SBJ Unpacks: UFC scores prime-time lift on CBS

Tonight in Unpacks: CBS had a simulcast of two hours of UFC 326 on Saturday, drawing over 2.5 million viewers and giving the MMA property its best linear TV audience in 10 years. This is a benefit of the UFC’s $7.7 billion rights deal with Paramount, as SBJ’s Austin Karp reports.

Also tonight:

• Rousey lambastes UFC in run-up to Carano fight on Netflix
• New ticketers kick off with the 2026 MLS season
• Pelicans’ Gulf Coast path could guide NBA teams
• Op-ed: Can regulation, fintech save sports from financial ruin?

Listen to SBJ’s most popular podcast, Morning Buzzcast, where Abe Madkour discusses the NBA’s decision to call off the Hawks’ Magic City tribute, the successful NASCAR-IndyCar desert doubleheader, Wasserman changing its name and more.

CBS, which simulcast two hours of UFC 326 on Saturday night, helped the UFC draw its best linear TV audience in 10 years, as just over 2.47 million viewers found the event on the broadcast network. Select fights from the prelims and main card were simulcast on CBS (its UFC debut), while Paramount+ carried the whole event on the streaming platform (figures for that stream are not available). Also, the UFC audience on CBS was 30% better than what CBS has been getting in that time slot from 8-10pm ET on Saturdays this TV season (dating back to the fall), and UFC was 208% better than normal CBS Saturday prime-time programming among adults 18-34 as well as 190% better among adults 18-49.

The incremental CBS viewership was around 284% better than UFC’s season average on linear TV last year across ESPN networks (661,000). For the main card simulcast on CBS from 9-10pm, CBS had 2.81 million viewers. The CBS telecast peaked at 3.21 million.

Back in 2008, when CBS aired its first MMA telecast -- an EliteXC fight headlined by Kimbo Slice -- the network averaged a little over 4 million viewers, but that fight was exclusively on CBS. The network also drew 4 million viewers for a Strikeforce telecast on a Saturday night in 2009 that was headlined by Fedor Emelianenko-Brett Rogers.

INGLEWOOD — Fight fans crowded into the plaza outside Intuit Dome on Tuesday for the kickoff press conference for Netflix’s Ronda Rousey/Gina Carano card on May 16. While most of the onstage commentary was focused on the upcoming fight, Rousey also used the opportunity to continue her recent attacks on UFC, which had originally been in discussions to promote the event.

“Once they moved into the streaming model, it’s just not about putting on the best fights possible anymore,” said Rousey, referring to UFC’s seven-year, $7.7 billion media deal with Paramount that eliminated the league’s traditional pay-per-view model. Rousey also criticized UFC’s upcoming White House event, its prioritization of shareholder value as part of publicly traded TKO Group Holdings and its treatment of fighters.

“It used to be that UFC was the best place you could come in combat sports to make a living and be paid fairly. Now it’s one of the worst places to go, and it’s why so many of the top athletes are leaving to go find pay elsewhere,” Rousey said.

Jake Paul, whose Most Valuable Promotions is behind the Netflix event, also used his time on the mic to take a shot at MMA’s incumbent leader.

“MMA is in a weird position right now. It’s the wild west. We have a massive opportunity here to disrupt the whole space,” Paul said. “I believe the UFC is dying, and MVP is here to take over.”

Ideally, Robert Davari would’ve been in two places at once on Feb. 21.

It was the biggest sports night so far for the CEO and his company, Tixr, which rolled out with its first two sports clients: the Earthquakes and Dynamo. The ticketing provider had eight staffers at each venue, with Davari at PayPal Park and his CRO, Patrick Bradley, at Shell Energy Stadium. “It was like Mission Impossible: MLS edition,” Davari deadpanned. “It was intense.”

Tixr’s two new clients were part of an MLS trio — which also includes Red Bull New York and its deployment with Sports Illustrated Tickets — kicking off with new primary ticketers this season. While three out of 30 teams does not make a trend, it does signal an emerging willingness to consider a new solution in a club’s Starting XI (especially considering the Live Nation-Department of Justice case that could rattle the whole system as we know it).

