On Wednesday, Dana White posted on IG that he had a big announcement to make. He later retracted the statement saying he had jumped the gun. Could it have been about media rights for Zuffa Boxing?
On Thursday, The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand reported that Netflix will stream MLB Opening Day matchup for the next three years. The first being the New York Yankees facing the San Francisco Giants on March 25th.
If you had listened to Mark Shapiro speaking appearances of late, it was clear that Netflix was close to signing the UFC to a media rights deal. That deal eventually landed with Paramount/CBS for $1.1 billion. Shapiro noted that Netflix did not want to take on the volume of the UFC. Namely, it did not want to take on the UFC Fight Nights. Netflix wanted to focus on special events and it already had a weekly show in the form of WWE Raw.
Given the fact that the Canelo Alvarez-Terence Crawford fight streamed to a huge audience on Netflix gave the company of glimpse of the production of Dana White and the financial backing of Riyadh Season. It has done well with Jake Paul (and MVP promoted) fights on the network as it is scheduled to hold another one this November.
So, enter Zuffa Boxing. Shapiro has stated that a deal is forthcoming and one might suspect with White jumping the gun may have coincided with (perhaps) an agreement that MLB would have a chance to announce first. It would make sense, wouldn’t it.
Certainly there are other suitors out there. The usual suspects including ESPN, Amazon and maybe even DAZN or Apple. But Netflix is actively looking to get into live sports and Zuffa Boxing seems like a logical choice.
We shall see….
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