During Thursday’s quarterly investors call, Mark Shapiro was asked about WWE’s upcoming negotiations for the rights to its Premium Live Events (previously known as pay-per-views).
Rather than focusing on the specifics of WWE’s PLEs — which are currently owned by Peacock — the TKO president and chief operating officer opted to take a big-picture look at the state of sports media rights.
“I don’t have to tell you that the market for premium content, such as ours, remains extremely strong. Look no further than the NBA renewal, which is higher than I think Adam [Silver] even thought it was going to be,” Shaprio stated, before noting the French Open’s rights jumping from $12 million to $65 million annually with its new deal with Warner Bros. Discovery.
“Now you come to the UFC and the PLEs, this is content that airs year-round. We’re strong in attracting viewers and subs in this direct-to-consumer environment we’re in. Both are very strong when it comes to reducing churn. And both are very strong as it relates to linear and network television. Let’s not forget whether it’s ABC or NBC, those are still very important and very much a part of the equation in rights deals moving forwad… so we feel very good about these renewals.”
The former ESPN executive proceeded to note that this is as strong of a market for sports rights fees as he’s ever seen.
“I’ve been doing rights deals for 25 years both on the buyer and the seller side dating back to my days at ESPN… I can tell you that this is as hot as I’ve seen it,” Shapiro said, before conceding, “But it is about timing. Very very important to understand that. Sports rights are strong and they’ve sustained, but it’s timing. Sometimes they’re hot and sometimes they’re warm. So what it is today isn’t necessarily what it’s going to be next year — could be hotter by the way. We’ll see how that plays out.”
As Shapiro noted, a lot can change over the course of a year. But when it comes to the UFC’s upcoming negotiations, TKO appears to be well positioned.
With the NFL, NBA and MLB all currently locked up to long-term deals, UFC’s offerings — which will become available when its current deal with ESPN expires at the end of 2025 — are the only major sports rights scheduled to become available in the near future. That ultimately proved to be a motivating factor for suitors that helped drive the NBA’s price point up, and one would imagine that UFC will benefit from such scarcity when its negotiations with ESPN — and potentially other suitors — begin.
As for Shapiro’s big-picture approach, it would be difficult to argue that sports rights aren’t as valuable as they’ve ever been. How long that will continue to be the case remains to be seen. But when it comes to the all-important factor of timing, TKO appears to be in position to benefit.
