Why Paramount is keeping Conor McGregor’s UFC return off CBS

Conor McGregor’s marquee return to the UFC is the latest UFC event to stay behind the Paramount+ paywall.

In August 2025, UFC reached an exclusive seven-year, $7.7 billion rights deal with Paramount in the United States. The agreement ended UFC’s pay-per-view model, moving all events to the Paramount+ streaming service, with select simulcasts on CBS.

CBS simulcast the final hour of the prelims and the first hour of the main card for UFC 326 in March and UFC 327 in April. Since then, however, Paramount has kept its biggest cards exclusive to Paramount+, which includes UFC Freedom 250, held in June on the White House lawn.

UFC 329, which features the return of Conor McGregor, will once again feature all live action exclusively on the Paramount+ streaming service. CBS will air a primetime special on Friday, however, featuring coverage of McGregor and Max Holloway’s weigh-in. Front Office Sports was first to report the Paramount+ exclusivity.

Viewership for UFC Freedom 250 may be a good place to start to understand why CBS, which is airing NCIS: Sydney and 48 Hours instead, will not simulcast any live action. Freedom 250 averaged 7 million viewers on Paramount+. That is on par with the NBA’s biggest regular-season windows. The most-watched NBA game on Christmas Day in 2025, featuring the San Antonio Spurs against the Oklahoma City Thunder, averaged 6.7 million viewers on ABC and ESPN.

That is likely one of the strongest live sports audiences ever on Paramount+, whose next most prominent exclusive sporting event is the later rounds of the UEFA Champions League.

Putting games over-the-air is great for increasing exposure, but if the event is already popular, a slightly smaller audience of new Paramount+ subscribers is more valuable than more people watching for free on CBS. For its part, UFC Freedom 250 resulted in an 184% increase in Paramount+ downloads on the day leading up to the event compared to the day before.

If UFC 329 proves to be another strong draw on Paramount+, that would be a huge success for this strategy. Less prominent events may still receive CBS simulcasts, but marquee events that already have interest should remain streaming exclusives.