TKO in talks with Skydance to bring the UFC to HBO and TNT

TKO is in talks with Skydance about putting the UFC on HBO and TNT as well as Paramount+ and CBS, president Mark Shapiro said on Wednesday, November 4. He said it on TKO's third-quarter earnings call, as MMA Fighting reported that evening. No deal, event or date has been announced.

"We're in conversation as we speak with Skydance about the best way to maximize audience across the Skydance platform," Shapiro said, according to Sherdog. He then named the channels, saying TKO "will be maximizing HBO, TNT, Paramount+, CBS" to grow the UFC's audience.

Skydance, formerly Paramount Skydance, completed its purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery on October 6, according to its own announcement. That put HBO, HBO Max and TNT Sports under the same owner as CBS and Paramount+, which already carry the UFC in the US.

Dana White welcomed the merger before the deal closed. "This merger is huge for us and everybody else on the platform, like 200 million more homes," he said after UFC 332 in Utah. BroBible reported the comment on October 4.

Shapiro raised the channels in answer to a question, not in his prepared remarks, according to a call report by Pro Wrestling Dot Net. TKO's written earnings release doesn't mention HBO or TNT at all. Skydance has not commented publicly that we could find.

The deal the UFC already has

Paramount announced the current contract on August 11, 2025. It runs seven years from 2026 and is worth $7.7 billion, about $1.1 billion a year, according to CNBC. That is more than double the roughly $500 million a year ESPN paid under the deal it replaced.

All 43 UFC events a year stream on Paramount+, and some numbered events also air on CBS. There is no extra pay-per-view charge. Because Skydance already owns all of these channels, any move to HBO or TNT would be an internal decision rather than a new rights sale.

The money is showing up in TKO's results. The release puts UFC revenue for the quarter at $519.2 million, up 60% from a year earlier, mainly because of the new Skydance contract. "They made a huge investment in UFC, and we want to see that we help them maximize their returns," Shapiro said, as Sherdog quoted him.

He also pointed to a personal link. "I used to work with David Berson, who's the head of Skydance Sports, from our days at ESPN," he said, according to MMA Fighting.

What could actually change

Nobody has said whether this means live fights on HBO and TNT or only more UFC shows. Sherdog notes that no plans or launch dates have been announced.

The other change is on the streaming side. David Ellison, now Skydance's chief executive, said in March that Paramount+ and HBO Max would be combined into one service, NBC News reported. Skydance's October 6 release repeats that its streaming products "will unify into a single service over time." No launch date has been given.

The UFC has worked across one owner's channels before. Under its seven-year Fox deal, from 2011 to 2018, the UFC ran cards on Fox, FX, Fuel TV and FS1, according to Wikipedia. The first was Cain Velasquez vs. Junior dos Santos on Fox in November 2011.

We think fans will notice the combined streaming service first, because it is already planned. Live cards on TNT or HBO would be a bigger step, and nobody at TKO or Skydance has said they are on the table.