much as they are heard. Smith’s show now has 1.3 million subscribers on YouTube. McAfee has 2.87 million. Sharpe’s Club Shay Shay has more than 4 million. His interview with comedian Katt Williams has pulled in more than 90 million views on YouTube, generating 239,000 viewer comments. Consumers watched more than 400 million hours of podcasts per month on YouTube in 2024.

You can call them vodcasts, digital TV, or even streaming TV shows. Regardless, the word podcast doesn’t mean what it used to in sports, according to Ben Sosenko, founder of SRK Strategies, which works with some of the biggest podcast platforms—including Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions, Colin Cowherd’s The Volume, and the Men in Blazers media network.

“In many ways, they are less like traditional podcasts and more like digital TV shows that are designed to be watched, listened to, and shared in whatever format the audience prefers,” Sosensko tells Front Office Sports. “The most successful brands don’t just publish long-form episodes. They break them into highly shareable moments, tailor content to each platform, and produce them with rich visual elements that keep viewers engaged.”

Video has always been easier to monetize than audio in media, notes Bleav president and executive producer Eric Weinberger. Utilizing high-quality video can help publishers triple or quadruple a show’s distribution.

“There’s such a higher ceiling level of revenue with video—and that’s not docking audio at all,” Weinberger says. “Over the last 15 years, audio has become the incubator of video talent. Even at Bleav, we go from an audio podcast to a virtual remote podcast. If it stands out, you start saying, ‘Let’s build a mini studio in your basement. Then it grows into a streaming TV show. In this digital world, there’s still exponentially more dollars doing video than there is just doing audio.”

There are no hard and fast rules—no single podcast strategy. ESPN let podcasters like Zach Lowe, Bill Simmons, Dan Le Batard, Colin Cowherd, and Ryen Russillo walk out the door to focus on their live game rights, noted Pablo Torre to Max Tani of Semafor. “If you were to collect all of those guys, and just do the math on that, ESPN legitimately let over a billion dollars walk out the door,” said Torre. “They missed, I would argue, the future of sports podcasting that was already in-house. But the economics of why they let it go was because it was still fractional compared to their actual interest.”

Travis and Jason Kelce often record their New Heights show, which boasts 2.6 million subscribers on YouTube, remotely. But rising media stars like Newton prioritize their shows for their YouTube audiences, according to Kevin Jones, founder and CEO of the Blue Wire podcast platform. 

“Podcasting is becoming more visual. YouTube used to just be a place you could check out clips. Now a lot more of the consumption is happening on YouTube. The look and feel can create a larger audience,” he says. “The look and feel of a show can help clips go viral more. Cam built his own studio in Atlanta with sets. A lot of the future of podcasting is that way.”

ESPN’s Smith clearly feels the same way. When he dipped into his own pocket to build out a new studio for his owned-and-operated podcast/YouTube show, he was making a statement to ESPN, to advertisers, and to himself. According to The Washington Post, his new studio in Jersey City boasts all the “bells and whistles,” including four TV cameras, video screens, a late-night-style couch for guests, and photos of the First Take star with famous acquaintances like Magic Johnson and Taylor Swift. The thrice-weekly show has a staff of 15.

As Smith told Ben Strauss: “If you want to be viewed a certain way, you have to show them you can do it.”