Dynamo CRO Nicolò Zini, who joined the club in October from the FIFA World Cup 2026 Miami Host Committee, feels like the decision to join a new ticketing player leans into MLS’s youthful spirit to try new things.

“I think simply, first and foremost, audiences matter,” Zini told Sports Business Journal. “Our demos are generally younger across the board, right? Our franchises are generally younger than the other leagues and their clubs. So that gives you an organic and natural way of looking at things in a different way, where you are more disruptive, you are challenger brands, you want to be more innovative.”

Here’s a look at the early days of these journeys so far:

The evolution of a relationship

For Sports Illustrated Tickets, the addition of Red Bull N.Y. as a ticketing client added to an already long-term relationship. Last year, the club and company launched into a 13-year relationship that included a sizable naming-rights investment and digital fan experiences.

Sports Illustrated Tickets was founded in 2021 and entered the space via sponsorship (it has deals with the Commanders, Falcons and Patriots) and brand power through a deeply endemic name. The chance to finally wade into primary ticketing for Sports Illustrated Tickets came with a larger mission to create a unified experience for fans, said Red Bull New York CCO Joe Stetson.

That vision’s true ticketing launch point arrived on Feb. 28, with the team’s season-opening game against the Revolution. “If it was easy, everybody would be doing [ticketing],” Stetson said. “And it’s not an easy process, right? But once again, it’s a build as far as we’re seeing it. And we know that each event is going to get better as well.”

Building the right experience

The focus on experience unification was echoed by Tixr’s clients, which from benefited Davari’s decade-plus of building fan-facing products on the entertainment side of live events. Tixr stands out among the new ticketing players for its 13 years of experience.

And that showed throughout the process for Zini and Earthquakes Chief Strategy Officer Ian Anderson. San Jose was the first sports franchise to pick Tixr, officially announcing the deal in June. Like Red Bull N.Y., the club was a former Ticketmaster client. Anderson used the phrase “product-led” often while describing Tixr to me during a conversation. And that included building out more solutions when the time called for it.

The Earthquakes’ initial news release (and contract) made no mention about building a fan-facing app, but the project eventually led to Tixr creating one for the team when Davari couldn’t find a seamless fit from a vendor. “I was fighting to not do it because it’s a whole new product line outside of anything we’ve ever done,” Davari said. “And the speed at which we executed, how high quality of a product it is and what a big impact it made on the fans and the teams, that was a huge surprise.”

Those platforms — Tixr built a custom app for the Dynamo as well — allow for customized brand experiences and capabilities. The Earthquakes, for example, created a marketplace for easy selling and transferring of tickets that doesn’t require a bounce-out to another screen. The Dynamo, meanwhile, is also managing its youth camps through the Tixr platform, which creates more first-party data injection and cross-selling of camp opportunities and tickets.

Building on positive traction

Any first-match ticketing jitters for Anderson dissipated quickly on seeing how easily fans were navigating the app to get into the venue. Any new launch features challenges because technology always does, but by and large, “Tixr delivered in spades,” Anderson said of the debut.

On the Sports Illustrated Tickets side, CEO David Lane is excited to see how the fan experience can grow through both clear messaging to fans (the name on the stadium is also associated with their tickets) and communication capabilities that exist through its blockchain technology, allowing Red Bull N.Y. to personalize the experience through a holistic digital ecosystem.

Ticketmaster (16 MLS teams) and SeatGeek (nine) still represent the majority of the 30-club league, but Lane sees this new breed of rising primary partners as a sign that teams are ready to react to the growing (and connective) experience that fans expect.

“We can compete now,” Lane said of his company, Tixr and Jump, provider for the Timberwolves/Lynx. “It’s a question of, ‘What else can we do?’ And I think there’s more we can do for the fans and for the team than anybody else in the space.”

Ethan Joyce can be reached at ejoyce@sportsbusinessjournal.com.

With 13 NBA teams facing key distribution questions this offseason now that Main Street Sports Group is winding down, perhaps they can learn some lessons from their brethren down in New Orleans.

