When Paramount finalized its seven-year, $7.7 billion deal with TKO Group last August, the UFC’s broadcast footprint changed overnight. Starting in 2026, all 13 of the UFC’s numbered events and 30 Fight Nights will stream on Paramount+, with select cards simulcast on CBS. No more pay-per-view, and no extra charge. That kind of a broadcast deal did more than change how fans could access MMA. Per UFC’s president Dana White, it sent shockwaves straight to 345 Park Avenue.

“We are not the same,” Dana White declared in a recent presser. “We are literally right now competing with the NFL, the NBA, Major League Baseball, and the NHL. If you think about where we sit in the pecking order of the top sports in the country, I don’t know this to be true, but I fu***** guarantee you it is: The day we announced that we did a $7.7 billion dollar deal, the executives at the NFL said, ‘How the f*** did we not get this money, and how did we not know that kind of money was sitting over there? We’ll do games on Tuesday, Friday, Saturday.’”

White’s point about Tuesday and Friday games lands differently when you consider the NFL has been doing exactly that – pushing games off Sunday and onto weeknight slots like MNF, TNF, and Black Friday game. Former NFL wide receiver Chad Johnson recently opined that the league’s mission is “about continuing to not only grow the game, but make as much money as possible doing so.”

Now, the NFL’s current deal – $111 billion over 11 years, signed in 2021 – brings the money from CBS, Fox, ESPN, and Amazon. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has always been vocal about wanting more. Last September, he told the media that renegotiation talks on new broadcasting deals could begin as early as 2026 – way ahead of the opt-out window. The idea was to push the price up while the league still held leverage, but that may not be as clear as Goodell thinks.

The 2026 season is just two months away, and per John Ourand of Puck, the NFL and its broadcasting partners “are no closer to working out a media rights extension than they were last week, or the week before, or the week before that.” Despite Goodell’s push, September might just arrive before a single new deal is signed.

All major American sports are adjusting to the streaming platforms because that’s where the money is. But while tech giants like Amazon, Netflix, and Google are fronting billions of dollars without breaking a sweat, the same can’t be said for all legacy networks. Making a long-term commitment isn’t easy for them, and that’s where the competition begins – between different sports.

“Then you got the NBA, the Major League Baseball is looking for a new deal, and the NHL,” Dana White continued. “So, if you look at where TV was 15 years ago, all these powerful cable channels and all this stuff, the cable industry is taking a nosedive. So what do you have left? You have NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox. And then you have like three powerful streaming services. There are a lot of people fighting over the same turf.”

And he’s right. The NBA already locked up Disney, Comcast, and Amazon in a $77 billion, 11-year deal in 2024. This, per Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio, had left a bad mark on the NFL, just like the UFC deal.

“The NFL, dismayed by the significant increase in rights fees the NBA generated on its latest deals, wants more,” writes Florio. “Sooner rather than later.”

MLB finished the picture. Rather than lock into a long-term deal, the league signed a short three-year bridge agreement worth around $800 million per year across ESPN, NBC, and Netflix. That deal runs through 2028, after which their existing deals with TNT Sports and Fox will also expire, putting every single game up for grabs for the highest bidder.

Every major sport is running to the same select broadcasters and the same handful of streaming services with real money to spend. The NFL still commands the most. But the UFC proved the pool was deeper than the NFL’s executives realized – and someone else got there first.