Eleven Sports has acquired rights to the Ultimate Fighting Championship in the UK and Ireland from 2019. The deal will see selected UFC events made available via pay-per-view across the two territories for the first time.
TV Sports Markets has learned that Eleven, which currently operates solely as a streaming platform in the UK, will hold the rights for three years from 2019 to 2021.
Eleven will hold exclusive rights to all 42 UFC events per year, but will attempt to distribute pay-per-view events to other operators in the UK and Ireland.
Eleven’s UK and Ireland business is partly-owned by the IMG agency, whose parent company Endeavor owns the UFC.