The Pelicans were faced with a similar situation when Main Street first came out of bankruptcy, and they ultimately decided to part ways prior to last season. That led to the creation of Gulf Coast Sports & Entertainment Network (GCSEN), whereby the Pelicans would move away from what was a cable-focused footprint/reach of around 700,000 homes on FanDuel Sports Network New Orleans to a broadcast TV-focused model with a footprint of over 10 million homes across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and parts of Florida. There would also be a DTC product, built by Kiswe, to stream live games inside the Pelicans’ coverage territory.

Are teams hitting up the Pelicans to see what has worked? “Yeah, they are. A few of them are,” said Greg Bensel, SVP/communications, broadcasting, community and government relations for the Pelicans and Saints. And in those conversations, Bensel tells counterparts that getting this sort of media effort off the ground is “hand-to-hand combat” in a local market.

When the Pelicans realized they wouldn’t be going back to Main Street, they looked at a number of possible plans. But it was a desire to make the NBA team more “regional” that ultimately had them strike a three-year deal with Gray Media.

In New Orleans, GCSEN content went to Gray-owned WVUE-TV Fox 8, which the Benson family had owned until 2013. Gray also had a number of affiliates (10+) in local markets like Lafayette (La.), Lake Charles (La.) and Birmingham (Ala.), and that regional spread gives the Pelicans a reach closer to the market size of Chicago, especially when a new DirecTV distribution deal kicked in.

One thing was for sure: The dollars would certainly not be there at the start. Sources told SBJ that the Pelicans were making closer to $25M annually toward the end of their Main Street media deal; now, they’re getting closer to $6M.

What are we going to show?

A key issue for teams going out on their own is how to populate a channel with content, especially during the offseason. “The first six months, eight months maybe for the first year -- we were kind of just maybe a zero rating,” Bensel noted, as Gray filled the hours outside of games, pre- and postgame shows with the likes of auto repair programs to fill time.

But then GCSEN leaned into sports content beyond the NBA team, including video podcasts focused on LSU and the Saints. “We were building programming that was going to start at 8am [CT],” Bensel said. “When you woke up, there was live programming talking about the Pelicans or talking about the Saints or talking about LSU, Tulane football. A talk show about [high school football] and live programming of high school sports would lead into and take you up to a Pelicans pregame.”

Fans responded as well, and those zero ratings have risen. The team noted Nielsen ratings for games are up 100% year-over-year, with strong growth in markets like Baton Rouge, Monroe and Shreveport in Louisiana, as well as in Jackson and Biloxi in Mississippi and Mobile in Alabama. “People are interested, and they’re watching and it’s because it’s accessible, it’s easy. People love live sports programming,” Bensel said.

For a network like Gulf Coast, adding more desirable live game content would be great. Could that eventually be something like an SEC sublicense for LSU, Ole Miss or Mississippi State baseball games from ESPN? Or maybe other Olympic sports? That remains to be seen. “All of that is on the table,” Bensel said.

Can GCSEN exist alongside a national NBA streaming package?

The NBA has made no secret that it plans to launch a national service for local streaming of teams’ games. But the demise of Main Street may have moved up that timeline, as first reported by Puck. Then SBJ last week reported NBA talks have already begun with the likes of Amazon, DAZN, ESPN and YouTube TV on launching such a service.

“At the end of the day, the Gulf Coast Sports & Entertainment Network isn’t going to go anywhere,” Bensel said. “Even if the NBA comes to us in a year and says, ‘Look, we’re taking all 30 teams and this is where you’re going to live, this is your fee, and you’ve got to be exclusive to this,’ I still think we still maintain our Gulf Coast network. It’s great for our brand and brand growth and merchandise and sales and everything else. So, we’re committed to this.”

The Braves are doing the lord’s work being a publicly traded company. So, it’s a near obligation on my reporting beat to dive into their recent 2025 full-year SEC filing and subsequent investors call for more details about the performance of their often-discussed mixed-use development, The Battery Atlanta.

The Battery’s 45% year-over-year increase in annual mixed-use development revenue ($97.4 million) certainly caught my eye in the recent filing. That means the 2.25 million-square-foot development now constitutes 13.3% of the Braves’ overall revenue of $732.5 million. In FY24, mixed-use was 10% of the revenue pie.

