US media giant Paramount has expanded its broadcast agreement with mixed martial arts’ Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) with a new six-year deal to provide coverage of its top-line events in Canada.
Under the deal, Paramount gains exclusive rights to air the main cards during all 13 top-line UFC numbered events, traditionally known as pay-per-view events, live on its Paramount+ streaming service across Canada from 2027.
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Paramount said details on the first UFC events to stream live on Paramount+ in Canada will be announced later this year.
UFC enjoys a large following in Canada, having launched in the country with UFC 83 in 2008. Since then, the promotion has staged 37 premier sporting events across 11 cities in the country.
The new deal builds on Paramount’s seven-year, $7.7 billion deal to become the exclusive broadcaster of UFC in the US and Latin America from 2026, which sees it air the promotion’s top-line numbered events (13 per year) and secondary Fight Night events (30 per year) via its Paramount Plus OTT streaming service.
Additionally, select numbered events are being broadcast on linear TV through Paramount’s CBS network simultaneously with Paramount+ coverage.
Paramount also has a rights agreement in Australia to show all 30 UFC Fight Nights and prelims for all numbered events.
Back in January, it was reported that UFC was seeking over $1 billion per year as part of its US rights deal, which has now been achieved with the $1.1 billion annual terms of the contract, which represents more than triple the $315 million per year it received from ESPN.
That deal with ESPN, which began in 2019, was struck in May 2018 and originally included streaming rights before being quickly expanded to encompass linear TV rights, and just as it had started in 2019, was extended from five to seven years and expanded to include pay-per-view (PPV) distribution. ESPN also owns UFC’s extensive historical video catalog.
ESPN did have an exclusive negotiation window with UFC that ran between January and April 2025, but it did not come to fruition, despite Shapiro making it known that the promotion saw “a long-term future with ESPN” and wanted a renewal.
The enhanced deal with Paramount comes soon after UFC announced financial technology company Exodus Movement as its first official payments partner, as the promotion continues its commercial partnership push.
Last month, UFC’s parent company TKO announced a 25% increase in revenue in the first quarter of 2026, reaching almost $1.6 billion spread across UFC ($401.2 million), World Wrestling Entertainment ($475.7 million), and IMG ($655.4 million), with all three seeing a revenue rise during the three months.
UFC's revenue increase was driven predominantly by a rise of over $50 million in media rights, production, and content, which brought in $275.3 million over the three months. This was mainly due to a new distribution deal with Paramount that got underway in January.
