The PFL buying Bellator isn’t making anyone nervous at the UFC. If anything, the promotion welcomes the competition.
That’s the message from TKO Group Holdings president Mark Shapiro, who spoke about the UFC’s main rival now that the PFL and Bellator have merged together under one roof. In addition to the Bellator purchase, the PFL also just recent re-upped with ESPN on a new broadcast rights deal — the same network that carries all of the UFC events and pay-per-views as well.
Shapiro, who serves as president at Endeavor and TKO Group Holdings — the combined company with UFC and WWE — says that PFL and Bellator coming together can only be good for the combat sports industry as a whole.
“I’m excited because I think a rising tide lifts all boats,” Shapiro said during the UBS Global Media and Communications conference. “So PFL and Bellator coming together, it’s good for the sport. It’s good for MMA. It’s good kind of ultimately for the media rights equation.
“I like the idea of having more MMA on ESPN. That helps us. Often they serve as a lead-in and they’re good competition, but make no doubt about it, they are the ‘B’ squad.”
The challenges awaiting PFL after the Bellator purchase are really no different than before two of the biggest MMA organizations combined rosters. PFL still constantly battles for viewership with fans not to mention ticket sales for live events as well as expansion into pay-per-view.
PFL did recently receive a $100 million investment from SRJ Sports Investments — a branch of the Saudi Arabia sovereign wealth fund — that will take the promotion to the Middle East starting in 2024. The Bellator purchase was also completed without exchanging any cash, but rather an all stock deal, with Paramount maintaining a minority ownership in the promotion.
That being said, Shapiro knows how hard it is to transform a sports property from an investment opportunity to a money-making, profitable operation, which is a feat that the PFL has yet to accomplish.
“I’m not being politically correct,” Shapiro stated. “Any entrepreneur that goes out there and launches a sports property that gets a chunk of audience, good for them. Can they turn it into a profitable business long term, sustainable with big lifts? That’s obviously the challenge.
“It’s amazing what Dana White has done over the last 25-plus years. I mean, he took a struggling brand, a struggling property, a struggling sport that wasn’t legal anywhere for that matter and turned it into a mainstream major sports property. That’s hard to do.”
While the PFL will attempt to become a real revenue producer over the next few years, the UFC hasn’t struggled at all in that area, especially after the organization was originally sold to Endeavor for just over $4 billion in 2016.
Over the past seven years, the UFC has seen incredible growth in both revenue and profits with record setting marks in both areas, especially after the global pandemic ended.
Sponsorships have also exploded for the UFC with the promotion inking numerous lucrative deals including the recent pact with Bud Light for $100 million to become the official beer of the organization.
Next up will be negotiating a new broadcast rights contract with talks for the UFC likely starting in late 2024.
“Look, we’ve got two years left on the UFC deal once we get past December,” Shapiro said. “We’re flying high on the UFC. The linear ratings are extremely strong. The buys for ESPN have been extremely strong. We’re developing new stars. Our social is very robust and we’re monetizing it like never before.
“Our sponsorships up near $200 million. When we bought the UFC at Endeavor we were doing roughly $40 million in sponsorships. So that shows you the kind of opportunity and the size and scale, the breadth of the UFC, the fanbase the way it’s grown and the way we’ve been able to monetize alongside it.”
Shapiro was quick to point out that discussions for the UFC’s broadcast rights deal will absolutely begin with ESPN’s owners at Disney but he also knows there’s a robust market for live sports.
“Sports rights are urgent, they’re immediate, they’re live, they’re water cooler,” Shapiro said. “They’re multi-tasking social. People like to chatter about them and root if Florida State got screwed for the [College Football Playoffs] or if it went down as it should have gone down.
“As long as that continues, as long as these media companies, these behemoths are launching their own direct-to-consumer platforms, they’re going to need sports if they either A. want to drive [subscriptions] or B. drive price. UFC, we still have two more years of that deal and we’ll have a conversation with Disney first and foremost.”