Combat Sports Journalist Luke Thomas Wonders How Paramount Profits From Deal With UFC

Combat sport journalist Luke Thomas explained why he cannot get his head around the fee paid by Paramount for media rights to UFC. 

UFC signed a seven-year deal with Paramount at $1.1 billion a year, valuing the entire package at $7.7 billion total. 

And while speaking at length about UFC's transition into a 'right-wing vector' with Pablo Torre, Thomas said that at some stage – he feels after January 6 – the company started to realize it could build something with Donald Trump in a favor-for-favor capacity; given Trump appeared on UFC events following controversies like January 6 and his 34 convictions. 

"At some point they come back around and they realize there's great transactionalism that is possible here," he explained. "Things that we want to be able to, he's going to facilitate, vice versa. We want someone who's in charge of the regulatory apparatus here that can cover us in a way that maybe someone else would not."

Through this line of discussion, he got onto Paramount deal and a potential ulterior motive to paying the amount they did. 

"There is no way Paramount is going to make their money back on UFC," he said. "Not only they're not going to make their money back. They're gonna take a bath."

He pointed to reporting at the time of media rights discussions, UFC was trying to shop as much content to Netflix and whatever was left could have been shopped back to existing partner ESPN. The value at the time being discussed was around the $800 million mark.

"And then the Skydance merger happens with Paramount and here comes the Ellisons who are regime allied, regime friendly. Of course Dana White is regime allied, regime friendly. They give them $1.1 billion a year for seven years. I just don't understand, even with how many subs they can pull or with the ads they can show, how they can possibly make their money back."