The latest case of major technical problems for a streaming-exclusive broadcast came Saturday night. There, the pay-per-view broadcast of UFC 313 (headlined by the Alex Pereira-Magomed Ankalaev fight), exclusive to ESPN+, was simply unpurchaseable for many looking to watch it. And that led to huge criticism for ESPN, the UFC, and even that overall broadcasting deal. Here’s some of that backlash (language warning):
This is awful.. Sit down to watch #UFC313 and can’t pay to access it on ESPN+…. Keeps popping up error.
Tried phone, and multiple TVs. I’ve purchased every PPV event for 5+ years. Unreal.
— ChadTheDad (@ChadMeszaros) March 9, 2025
Got confirmation the #ESPN app sucks. It’s choppy for me in Vegas and still choppy in LA so it’s not my internet.
Here’s selfishly hoping #UFC moves out of the exclusive window and gets its fights off this platform in 2026 – or the PPV shows at minimum #UFC313
— Paul Gift (@MMAanalytics) March 9, 2025
ESPN+ has to be the worst streaming app in all of sports.
Completely glitching when trying to purchase UFC 313 😡 pic.twitter.com/Hu0kGPCRU0
— AFeldmanMMA (@afeldMMA) March 9, 2025
Just to add on here and some quick maths… your supposed to have an estimated 500K buys of ppv at $80 each, that’s roughly $40M+ in potential revenue lost—and counting. Time is money. #ESPN #PPV #LostRevenue@endeavor_global you should be pissed. Should be mentioned on earnings…
— Alexander Saslove (@___Yofi) March 9, 2025
This is awful.. Sit down to watch #UFC313 and can’t pay to access it on ESPN+…. Keeps popping up error.
Tried phone, and multiple TVs. I’ve purchased every PPV event for 5+ years. Unreal.
— ChadTheDad (@ChadMeszaros) March 9, 2025
It’s unbelievable that the @ufc @espn and @danawhite would allow this to happen to their fans. This entire card should air for free on @espn after their total and complete failure.
— Ben Allison (@Ben_A7) March 9, 2025
@espn I pay 100$/yr for this piece of shit platform for no reason and now you won’t let me buy this fight? Been trying for 15 minutes with the same message. Fuckin scamming clowns. I can’t wait until ufc breaks this worthless partnership pic.twitter.com/k5ogc2gMg7
— Unpopular Opinion (@UnpopularAF_) March 9, 2025
The complaints there went well beyond just the social media posts included above. There were many more complaining this across social media, and on forums including Reddit, to a level showing this was quite widespread. That’s significant, especially as major streaming-exclusive technical issues are far less common now than they were in the earlier days of those kinds of broadcasts. And as noted by that last X poster, part of what makes the ESPN+/UFC deal unusual is that it requires a subscription to the streaming service just to be able to purchase a pay-per-view event.
A PPV exclusive to a subscription service’s customers isn’t entirely unprecedented, especially in combat sports. Fellow subscription service DAZN also started offering PPVs in 2022. But charging people just for the opportunity to buy a PPV adds to the criticism when something goes wrong with that PPV.
Unlike with some other PPV–buying issues over the years, those who couldn’t buy this didn’t just miss the event (which saw Ankalaev post a surprising upset). They were also still out money for their ESPN+ subscriptions. (Yes, there are plenty of other events and shows on ESPN+, but charging just for the ability to buy a PPV and then not actually providing that PPV can provoke a lot of major complaint, as we saw here.)
There’s never a good time for technical issues, but this timing was perhaps particularly bad for ESPN. Their deal with the UFC, which was first struck in 2018 (in strange circumstances partly coming from the sudden exit of former ESPN boss and longtime UFC critic John Skipper) and expanded to the PPV side (which had previously been with Amazon) in 2019, expires at the end of this year. The UFC was one of the first major sports on ESPN+, but there’s been a lot of discussion that it may not stay there, especially around ESPN’s own changes with the planned fall launch of a wider streaming service in Flagship that also will include linear ESPN content.
ESPN and the UFC engaged in some renewal discussions back in 2023, but those didn’t lead to a deal. The network was still projected as a favorite to retain the UFC in December, but potentially with a smaller package shared with other suitors. Amazon has publicly stated interest, and there may be more interest still if ESPN’s exclusive negotiating window (which expires in April) ends without a deal. Adding to that, John Ourand of Puck reported last month that both sides seem likely to let that window lapse.
While technical issues with one particular PPV are unlikely to be the driving factor in any split, they add to a collection of elements that might be pointing to ESPN having a smaller (if any) role in UFC broadcasting beyond 2025. UFC and parent company TKO leadership figures have expressed desires to get a lot more money (which could particularly involve splitting up rights) and a willingness to consider a variety of models, perhaps even moving away from pay-per-view.
Thus, ESPN is far from guaranteed to retain the UFC. And while complaints over technical issues are unlikely to be the biggest factor in multi-year billion-plus broadcasting deals, it’s certainly not helpful for ESPN to have a high-profile broadcasting failure in the midst of discussions about the future of their UFC rights.
Update: Andrew Marchand and Alex Andrejev of The Athletic noted Sunday that ESPN is now offering free replays of the event (with an ESPN+ subscription), but not rebates. Their logic is that “the issue did not impact those who had already bought the pay-per-view (PPV) prior to the start of the issue at approximately 10 p.m. ET” and “Anybody trying to purchase the PPV during the technical outage would not have been charged.”
