The Professional Fighters League announced it has re-signed a TV deal with ESPN. The new multi-year deal expands on the coverage of the company which recently purchased Bellator MMA.
The deal will include coverage of the new PFL PPV Superfight Division. It will also include live event distribution of PFL MMA Global Regular Season, Playoffs and World Championships on ESPN Platforms. The past two seasons the PFL Championships have been on ESPN PPV.
Financial details were not disclosed.
The deal will include shoulder programming to promote PFL events across ESPN’s platforms.
Payout Perspective:
It will be interesting to see how much more (we assume more) programming will be on ESPN’s linear networks which should be more available to the MMA audience since it does not require a subscription like ESPN+. One would think that with the addition of Bellator, there should be more programming on ESPN and the enhanced with the PPV division spearheaded by Jake Paul and Francis Ngannou. We will see if this move causes UFC to shop its rights around more than it would have prior to the PFL acquisition of Bellator as one might assume more competition for Zuffa.
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