April 9, 2022 – Canadian Mike Malott celebrating his knockout win at UFC 273 (Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC)
The UFC has signed a six-year broadcast deal with Paramount Skydance for Paramount+ in Canada, eliminating pay-per-view north of the border for numbered events beginning in 2027. UFC confirmed the agreement in a press release on Thursday.
The arrangement mirrors the UFC’s existing US deal with Paramount, and it runs through the same window, putting both rights packages up for renewal at roughly the same time. Numbered event main cards, the marquee monthly product, will land on Paramount+ as part of a standard subscription. No separate buy. No premium PPV charge on top of whatever cable or streaming bill was already in play.
“Beginning in 2027, Paramount+ subscribers in Canada will get every UFC Numbered Event main card live, at no additional cost,” UFC CEO Dana White said in the press release. “Paramount has been an incredible partner that understands the power of UFC, and together we’re going to make it easier than ever for fans in Canada to watch the biggest fights in the sport.”
For Canadian fans, this closes a long-running pricing gap. US Paramount+ subscribers have been getting numbered cards bundled since the American deal kicked in. Canadians, meanwhile, were still buying events à la carte, paying for the same fights their American counterparts were watching at no extra cost. The asymmetry was hard to miss, and harder to explain.
Rogers SportsNet, which has held UFC rights in Canada since the promotion’s return to the broadcaster in 2024 (after a stint on TSN), isn’t out of the picture. SportsNet retains most, though not all of the Fight Night calendar, meaning the weekend cards that fill out the UFC schedule will continue to run through the existing cable and streaming pipeline Canadian viewers know. Prelims for numbered cards are expected to stay on their current broadcast home rather than move to Paramount+. The split is clean enough: Paramount+ takes the numbered tentpoles, Rogers keeps the volume.
Having covered broadcast rights cycles across multiple promotions and territories, the structural logic here is straightforward. Streamers want anchor content that drives subscriptions and reduces churn, and a guaranteed twelve-or-so numbered events a year is exactly the kind of recurring appointment programming that justifies a subscription line item. PPV, by contrast, is a transaction. It doesn’t build a base.
The shift also reflects where the UFC’s broader distribution strategy has been heading since the Paramount deal was first announced for the US market. Bundling the numbered cards into a flat subscription fee changes the consumer math entirely. Whether average revenue per fan goes up or down depends on how many casual buyers convert to subscribers versus how many hardcore PPV purchasers were paying premium prices multiple times a year.
For Rogers, retaining the prelims and most of the Fight Night slate is meaningful. Those events drive consistent weekly viewership and tie into the broadcaster’s broader sports package alongside NHL rights and other properties. Losing the marquee numbered cards is a hit on prestige, but the volume play remains intact.
The 2027 start date gives both sides runway. The current Canadian PPV structure will run through the rest of 2026, meaning fans in Toronto, Vancouver, and points between still have roughly six months of the old model before the switch. UFC 330, 331, and whatever else fills out the back half of the year will be the last numbered events sold the traditional way in Canada.
The deal is designed to align Canadian distribution with the US framework for the duration of the UFC’s Paramount relationship. What happens when that global deal expires is a question for another rights cycle, and another press release.
