UFC fighters will have more to fight for once UFC’s Paramount+ era begins. UFC CEO Dana White confirmed plans to increase post-fight bonuses after the new media rights deal.
On Monday, TKO Group Holdings, UFC’s parent company, and Paramount, a Skydance Corporation, announced a seven-year media rights agreement starting in 2026. The new deal will benefit fighters in at least one regard.
“It’s August, we have until January to figure that stuff out. But the low-hanging fruit that’s easy to answer? Bonuses are obviously going up,” White told reporters at Tuesday’s “Contender Series” press scrum. “So that will be big. Forget about the tide rising with all the other fighters, just the number that the bonuses bring to a fighter is millions of dollars.”
UFC’s standard bonus structure calls for two $50,000 Performance of the Night and one $50,000 Fight of the Night bonus. On rare occasions, UFC has bumped up the value or number of bonuses. White did not comment on how much the bonuses would increase.
Paramount will exclusively distribute UFC’s full slate of 13 marquee numbered events and 30 Fight Nights via its direct-to-consumer streaming platform Paramount+. The new model will mostly do away with traditional pay-per-view, though White claims that one-off PPVS and live events on CBS are possible with the new agreement.
Components of UFC’s business model will shift with the deal. For example, champions and pay-per-view headliners typically receive “PPV points,” an additional payment relative to the number of PPVs sold. With PPVS mostly going away, that could impact fighters. White insists there is time to figure out specifics.
“It’s not massive restructuring,” White said. “Obviously, this TV deal is massive, and a big deal. There’s still a lot more to it that you guys don’t know, but now it’s about — you always have to prove yourself. Always. No matter how good last year was, it doesn’t mean jack shit when you go into the next year. We have to get in there and we have to deliver. These guys are investing in the sport, in the athletes, and we’ve got to get in there and kill it. so we’ve got a lot of hard work to do over the next several months.”
