Will UFC renew their horrible contract with ESPN?

[Cartiac]

It's not the money. It's the principle.

It's like if you went to your favorite steakhouse and ordered your usual, and they said, oh that steak now comes with shit sauce for only 25 cents extra.

And you say, "can I get my steak without shit sauce on it?"

To which the waiter replies, "OMG it's only 25 cents! What are you, POOR?"

Damn right it's the principle! If you are too f'n poor to pay your favorite steakhouse the extra 25 f'n cents for the new shit sauce then you should keep your broke ass home!

 

[1BadMF]

jfc...I hope not

 

[CrimsonFan]

I kind of like espn plus to be honest.

I think I pay like $20 a month for Hulu, Disney plus, and ESPN plus. I do like that I can pause the fights, or come home and easily watch a card i missed. I dunno I guess I don't really get the hate. It's very convenient to me.

 

[milliniar]

Unless they get a better offer yes.

 

[Drakesavage9]

I kind of like espn plus to be honest.

I think I pay like $20 a month for Hulu, Disney plus, and ESPN plus. I do like that I can pause the fights, or come home and easily watch a card i missed. I dunno I guess I don't really get the hate. It's very convenient to me.

I’m with ya. $10 a month is nothing and everything in life has gotten more expensive in the last few years so I don’t see it as an issue.

 

[JudoThrowFiasco]

It's funny. Piracy is not even a big problem in music anymore, because that industry has found it's price point. Music is cheap enough now that people are fine paying for it.

The same thing could happen with UFC. Most people would probably be fine paying for it if they didn't feel like they were getting ripped off.

Adding it to Netflix would probably keep a lot of subscribers from jumping ship to another streaming service.

I'm convinced you could make ppvs 10 a pop and majority would still rip it off.

 

[InternetBadAss]

The worst day in UFC history is when they signed a 7 year deal with ESPN where, to see the fights, UFC fans suddenly had to subscribe to ESPN+ on top of paying for the PPV.

ESPN+ was cheap at the time, I think only 5 bucks a month, but I rejected this deal on principle and swore to never order another PPV as long as this deal was in place.

Well it's been 6 years now, so they are probably deciding whether or not to renew.

I'm begging Dana and his lizard overlords to not renew this deal. Or at least remove the requirement of the ESPN+ subscription.

Until then, I will continue to vote with my wallet and encourage others to do the same.

I've pretty much stopped watching altogether except for maybe 2-3 times a year I'll sail the seven seas.

 

[Pechan]

Why not? TKO will probably want to get money from as many plataforms as possible, netflix with WWE, disney with UFC, if they buy a boxing promotion thry will probably take it to amazon.

 

[GSP_37]

The card quality sucked with ESPN. Watered down. Live stream video also very blurry, but after the fact on demand was normal and sharp.

 

[CerebralKnievel]

Man if Netflix gets UFC and just gives it to existing subscribers at no extra cost I will personally blow their CEO.

I already love that company.

Youre complaining about ESPN costing something like $8, but somehow in your mind if Netflix picked up all UFC events, that would somehow be at "no extra cost." Netflix isn't free. You're an idiot.

 

[Fedorgasm]

Youre complaining about ESPN costing something like $8, but somehow in your mind if Netflix picked up all UFC events, that would somehow be at "no extra cost." Netflix isn't free. You're an idiot.

I never said it was free. I said no extra cost to existing subscribers.

 

[Doctor Grudge]

I never said it was free. I said no extra cost to existing subscribers.

It's at no extra cost to existing ESPN subscribers either.

 

[HolmeZy55]

on top of paying for the PPV.

Paying?

What is this paying you speak of?

 

[duke_droese]

Those ads are annoying as hell... when I'm watching my illegal stream.

 

[CerebralKnievel]

I never said it was free. I said no extra cost to existing subscribers.

You suffer from a serious lack of perspective.

