Combat sports have long been synonymous with pay-per-view (PPV), but that may be about to change.
The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and Zuffa Boxing’s new broadcast deals with Paramount and Saudi Arabia’s growing influence in boxing are challenging the traditional model, reshaping how both sports operate.
PPV’s long-term viability has been questioned before. Yet recent media rights partnerships, changing audience habits and wider shifts in broadcasting have put the approach under renewed scrutiny. Its demise would reshape the business of boxing and mixed martial arts (MMA).
Why PPV?
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Boxing was an early pioneer of PPV, beginning with closed-circuit telecasts in the 1960s and 1970s featuring stars such as Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali. The latter’s third fight against Joe Frazier – the ‘Thrilla in Manila’ – was watched by an estimated 100 million people worldwide.
In the 1980s and 1990s, home television PPV replaced closed-circuit screenings. Since then, most of the sport’s biggest fights have relied on the PPV model, which is deemed essential to making mouthwatering matchups possible thanks to the additional revenue it generates to pay fighters and other stakeholders.
It’s easy to see why boxing has stuck with this model, where a single PPV fight can cost as much as US$90 in the US. Notably, Floyd Mayweather Jr’s win over Manny Pacquiao in 2015 broke records in the States, delivering 4.6 million buys and grossing US$410 million. In the UK, Sky Sports smashed the UK boxing PPV record three times in the 2010s, peaking at approximately 1.54 million for Anthony Joshua’s rematch against Andy Ruiz Jr in December 2019.
For the UFC, MMA’s leading promotion, PPV has also been highly lucrative. The 2.4 million PPV buys for UFC 229 in 2018, headlined by Khabib Nurmagomedov and Conor McGregor, has been bettered only three times by professional boxing – one of which was McGregor’s crossover bout against Mayweather Jr in 2017.
Having adopted PPV so early, combat sports have conditioned fans to expect to pay a premium to watch the biggest events.
The crossover fight between boxing’s pound-for-pound king Floyd Mayweather and UFC star Conor McGregor in 2017 was a PPV smash hit (Image credit: Getty Images)
What’s changed?
Paramount seemingly came out of nowhere to poach the UFC’s US broadcast rights from ESPN, signing a seven-year deal worth US$1.1 billion annually from 2026.
The fact that the TKO Group-owned promotion was able to double the value of its rights deal wasn’t the only surprise. Paramount+ will stream all 13 numbered UFC events and 30 Fight Night cards at no additional cost to subscribers, bringing the UFC’s PPV business to an end in its biggest market.
“The UFC wouldn’t have needed much convincing [to stop PPV],” says Patrick Crakes, a strategic media consultant who also worked closely with the UFC during his time as a senior executive at Fox.
“The pay-per-view business over the past four or five years has been in steady decline. It was the only route 30 years ago but there are now so many options.”
Crakes believes that the UFC is reducing the risk that comes with PPV through its lucrative Paramount deal, which also guarantees primetime exposure for select numbered events on CBS.
Boxing, meanwhile, has been able to stage more blockbuster bouts thanks to Saudi Arabia’s investment in the sport, spearheaded by Turki Alalshikh, chairman of the General Entertainment Authority (GEA).
Initially, the stacked cards involving Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing and Frank Warren’s Queensberry Promotions were kept behind a paywall on DAZN. But Alalshikh shook things up in July when he announced that fights organised by Riyadh Season and The Ring, which he owns, would soon no longer be distributed on a PPV basis.
On top of that, Paramount has now complemented its UFC arrangement by bagging broadcast rights in the US, Canada and Latin America to Zuffa Boxing, the new venture backed by TKO and Saudi Arabia, including Alalshikh, that will be akin to Dana White’s Contender Series in MMA. As with the UFC, PPV will play no part in a deal that cements Paramount as the leading combat sports broadcaster in the States.
The entry of Netflix into boxing has also been significant. The platform streamed September’s super-fight between Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez and Terence Crawford to more than 300 million subscribers worldwide at no extra cost.
With MMA’s top promotion, boxing’s most influential powerbroker and the world’s largest streaming service all avoiding PPV, the options for other combat sports properties appear to be narrowing.
Is PPV dead?
DAZN declared it was for boxing in 2018, even running a promotional advert featuring legendary ring announcer Michael Buffer proclaiming that “pay-per-view is totally screwed”, with the streamer vowing to make all its fights available via a monthly subscription. The economics of the sweet science meant the company had to renege on that promise.
This time, however, things feel different given Saudi Arabia’s grip on the sport and Alalshikh’s determination to dispense with PPV. The kingdom’s vast resources and broader ambitions in boxing mean profitability is not the main priority.
If Alalshikh gets his way – as he has so far – it could soon become near-impossible for promoters and broadcasters not aligned with Saudi Arabia to stick with PPV in its current form. That leaves three options: lower prices, scrap PPV altogether, or fall in line with DAZN, Paramount and Alalshikh.
“Per-per-view remains viable in the right context,” Ben Shalom, chief executive of boxing promotional company Boxxer, tells SportsPro. “When a fight transcends sport and becomes a cultural event, fans are willing to pay. But it can’t be the default model.
