Both of WWE’s new deals for RAW and SmackDown will go into effect from October 2019 until September 2024 and will be worth a combined $2.2 to $2.4 billion over the next five years.
With FOX offering SmackDown an amount of $200 million, it appears that the same offer with the same value was also offered to UFC, but UFC ended up agreeing to a separate deal with ESPN for an amount of $150 million. When FOX was unwilling to pay roughly $10 million per UFC episode, it is believed that they used that budget of $200 million to go to WWE and offer it to SmackDown instead.
What this means is that according to FOX, they find 52 weeks of SmackDown on Friday nights more valuable than 20 UFC shows plus supplementary programming. One insider noted that “UFC played chicken with FOX and lost.”
Source: Wrestling Observer Newsletter
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