UFC media rights are up for renewal next year, and TKO Group Chief Operating Officer Mark Shapiro tells me he thinks Netflix could be getting in the ring.“I think absolutely, they’ll be at the table on UFC,” Shapiro said in an exclusive CNBC Sport interview. “They get the UFC. They’re fans of the UFC. They’ve been to the UFC. Their kids watch UFC, and they’re looking for those leagues, those brands, those kind of power sports content factories that can go global. And UFC is very much a global brand.”TKO owns both UFC and WWE. TKO shares have jumped more than 45% this year but fell slightly in after-market trading Wednesday after the company released its earnings after the bell.At this stage, the Netflix interest is purely speculative. UFC can’t negotiate with anyone other than its incumbent partner, Disney, until April 15, when the MMA league’s exclusive negotiating window ends.Netflix declined to comment on its potential interest.But if Netflix does strike a carriage deal for UFC, it will cement the world’s largest streamer’s status as a competitor for any live sports package moving forward.That wasn’t the case just two years ago.“We’ve not seen a profit path to renting big sports,” Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said in December 2022.Netflix seemed to back off that stance with a deal to be the exclusive home of WWE’s “Raw” in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Latin America beginning in Jan. 2025.Still, even with the WWE deal, Netflix didn’t fully embrace its new role as a platform for live sports.“WWE is sports entertainment,” Sarandos clarified in January after reaching the groundbreaking deal with the WWE.While WWE would be broadcast live, it’s also scripted and episodic. Netflix has experience marketing dramas. WWE is “quasi sports,” Shapiro noted.In May, Netflix agreed to stream Christmas Day National Football League games for the next three years. While there’s nothing squarely more “sports” than NFL games, the deal is only for a day’s worth of games. It fits Netflix’s event-driven strategy of getting people to tune in for a water-cooler event, such as a live comedy special or the upcoming Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson boxing match, which takes place on Nov. 15.Bidding for a full package of UFC events would be different. There’s no way Sarandos could still argue Netflix hasn’t changed its tune on the value of sports – which makes sense. Netflix is pushing its advertising tier now, and there’s little that entices advertisers more than live sports.“Advertising is so important to the growth of Netflix, and we’re gonna see how they do with live events,” Shapiro said. “The Tyson-Paul fight will tell us a lot. How many folks come to the table to watch that, how many folks sign up from Netflix or claim that they stayed with Netflix because of that.”Landing a package of UFC events seems like a natural evolution for Netflix. It’s not scripted like WWE, but it’s just a series of live events. That’s what sports are!
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