“What Turki Alalshikh’s investment has shown is that boxing must evolve into a multi-revenue ecosystem with broadcast rights, site fees, global streaming, sponsorship and digital monetisation.”
Boxxer chief executive Ben Shalom believes there is still a place for PPV but it mustn’t be overused (Image credit: Getty Images)
Shalom is speaking shortly after Boxxer signed a new multi-year rights deal with the BBCfollowing the expiry of its four-year contract with Sky Sports at the end of June. The agreement brings professional boxing back to the public service broadcaster (PSB) for the first time in 20 years, starting with a British heavyweight title fight between Frazer Clarke and Jeamie Tshikeva on 25th October.
It is not an exclusive agreement. Boxxer still plans to stage marquee PPV events on other broadcasters, and its ties to DAZN and Alalshikh will continue.
The Clarke-Tshikeva encounter is taking place on the same evening as another heavyweight dustup between world contenders Joseph Parker and Fabio Wardley, which will cost UK£24.99 (US$33.62) to watch on DAZN PPV in Britian. Warren, who promotes Parker and Wardley, has called the clash “madness”.
“For Boxxer, our goal is to be dynamic given the opportunities out there,” continues Shalom. “We’ll use free-to-air to build stars, PPV for mega-events and digital to capture younger audiences.
“We believe we have the right balance and it is built for a sustainable, successful future.”
The UFCmeanwhile, has been able to ditch PPV in the US on its own terms. Competitors such as the Professional Fighters League (PFL) and Singapore-based ONE Championship use a mix of distribution models depending on the territory.
The PFL, which acquired MMA promotion Bellator in 2023currently has a deal in the US with ESPN that includes ESPN+ PPV for its new ‘PFL PPV Super Fight Division’ featuring elite fighters. The organisation evidently believes there is still plenty of life left in the PPV model.
Still, PPV is becoming harder to justify. Coupled with Paramount’s deals, streaming giants like Netflix and Amazon experimenting with live combat sports has raised expectations that events should sit inside subscriptions, not behind an extra paywall. High PPV prices also fuel piracy, while guaranteed rights fees give promoters more predictable, upfront revenue.
What happens next?
The structure of other major MMA promotions’ next rights deals in key markets will reveal much about PPV’s viability for the rest of the decade. The PFL, for example, has sought to differentiate itself from the UFC with a league format that features a regular season, playoffs and championship each year. Yet it may ultimately have to follow its rivals’ broadcast template more closely to stay relevant.
Boxing faces a different scenario. Saudi Arabia and Alalshikh seemingly hold all the cards, with leading promoters aligned and DAZN established as the global broadcaster for the kingdom’s fights, excluding Paramount and Zuffa in North America.
DAZN can still sublicense rights, but the Gulf state’s stranglehold on boxing looks set to tighten as legacy broadcasters scale back their involvement – underscored by ESPN’s decision not to renew its contract with Bob Arum’s Top Rank.
“Five to ten years ago, the idea [for broadcasters] was to get as much as possible,” notes Crakes. “Now it’s about optimising what you do best. Optimise what the subscribers, the distributors and the advertisers will pay you for and get rid of everything else.
“ESPN let go of Top Rank and the UFC because they’re increasing economics into things that have high multiples for them.
“They’re doubling down on the NFLcollege football and the NBA.”
Joe Markowski, the former chief executive of DAZN North America, believes boxing broadcasting has benefited from “significant sovereign wealth fund capital entering the sport in the past two or three years”.
“That wasn’t the case previously and a significantly smaller percentage of the risk is being held by the broadcaster,” he continues, “which allows them to invest with more confidence and generate better and more profitable returns.
“That means that a significantly smaller percentage of the systemic risk is now being held by the broadcasters, who previously footed the vast majority of the bills. This allows them to invest with more confidence – in production, in marketing, in their coverage of the sport more generally – to generate better returns and maybe to start weaning themselves off the PPV model.
“It’s a major positive shift for the broadcasters and, if it continues, it’s great for their businesses and their consumers. But the financing of boxing has a track record of evolving its model pretty regularly, so it will be interesting to see how it evolves.”
Turki Alalshikh has established himself as the most powerful man in boxing (Image credit: Getty Images)
And while DAZN has become the broadcaster of choice for much of Saudi Arabia’s boxing ambitions, it won’t be showing the kingdom’s cards at no additional cost. Instead, the company plans to launch ‘The Ring Pass’, a global monthly add-on subscription backed by Riyadh Season and The Ring. Alalshikh has described it as a “win-win” for all parties, including fans, who he says will pay far less than they have in the past to watch the biggest fights.
Whatever happens next, this year has already shown that the economics of combat sports broadcasting are shifting.
“Streaming and free-to-air are playing a bigger role in building audiences, while PPV is becoming more selective,” says Shalom. “We believe the future is hybrid. It depends on platform strategy. With the amount of competing platforms with their various commercial models, this means boxing has to be flexible and cater to those opportunities.
“There will be more mainstream exposure via broadcasters like the BBC and an increasing role for digital and direct-to-consumer platforms. Boxxer was built for this and we’ve always operated differently to the traditional model.
“Our partnership with the BBC will show how boxing has a lot of room to grow when it’s opened up to the widest possible audience.”
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