For a promotion that started twelve years ago on the UK regional circuit, it is the largest commercial move in its history. FSC launched in 2013 in the northern circuit towns, Huddersfield, Halifax, Manchester, expanded through the Midlands, and solidified its footprint in London, selling out rooms of 2,000 to 3,000 under founder and CEO Raj Singh. The DAZN agreement lifts it out of the UK-only bracket in one step.
The structure of the deal matters as much as the reach. DAZN will stream three FSC events across the remainder of 2026: FSC 37 in London on August 23, FSC 38 at Manchester’s BEC Arena on October 17, the promotion’s first event at that venue, and a return to Indigo at The O2 on December 19. All free to view. For a regional promotion, free-to-view global distribution is arguably the best version of a broadcast deal available, because the product’s job at this stage is audience acquisition rather than subscription revenue. Every viewer in a new territory is a new fan the promotion did not previously have access to.
Kay Khan, FightStar’s Managing Director, framed the deal in exactly those terms in the announcement.
“This partnership with DAZN marks a significant milestone for FightStar Championship and our athletes,” Khan said. “DAZN’s global reach will help us bring our events to more fans than ever before, while showcasing the exceptional talent competing across our roster. We are excited to begin this new chapter with FSC 37 and look forward to continuing our growth supported by the world’s leading sports entertainment platform.”
The athlete-side arithmetic is the piece worth sitting with. FSC’s roster is largely UK and European fighters working their way up, and the difference between fighting on a domestic stream and fighting on a platform available in Sao Paulo, Tokyo, and Toronto is not cosmetic. It changes who is watching, who is scouting, and what a win is worth on a résumé. Regional MMA’s structural problem has always been that its best prospects outgrow its shop window. A 200-territory footprint does not solve that, but it moves the ceiling considerably.
FSC 37 itself gives the new audience a real card to land on. The event carries three title fights plus the semifinals of the promotion’s £25,000 featherweight tournament. The main event is a welterweight title bout between champion Tom Mullen (11-2), who claimed the belt at FSC 36 in Bradford, and veteran Nathan “Mr. Bag & Tag” Jones (17-12). The co-main event is the fight most likely to travel internationally: former UFC light heavyweight Ihor “The Duelist” Potieria (20-8) faces Cally “Juggernaut” Gibrainn de Oliveira (6-2) for the light heavyweight title. A recognisable UFC name in a title fight is precisely the sort of anchor a promotion wants on its global broadcast debut.
The venue keeps the live product intimate. Indigo at The O2 holds a shade under 3,000, which has historically suited FSC’s card structure and atmosphere. What the partnership adds is the second audience, the one watching on a phone in a time zone that has never heard of most of the fighters on the bill. That audience is where the real work of the deal gets measured.
For DAZN, the acquisition fits a pattern the platform has been running aggressively. The FightStar deal landed in the same news cycle as the company’s long-term partnership with Premier Boxing Champions, its move to become the exclusive direct-to-consumer streaming home for New York’s YES Network and MSG Networks, and a dedicated fan streaming service with the Minnesota Timberwolves. The combat sports portfolio now layers boxing, kickboxing, and MMA properties across multiple markets, and adding a UK-based MMA promotion with a live London card as the launch event gives the platform a home-market anchor in a programming category it has been actively growing.
The international expansion thread runs deeper than the broadcast deal. FSC’s own materials list a partnership with the Royal Sheikh’s Office of Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, and the announcement referenced UAE expansion already in motion. A second geographic base in the Gulf, paired with a broadcaster whose footprint covers that market, gives the promotion a matchmaking pool beyond the UK and a live-event calendar that can run across two regions. That is the model most promotions of this size aim for once broadcast distribution enters the picture. The timeline has not been detailed publicly.
The wider industry read is that the distribution layer of combat sports keeps consolidating toward streamers at every tier. The UFC is ten months into Paramount+. The newly merged MVP MMA has its Netflix relationship and an ESPN decision pending. BKFC runs its own app alongside TrillerTV and DAZN deals in select markets. And now a UK regional promotion twelve years into its run has a 200-territory free-to-view home. The pattern is the same at every scale. Platforms want live combat content, and promotions want reach they cannot build alone.
FSC 37 goes August 23. The full card and running order will follow through the promotion’s channels in the coming weeks, with the DAZN broadcast marking the first event under the new agreement.