The jump’s main source was a $27 million increase in rent revenue, gained through new leases and the acquisition of existing leases related to the Braves buying Pennant Park for $93 million in April and expanding The Battery’s footprint to the other side of Interstate 75. A $2 million increase in sponsorship revenue also contributed to the boost, according to Braves CFO Jill Robinson. Mixed-use development-related costs also rose 45% but on a different scale than the revenue, from $9.8 million to $14.4 million.

During the investor call, Mike Plant, president and CEO of Braves Development Company, described a record year for The Battery’s tenants, in which their annual sales hit approximately $137 million across 30 locations, which, he added, “we believe ranks among the most successful mixed-use operations in the country.”

A place for big business

The Battery’s unusually high concentration of corporate HQ contributes to the retail success, acting as a straw that stirs the drink by bringing the daily activity (and spending) of its employees to the development, and in most cases, the companies signing long-term leases with premium rents.

The Battery’s HQ collection includes Papa John’s International, Truist Securities and the North American base of TK Elevator, as well as Comcast’s regional hub (overlooking Truist Park), and a handful of other smaller companies’ corporate bases. Their presence underlines the feeling that The Battery is a place where big business is happening.

Adding Pennant Park strengthened the development’s tenant portfolio. The Braves inherited a property with low 80% occupancy last April, but closed FY25 with that measure over 90%.

Plant said the development continues to command premium rents and to secure early lease extensions. In the fourth quarter alone, the Braves closed just under 50,000 square feet of new deals, with Walk On Sports Bistro and Shake Shack recently opening, while high-end chain restaurant J. Alexander’s debuts this year.

Real estate helping backstop media experiment

The Braves’ SEC filing news cycle was dominated by the announcement the team was launching an in-house TV network, BravesVision. The Battery, meanwhile, chugs along in the background.

Mixed-use development may never replace media rights money — at least not in certain sports — but it certainly strengthens a team’s business, with no better, or more public, example than the Braves.

Other MLB teams left in the cold by Main Street’s imminent collapse — the Royals, Brewers, Cardinals, Reds, Marlins, Tigers, and Rays — headed for the MLB Media umbrella. The Angels are launching their own network, too.

The decision to launch BravesVision was made easier in part because the Braves have always had a media bent, dating to their Ted Turner ownership, and their ownership and executive ranks are full of media expertise.

They have a sizable six-state territory with a large fan base and the streaming devices that could support a (new) regional network.

And they have The Battery to financially support the risk that BravesVision represents.

The 380 events hosted in The Battery and Truist Park in 2025 included 144 in the development’s common areas, with an additional 147 held at the Coca-Cola Roxy. Nearly 9 million people visited the area in 2025, close to the development’s 2024 count even though baseball attendance was down.

If (or when) the Braves lose tens of millions of RSN dollars in the near-term, they can augment that with the nine-figure revenue-generating development encompassing their ballpark. As Plant plainly stated during the investor call, The Battery “continues to expand its role as a meaningful contributor to our team and franchise value.”

England’s Premier League clubs amassed around £6.3 billion in revenue in 2023-24, according to Deloitte, and grassroots sports still manages to recruit millions of volunteers. On the surface it looks like a robust system, a good pyramid. But behind the scenes, the foundations are showing clear signs of cracking.

Rising costs, from energy and insurance to facility maintenance, are crushing non-elite club budgets. Sport England has warned that half of sports volunteers feel “at risk” of burnout as demands grow. Community clubs regularly fold because they simply can’t afford basic upkeep or insurance. A recent industry survey found 92 UK clubs taking “big financial risks,” with 43 holding less than a month’s cash on hand. In short, many teams barely wash their face, let alone invest in growth.

Regulators have noticed. In the UK, the new Football Governance Act 2025 has created an Independent Football Regulator tasked explicitly with enforcing financial sustainability at all levels of the men’s game. From November 2025 the IFR started to oversee the Premier League down through the National League. That’s unprecedented. It signals that sport is now treated like an economic national asset, not a free-for-all.

Across Europe and North America, many leagues already impose financial rules — think NFL/NBA salary caps, or UEFA’s breakeven rules — to stop runaway spending. The UK may be moving fastest right now, but the same financial pressures are playing out across U.S. college sports, minor leagues, and community athletics.

