Looking Back on Best UFC on ESPN Moments as Run Concludes

UFC action has called ESPN and ESPN+ home inside the United States of America for seven years. Flashback to 2018: Former UFC rightsholder FOX acquires the rights to WWE SmackDown! in a Friday evening timeslot under the FOX Sports banner in a $400 million (USD) deal.

The deal ran for five years, ending in the fall of 2024 and came with a per-episode cost of $7.6 million. Since Smackdown! left FOX, the network’s sports division has run live events in primetime on Friday evenings.

In the wake of the UFC and FOX parting company, the promotion and Disney-owned ESPN came to terms on what had initially been scheduled as a five-year media rights deal commencing in 2019. Said deal was later extended…