TKO Group Holdings President Mark Shapiro has declared his belief that UFC [MMA] should now be considered the 4th major sport in North America ahead of Hockey thanks to it’s superior TV ratings.
“I’ve spent a lot of time in sports in my career, I’m getting old now, and once in a while you hear — you used to hear it more often than you do now — but it used to be the four majors,” Shapiro said of football, basketball, baseball, and hockey during a conference in San Francisco yesterday.
“The four majors. Frankly, what are you talking about?
“UFC is now not only mainstream, but it’s one of the four majors. The ratings on ESPN and ESPN2, apples to apples against the NHL — even including the playoffs, we dwarf them.”
“You put a Fight Night, not a pay-per-view, not a preliminary bout in front of the pay-per-view, a regularly weekly Fight Night on ESPN — does double digit ratings, beats [the ratings] against the NHL,” Shapiro said. “The demos are anywhere from 20 to 40 percent up.
“Not to smack [NHL commissioner] Gary Bettman or anything, I love the NHL, I’m a huge Chicago Blackhawks fan, but they’re just not in our league. That’s just not the case.”
“Keep in mind when I rattle off those ratings, that doesn’t include what we’re doing on ESPN+, which they’re not publishing,” Shapiro said. “We’re that much bigger. So we’re in a great place.”
The TKO Group, which was formed from the amalgamation of UFC and WWE under the same banner, are keen to talk up the success that the UFC has enjoyed in recent years a the moment as they are looking to land a lucrative new media-rights deal when their current contract with ESPN expires in 2025.