 

[sdpdude9]

Wherever they go, it’s far past time to do away with pay per views. The UFC is the most expensive sport to follow. 14 $80 PPVs + $100 ESPN subscription = $1220 a year. Going by last year’s calendar that’s for 43 events for an average price of $28.37 per event. That’s fucking wild.

They complain about piracy but it’s well established people will forgo it if the price is fair. It happened in the music industry, it happened with HBO. This outdated model just holds the sport back.

 

[skylolow]

It's not the money. It's the principle.

It's like if you went to your favorite steakhouse and ordered your usual, and they said, oh that steak now comes with shit sauce for only 25 cents extra.

And you say, "can I get my steak without shit sauce on it?"

To which the waiter replies, "OMG it's only 25 cents! What are you, POOR?"

Isn't this in a nutshell what every media distributor does to its consumers????????????

You pay more today for your media access(cable, satellite, fiber optic, streaming services, etc) than you did a few years ago and they gave you nothing new except raising cost.

 

[GrantB13]

I hope not. Why the F would we want to be on a service that double dips? Not only does ESPN raise the price of their service which has an exclusivity deal for PPV but then the UFC raises the price of the PPV on top of that. Bullshit. I stopped buying PPV a while ago and I'm seriously debating dropping ESPN. I only use it for UFC and F1. ESPN's stream player is fucking garbage too. You try to fast forward between rounds or fights trying to catch up and it sends you to the live broadcast. Thanks for spoiling Whittaker/Aliskerov, you fucks. And their quality is crap as well. I almost never get decent resolution and frame rate except for specific device/browser/app combos.

 

[skylolow]

It's funny. Piracy is not even a big problem in music anymore, because that industry has found it's price point. Music is cheap enough now that people are fine paying for it.

The same thing could happen with UFC. Most people would probably be fine paying for it if they didn't feel like they were getting ripped off.

Adding it to Netflix would probably keep a lot of subscribers from jumping ship to another streaming service.

Piracy killed the music industry from an artist perspective. Artist get shit from there creations now days. It's turned into nothing more than a driving factor in getting fans to come to live shows and that is how you make money(plenty of road blocks there also to make real money).

If you call "finding the price point" by basically saying here is access to 100,000,000 songs for $8 bucks a month or whatever and the artist who made the music get paid absolute dog shit, then I guess mission accomplished. I don't think I'd compare it to the UFC or sports in general.

Remember it isn't really the UFC's fault with ESPN+. ESPN was the highest bidder for the product and decided to use it to grow ESPN+ by putting most of the events on that. That worked out so well that ESPN decided to go back to the table and gain exclusive rights to the PPV's. That tells me most fans aren't thinking the way you are. I'm sure UFC would've love to seen all the events outside of PPV's on ESPN itself. More eyes, more chances to grow revenue.

New media deal will just come down to who wants to pay the most. The UFC built a brand and fans follow the brand. As fan it would be great if they worked out a deal that fans get all the content with someone like Netflix or even ESPN+ if they started to include the PPV's. I agree the PPV portion of this sport sucks ass and piracy runs rampant because of it. I'm hoping that is coming to end soon.

 

[DecisionSplit]

ESPN's stream player is fucking garbage too. You try to fast forward between rounds or fights trying to catch up and it sends you to the live broadcast.

ESPN+ only works when you watch it through another service like Hulu or Amazon. The actual service itself is clearly not optimized for most browsers or televisions. It's like ESPN gave up on improving the service years ago and are just waiting for Disney to sell the entire company off to another media group.

Remember it isn't really the UFC's fault with ESPN+. ESPN was the highest bidder for the product and decided to use it to grow ESPN+ by putting most of the events on that.

ESPN loses money on the UFC. They overpaid to try to build their platform around signings like this. YouTube loses massive money on the NFL. The NFL also just lost their antitrust lawsuit over exclusivity and will be eating billions in fines. These deals make zero sense for anyone but the UFC.

I doubt that UFC gets another sweetheart deal to stream events after this unless the Saudis overpay.

More eyes, more chances to grow revenue.

Then piracy should be acceptable. After all it means more eyes on the sport and sponsors. UFC should not complain.