ESPN brass ready for the dawn of a new UFC era

ESPN long ignored mixed martial arts in general and the UFC in particular. Now they are spending $300 million per year for the rights. What changed?

First, the UFC got was too big to ignore – the league sold in 2016 for four billion dollars, the largest sale of sports property in history. And it’s way bigger now.

Second, ESPN has done well recently with boxing, whetting their appetite for more combat sports.

And third, Jimmy Pitaro. The new ESPN president was a pioneering sports media executive in embracing MMA when he oversaw the first full staffed MMA coverage team for a major sports website in early 2007 at Yahoo Sports.

Back at Yahoo we could see this was an extremely engaged audience of young viewers who visited the site in droves and spent a lot of time on the site, said Pitaro to former Yahoo employee Dave Doyle for MMA Fighting. And when you look at the numbers today, you can see the same audience has been early adapters in new technologies like streaming services. Combat sports is going to be an important facet of our business to ESPN+, and when the UFC’s rights became available, I mean to me, this was a no-brainer of a deal to make.

The core of the show will remain familiar, as ESPN puts ten full events and twelve PPV event prelims on linear cable (ESPN and ESPN 2), and 20 events on the ESPN+ app. Rogan will commentate the PPV events, and Jon Anik will be doing play by play ever just off to the side like the ninja that he is, with a revolving team of fighters including Daniel Cormier and Dominick Cruz providing color. The FOX team of Karyn Bryant, Michael Bisping, and Rashad Evans will continue on with ESPN, providing pre-and-post fight shows and weigh-in broadcasts.

But there is expected to be an increase in storylines. Because pro wrestling isn’t real and can be pushed in various directions, it provides a window into what an audience wants. Japanese fans love stoicism, so puroresu has performers taking an actual beating. South American pro wrestling has more than a touch of Magical Realism. And US pro wrestling has storylines, with scriptwriters. In short, the US audience loves drama, and ESPN will be telling more back stories.

Undefeated Gregor Gillespie has five exciting finishes in a row, could become a star, but the UFC has focused on him so little he has barely 5,000 Twitter followers. Expect that to change. ESPN will be moving MMA through all of the channels, including a new 24/7 documentary type series covering elite fighters before and after fights, called ‘Destined’ and an X’s and O’s show called ‘Unlocking Victory’ co-hosted by Dominick Cruz and Gilbert Melendez.

If you look at any league we’ve partnered with, when we go all-in, we go across all platforms, said ESPN vice president of UFC and boxing Glenn Jacobs. If something happens on ESPN, you can expect you’re going to see follow up on linear cable and Plus and over the radio and on anywhere we can talk about it. We’re going to put the ESPN stamp on things.

Further, Pitaro promises to cover news the UFC might prefer was ignored.

The big stick-and-ball sports don’t like everything we publish, but we’re here to report the news that matters,” he said. “I’ve got a long relationship with Dana White, and yeah, I’m going to hear about it sometimes, but they know we’re going stay on top of the issues of the day because the viewers demand it.

And lastly, MMA is not going to change; it will remain crazy, as evidenced every weekend, and by the recent move of UFC 232 from Vegas to LA on less than a week’s notice, which was observed by a shadowing team from ESPN.

You know what comes with the territory when you get into the fight game,” said ESPN executive vice president of programming and scheduling Burke Magnus. “They do things differently than other properties and that’s part of the fun.