The UFC President reflects on 25 years running the company as he pivots to streaming, launches Zuffa Boxing, and plans a White House event.
This month marks 25 years since Dana White was named UFC President.
Over the preceding quarter-century, he’s shepherded the company from its initial $2 million purchase price to a ubiquitous superpower. The UFC generated slightly more than $1.1 billion in revenue over the first nine months of 2025 and then agreed to a landmark seven-year, $7.7 billion U.S. media rights deal with Paramount Skydance that fundamentally changes the way fight fans consume the sport’s biggest bouts. Gone is the pay-per-view model on ESPN+, where consumers would have to shell out $80 for an evening of action, replaced by a streaming subscription model on Paramount+, where $8.99 per month gets you every fight of the year, plus Landman, NCIS, or whatever else you may want to watch on the service. As White celebrates his silver jubilee with the company, the biggest product in his most important market has never been more accessible.
UFC makes its Paramount+ debut Saturday night with UFC 324 from Las Vegas, where Justin Gaethje takes on Paddy Pimblett for the interim lightweight title and Sean O’Malley brings his entertaining brand of fighting to the octagon. The co-main event between Amanda Nunes and Kayla Harrison was called off due to injury, but the card is slated to have the sport up and running in this new era.
“Last year, we’re coming off the best year we ever had,” White told Boardroom over the phone earlier this month, “but it means nothing. Now the slate is wiped clean. We’re on a new platform, and we have to deliver. When you think about it, every Saturday, I’m asking you to stay home and watch a fight, and we’re selling tickets. And obviously, this is our first flight on the platform, so you want to make it great.”
As White shopped UFC media rights to networks and streamers like Paramount, ESPN, Fox, Amazon, and Netflix, he initially believed the package would have to be split up in order for the company to get what it wanted.
“Everybody’s wishlist would’ve been to have it all, but what were they willing to spend?” White said. “But at the last minute, literally the last minute, Paramount stepped up and said, ‘We want everything.’ And we already love these guys. I mean, one of the great things about being in business with them already is how excited they are that we’re on the network. They’re getting us all fired up with how excited they are.”
It will be six weeks since the last numbered UFC event, the longest stretch without a major card White could remember. But then to get fans accustomed to streaming on Paramount+ in the U.S., UFC 325 will be on Jan. 31, marking the first time in a long time that there are numbered events in consecutive weeks. Sydney, in an Australian market that still relies on the pay-per-view model, is hosting an event headlined by a number of Aussie fighters led by featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski.
At the same time as White is launching the UFC on Paramount, he’s overseeing the debut of Zuffa Boxing, a new promotional company owned by UFC parent company TKO and Saudi-owned entertainment group Sela, headed by co-founder Turki Alalshikh, the chairman of the Saudi General Entertainment Authority. Just like with UFC and WWE, TKO believes it can bring boxing back into the mainstream public consciousness and has tasked White and Alalshikh with running the operation, with the first matches taking place on Friday at the UFC’s Meta Apex arena in Las Vegas, also streamed on Paramount+. After putting nearly $40 million in renovations into the Apex, White said he’s also working on a separate deal for a more permanent, residency-type home for Zuffa boxing to help the operation get off the ground.
“I want to rip the thing apart and build it from the ground up just like we did the UFC,” White said. “But my goal is the same in every combat sports business that I’m in, to bring the best fighters in the world to the company, put on the best fights in the world, and get people loving the sport and watching it every weekend or whenever we have the events. The difference is when you look at boxing, it has a massive fan base around the world, so I should be able to build it out a lot faster than the 25 years with UFC.”
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Like the NBA and MLB, the UFC recently found itself mired in a controversial betting scandal during the fall that saw White entangled at the center of the news cycle. At a smaller UFC fight card in November, featherweight Isaac Dulgarian was fired from the company after losing via submission in the first round following highly suspicious betting patterns that caused some U.S. sportsbooks to either suspend bets on the fight or issue refunds after the highly questionable event.
Integrity Compliance 360, a company UFC uses to monitor suspicious betting trends and activity, contacted White before the Dulgarian fight and flagged abnormal betting patterns, but let the fight proceed after discussions with the fighter and his lawyer.
“Let me tell you what won’t happen again,” White said. “If it happens again and I hear about a fight, we won’t ask and say, ‘Hey, are you doing this and that and everything else?’ We’ll probably just pull the fight.”
White alerted the FBI, and the investigation into Dulgarian is ongoing. He issued a stern warning at the time for fighters who try to damage the UFC’s integrity.
“If you try to do this,” White said in November, “I’ve been very vocal and very open about this, we will be your worst enemy. We will immediately go after you, guns a-blazing, with the FBI and whoever else we need to get, and we will do everything we can to make sure you go to prison.”
Of course, the FBI is not the only way in which UFC is currently working with the federal government. White is full steam ahead on a June 14 fight card on the White House lawn in celebration of the U.S.’s 250th anniversary and President Trump‘s 80th birthday. While White is unsure whether the card will be on Paramount+ or CBS network television, one of the most unique ideas and spectacles in the history of American sports will not only be the biggest event in the world that weekend, but will most likely be the most-watched fight card in UFC history. In my 2026 sports business predictions, I estimated that at least 10 million viewers would tune in.
“The White House fight is a one-of-one amazing opportunity and event,” White, who’s currently planning the event specifics with Paramount, said. “Pretty much the whole roster is campaigning to be on the card.”
In many ways, the White House event reflects the outside-the-box mentality that helped propel White and UFC from its humble beginnings to major-sport status through what he called an NBA- and NFL-type media rights deal. It maintains the company ethos of thinking of less traditional sporting and promotional methods, but it’s seemingly difficult to remain guerrilla, considering the company was valued at $11.3 billion in 2024. But focusing on live production on TV and in the venue, finding the best fighters on earth, and putting on the best fights will always be the three key pillars of success, White said.
“As long as I stay on top of what our core business is,” he added, “it’s tough to mess it up.”
For 25 years, pay-per-view was a major component and the lifeblood of combat sports revenue. One bad night on PPV buys could ruin a promotion or a company’s quarter. String a few of those together, and you could find yourself out of business. So as UFC begins its streaming era, it’s trying to keep as many things familiar to its fans as possible.
You’ll still watch the announce crew of Jon Anik and Joe Rogan, a mainstream pairing now, but unorthodox choices when they were first hired. You’ll still see and hear the unmistakable voice of Bruce Buffer as the ring announcer. Gaethje and O’Malley are bona fide bankable superstars who will help get this new era safely off the ground.
But as White and the company he helped take from a $2 million afterthought to a multi-billion-dollar colossus enter uncharted territory, the brash, pioneering president and CEO is ready to take this next challenge head-on.
“Everything we’ve accomplished means nothing going into this new deal,” he said. “We have to prove ourselves again.”
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