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    Dana White throws shade, claiming NFL executives were left fuming by UFC’s $7,700,000,000 deal

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    Dana White’s UFC signed a seven-year, $7.7 billion deal with Paramount last summer. It pays the UFC about $1.1 billion a year. That’s a big jump from the $300 million a year it made under its old ESPN deal.

    He said the NFL got caught off guard with the deal. He said league executives couldn’t believe what they missed out on.

    White made the comments at a Zuffa Boxing event in the UK on June 7. A clip of his remarks spread on X this weekend.

    “We are not the same,” White said. “We are literally competing with the NFL, the NBA, Major League Baseball and the NHL right now. The day we announced the $7.7 billion deal, executives at the NFL said, ‘How the f**k did we not get this money, and how the f**k did we not know that kind of money was sitting there?'”

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    Dana White serves as the CEO of the UFC and a key executive under TKO, which owns UFC and WWE. He bought the company for $2 million in 2001.

    Read more: “Zuckerberg vs. Musk” – Dana White names condition for potential $150 million UFC Colosseum fight

    Read more: “That guy doesn’t ever complain” – Dana White reacts to controversial ending to Alex Pereira vs. Ciryl Gane

    Putting the NFL’s $8 billion miss into context

    UFC 328: Chimaev v Strickland - Press Conference - Source: Getty
    UFC 328: Chimaev v Strickland – Press Conference – Source: Getty

    Dana White said the NFL missed a deal that was right in front of it.

    “You’ve got to imagine the way in the United States, the powerhouse over there is the NFL, and I’m sure when the NFL, when they were sitting in their executive offices and they saw the deal that we got with Paramount, they had to be thinking, ‘Wait a minute, there was $8 billion sitting over at Paramount that we didn’t get. We’ll start putting games on Tuesdays,” White said.

    For comparison, the NFL makes about $10 billion a year from its current $110 billion media deal. That’s still far more than the UFC earns. But the NFL wants a new deal worth almost double that amount. One estimate puts the new number at $15.9 billion a year. Paramount already pays the NFL about $2.1 billion a year. So far, it has only offered a 25% increase.