According to a 2020 survey, nearly 40% of MMA fans frequently watch the biggest MMA PPV events, whether successful or not, through illegal piracy and streaming services – and that was back when PPVs still cost $64.99.
Now, in 2024, fans will have to shell out a whopping $79.99 to watch PPV events. Yesterday’s quarterly financial report from TKO Group Holdings (the parent company of the UFC) makes for interesting reading.
TKO Group President on UFC PPV pricing and illegal streaming
In 2019, when the UFC signed its massive $1.5 billion broadcast deal with ESPN, PPVs cost $59.99, and over the past five years we’ve seen a steady increase in price: $64.99 in 2020, $69.99 in 2021, $74.99 in 2022, and finally $79.99 at the time of this writing.
Unfortunately, but equally understandably, this has led to an explosion in pirated and illegally streamed UFC content – and TKO Group Holdings apparently agrees that the two are inextricably linked.
Last night, the media conglomerate held its quarterly financial conference, where President Mark Shapiro took aim at ESPN’s “aggressive” and increasingly frequent PPV price increases due to the rise in illegal streaming.
“ESPN and Disney have been very aggressive, if you will, in pricing the pay-per-views and they have complete control over that, but they have control in terms of what they’re paying us for those rights,” Shapiro explained, as Forbes reported.
“Over the course of our partnership, they’ve probably gone a little faster and higher than we would have liked… We’ve told them that too, especially during this time of piracy where our piracy numbers have really skyrocketed, and we believe that’s because they’re setting prices too high.”
One strategy ESPN, in partnership with the UFC, has implemented over the past few months to combat this rise in pirated PPV content is to offer events at a lower price if you pre-order the PPV.
According to Shapiro, the company is “successful” with this new approach. However, how big an impact it has on streaming piracy remains unclear.
“They’ve basically lowered the price by offering a new marketing promotion: if you buy by a certain date, well before the numbered fights, you get a discount, and once you’re past that date, the price obviously goes up. They’ve had great success with that.”
Shapiro also said he believes the “PPV market” is slowly finding its middle ground, with ticket sales from live events also “supporting our buys in the pay-per-view space.”
“Like the audiences at the live events where we’re selling out and breaking records, and you see all of that in the press release, and the return that we’re getting, which in many cases, especially with WWE, has been higher than we even planned for… We’re also maintaining our buys when it comes to pay-per-view. So we feel really good about that.”
The current broadcast contract with ESPN expires in 2025.
Review of The Athletic’s 2020 MMA Fan Poll
As for the aforementioned question of where MMA fans get their content, a survey was conducted by The Athletic back in 2020 to find out how many fans were “taking to the high seas of online piracy” – and the consensus is that those numbers have only increased since then.
Of the 530 attendees, 40% said they only buy one or two PPVs per year, and only 10% said they buy 11 or more PPVs per year – there were 14 PPVs in 2023, suggesting that less than 1 in 10 fans buy “every” event.
The most striking findings of the survey, however, were the fact that 33 percent said they do not buy PPVs at all and that around 38.7 percent regularly look for links to illegally streamed live broadcasts.
Considering that the global coronavirus pandemic has led to another dramatic increase in pirated streaming and numerous PPV price increases since the survey was conducted, we wouldn’t be surprised if that 38.7% is now closer to 45% or more when looking at the UFC’s global market share in 2024.
Read The Athletic’s full 2020 report here.
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