Rejoice, fight fans. The UFC’s long winter slumber has ended. The world’s leading MMA promotion is back with UFC 324 this week, and now it’s not just a new year that’s beginning. It’s a whole new era … kind of.
Quick status update, just so we all understand the present lay of the land. Saturday’s event from T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas will be the first under the UFC’s new broadcast deal with Paramount. That means fans here in the U.S. can watch the whole thing for just $8.99 — the current cost of the cheapest Paramount+ subscription plan. Just last month, when the UFC was still on ESPN+, an event of the same or similar caliber would have cost you $79.99, in addition to the $12.99 subscription plan.
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So in other words, yeah, price of the brick just went way down. And that never happens.
Here’s where a reasonable person might ask: So what are we getting for our money now that the UFC is making so much from Paramount that it doesn’t need to dig quite as deeply into our pockets (for now)? Here’s a few things to consider:
1. Paddy Pimblett and Justin Gaethje are fighting for something, but the title of world’s best lightweight sure ain’t it
There’s something about this matchup that I genuinely like. It has a story. It has stakes. But, let’s be honest, those stakes are not the UFC lightweight title. That resides with Ilia Topuria, who won it fair and square and has yet to lose it. If you want to tell me this interim version is the next best thing, well, first you’d need to explain why the consensus No. 1 contender isn’t involved in it (and you’d have to do better than just telling me Dana White is mad at him).
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So let’s tell it like it is: The UFC wanted a fun stylistic pairing featuring two lightweights with something resembling existing fan bases. That’s the only way Pimblett ends up in this fight. His biggest UFC wins all came against guys who were pushing 40 at the time. He has not (yet) built a championship résumé for himself, but he is fun and brash and fans remember him even when he doesn’t have a fight booked, which is more than half the battle these days.
Then on the other side you have Gaethje. For a while there he seemed like he was never more than one good punch away from a UFC title. It never happened for him, and now he’s 37 and eyeing the exit. The thinking among his team seems to be: If you can’t beat this guy for the right to at least say you had another version of a UFC title, why keep hanging around and taking the hits? And yeah, that’s hard to argue with. There will never be a better chance than this. Not for Gaethje. Not at this point in his career. He must make this one count. Which means he’s fighting not just for metal and leather, but for his career and legacy and identity.
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That’s heavy, man. And while I may have still balked at this being the only “title” fight on a numbered UFC event back when these things cost $80 plus the subscription price, for $8.99 I find myself feeling much more forgiving. Let’s see how long that lasts.
2. But hey, in the big picture sense, anyone else feeling like the UFC is on the precipice of major change?
Look around. The first few months of 2026 in the UFC have been mostly mapped out and we have exactly one (1) actual, undisputed title fight booked. Even that one — a rematch between featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski and challenger Diego Lopes, who was soundly defeated in his first attempt last year — is one that no one asked for. Is this all a consequence of holding the good stuff until the White House event in June? Or is it the result of an incentive structure that shifted big time the moment Paramount ponied up a billion bucks per year for the broadcast rights?
Ask the head honcho White about it and you’ll get the same rote answer: “If you don’t like it, don’t watch.” That’s been his response for 15 years, but now he seems almost bored of hearing himself say it.
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Also, now he genuinely does not have to care. Paramount is paying big, big bucks whether anyone watches or doesn’t. From a live events and TV production standpoint, the UFC is a well-oiled machine that no longer needs White’s hand on the throttle every week. Which is good, because he seems less interested than ever. It’s as if the towering financial success of the UFC has sucked all the fun out of it for him. More and more, he might as well be walking around with a shirt that says: I’d rather be podcasting. Or running a slap-fighting league. Or producing a show that’s essentially what-if-TUF-but-NASCAR-trucks. Or trying to take over boxing. Anything but this.
The UFC’s lone undisputed title bout of 2026 thus far — a rematch of a fight we just saw in April.
(Chris Unger via Getty Images)
It’s not just White, either. The suits behind TKO Group Holdings have hacked the code on squeezing every last dime out of these combat sports properties. Just look at the WWE, which is poised to make a bunch of money bringing the Royal Rumble to Riyadh next week, where there are actual royals paying for the privilege of hosting it. Or look at Zuffa Boxing, which debuts at the (newly renamed) Meta APEX this Friday, with no real attempt to hype up any of the actual fighters competing on the card.
In terms of money in and money out, this feels like it’s literally a golden age for the UFC. But does it feel that way as a UFC fan? Because to me, as someone who’s followed this sport and this promotion for close to three decades now, it feels like our viewership is taken pretty much for granted these days. And it’s hard to see how that changes when the river of money keeps flowing whether we’re happy or not.
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3. In terms of pure user experience, what can we expect when we turn on Paramount+ this Saturday?
One of the smartest things UFC ever did was maintain an iron grip on its own TV production. In the early days, this was mostly pragmatic. The sport was very new and very niche. You couldn’t count on any old cable network to understand it and get it right. Plus, for all his other faults, White always seemed to have an almost preternatural understanding of TV production. This served the UFC extremely well, but also kept the look and feel of UFC events pretty much uniform as the promotion moved from Spike TV to FOX to ESPN.
That part probably won’t change now on Paramount. The UFC upgraded the broadcast team by adding Kate Scott, but otherwise expect more or less the same voices saying the same things. (Jon Anik, as always, will be extremely professional and well-prepared. Daniel Cormier and Michael Bisping will be fun and opinionated but probably still won’t totally know the rules or judging criteria of the sport they’ve spent their entire adult lives in and around.)
Personally, what I ask of this new home for UFC events is that it deliver a better viewer experience than ESPN+ did. That shouldn’t be too hard. If the streaming app actually works the way it’s supposed to every time, then that right there is an upgrade. If CBS keeps pushing the UFC on things like NFL broadcasts (and for a billy a year, it has incentive to), maybe the sport even gains some new fans.
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The big downside to this move is the risk of falling completely off the radar of John Q. Sportsfan now that you’re not on ESPN. Go to almost any bar in America with TVs stuck to the wall and chances are good that at least one of them is showing ESPN all day, every day. The UFC really benefitted from that. Sandwiched between NFL highlights and NBA news, it joined the mainstream sports tapestry. Paramount can’t really deliver that same punch. And when ESPN no longer has the same skin in the MMA game, it will almost certainly tone its MMA coverage way, way down.
That’s a loss. But again, the UFC is being extremely well compensated for that trade-off. You just hope that it’s not mortgaging the future in the process.
