'I Take Niche Sports And Turn Them Into Monsters'

03/13/2025 08:00 AM

As Dana White prepares to get working on his new boxing endeavor, he laid out the general ideas behind how the league will take shape.

If Dana White's new boxing league feels a little bit thin on concrete details, that's because a lot of the details haven't been worked out.

Questions like how many events the 'league' will hold after it launches in September have no answers yet because it all depends on what kind of broadcast deal parent company TKO can wrangle up. And as White learned with Power Slap, broadcast deals are getting fewer and farther between in today's economic climate.

In a recent interview with former ESPN boxing reporter Dan Rafael, White gave some interesting insight into his boxing venture and his view on the current TV landscape, which plays into the UFC's ongoing negotiations for a new broadcast deal (or deals) at the end of 2025.

"How many fights you're gonna do a year? It's gonna depend on, on who we do a deal with, what they're looking for," White said. "You know, I say this all the time. If you call Kevin Kay, who used to be the head of SpikeTV, if you call Eric Shanks from FOX. If you call [former ESPN president] Jimmy Pitaro, ask any of these guys who's the best sports partner they've ever been in business with. I'm a good f—king partner. You know what I mean?"

"So we will go in, we will cut a deal with somebody, and we will basically build this thing around what they need for programming."

It's a strange time for live sports deals, though. While streaming networks want live events to keep customers locked into their service, there's an overall belt-tightening going on, especially at ESPN where the UFC is currently. And despite Netflix signing a $5 billion dollar deal with UFC's sister promotion WWE, Netflix execs continue to say they aren't interested in the week to week sports event business.

"It's gonna be interest because even the majors, unless you're the f—king NFL or college football — NBA's numbers are dropping drastically," White said. "Major League Baseball just went back and ESPN turned them down. Not only did they turn them down, they cut what their f—king deal was in half."

Asked if he was going to try and cut broadcast deals up amongst multiple partners, White suggested it was more important to make sure they ended up with the right network that would survive the coming media contraction.

"When you and I grew up, it was channel 3, channel 5, channel 8 channel 13," White said. "Then in high school, we had like 33 channels on cable. Then satellite hit. And then when you think of peak linear television, when ESPN was getting $7 a sub and all this other stuff, it was massive. Now all linear is starting to go away. The world is becoming a much smaller place because of streaming. And I think there's gonna be a channel 3, channel 5, channel 8, and channel 13 again globally."

"The question is, who's it gonna be? Is it gonna be Amazon, YouTube, Disney? You know, the list goes on and on."

The UFC and TKO remain in a very solid position despite all the chaos. UFC fans follow the promotion wherever they go and are a rare group that still buys pay-per-views. TKO has top corporate daddy Endeavor managing media rights negotiations, and they're flying high off the blockbuster numbers they're generating with Netflix. Now they're leveraging Dana White's reputation as a Midas Touch-type to sell the boxing thing.

"What I do is I come in and build things that people think can't be done," White said. "I take niche sports and blow them up and turn them into monsters. That's what I do. That's my passion. If you look at what I did with UFC, why the f—k would I get involved in PowerSlap? Because I believe in it. I think it can be big and nobody else does. I mean, that's basically what I do."

"Now I also believe that the sport of boxing is absolutely broken and has to be fixed. It has to be rebuilt from the ground up. And that's pretty much what I'm good at."