It is also not just in men’s sports. As women’s elite sport expands, and by doing so supporting increased inclusion for traditionally disenfranchised groups, so too does the commercial lens. While global revenues were projected to exceed £1.8 billion by the end of 2025, many clubs still operate at a fraction of the commercial scale seen in the men’s game, and profit remains rare.

From League Two to Little League, the same pressures are reshaping how sport survives.

Post-pandemic, the old model of funding is at breaking point with costs soaring. Grassroots clubs that are the bedrock of any pyramid have long been run on a shoestring budget with well-intentioned but sometimes ill-equipped volunteers charged with compliance, insuring facilities through to data-protection obligations. A lack of financial literacy in challenging times has become the death knell for many community clubs.

We need to start treating and regulating sports clubs as what they really are: critical social infrastructure, in the same way we think about schools, libraries or transport hubs, assets that hold communities together. When a small business fails, another often takes its place. When a sports club folds, a generation can lose its route into participation. That loss compounds quietly: fewer volunteers, fewer role models, fewer reasons for young (and old) people to show up. This is why sustainability in sport isn’t just a financial question, it’s a civic one. If regulators, investors and innovators align around that truth, the conversation shifts from “How do we keep clubs alive?” to “How do we make them durable?” And that is a far more ambitious, and necessary, goal.

Crucially, regulation can become a catalyst here rather than a hurdle. Strict rules on spending or investment might disappoint fans at the top end of the pyramid used to big money “winning at all costs,” but they force clubs to play sustainably. Imagine a rule requiring any mega-owner money to be split: half into wages and transfers, half into youth academies and community programs, filtering down to the volunteers at the lowest rung of that pyramid. Big spenders would still fire up performance, but would also have skin in the game down the pyramid.

Likewise, limiting losses (or requiring profits) makes clubs responsible. Only half of Premier League teams reported an operating profit last season, meaning many survive only on owner checks. If that bridge funding is capped across pro leagues, investors would be drawn into clubs that can truly make money, which might be the smaller, smarter ones, not just the glamour giants.

Technology and fintech are lining up to help solve these problems. The UK’s sport and leisure sector is a £100 billion economy involving 43 million participants, yet still lacks financial infrastructure. By combining banking, analytics and automation, fintech platforms can do things traditional banks won’t: from automating Gift Aid tax claims to bulk procurement platforms to cash-flow issues. Each of these helps clubs shave costs or boost revenues — and allows them to focus time and energy on what they do best: being a hub for community and social good.

A good technology system making effective use of AI, for example, could automatically remind a volunteer treasurer of an upcoming lease renewal, or simulate budget shortfalls and suggest funding sources. Over time, such tools can be scaled across thousands of clubs. And the data capture is a side benefit: better tracking of members, donors and sponsors will satisfy regulators (from data protection to safeguarding requirements) and help clubs plan growth rather than guess.

Where next? Sports and finance are at an inflection, but the outcome isn’t preordained. With smarter regulation and innovation, we can turn each invested pound into seed capital, not charity, whatever the level of sport being played. The evidence is there: Sport England finds that every £1 spent in community sport yields about £4.38 in social value — healthier people, safer streets, a smaller health care bill. But to capture that return, clubs must be built to last, if only to ensure that they continue to support the very people that care about them and benefit from them most.

That means backing reform. Legislators should collaborate at speed with sports bodies and fintech pioneers. Fans and investors should demand clear sustainability plans, not just splashy signings. The tools are emerging from purpose-built banks, digital platforms and cost caps so that sport can be run more like a resilient industry.

If we seize this moment, the sports pyramid will be stronger and deeper for it. If not, more teams will collapse under debt or drift away. “We’” must stop treating sport funding as a blank check, and instead demand every pound, dollar or euro from owners, investors and fans propels something forward.

Andrew Smith is founder and CEO of Sporta, an AI-native banking platform.

• Live Nation would be required to terminate its preferred ticketing service contract with Oak View Group within 30 days of approval if a judge signs off on the company’s proposed antitrust trial settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, reports SBJ’s Ethan Joyce and Bret McCormick.
• Golf’s post-Covid boom is not showing any signs of slowing down, as the sport continued to see incremental growth with total participation — both on course and off course — was at a record 48.1 million people, writes SBJ’s Josh Carpenter.
• Carpenter also notes that Jim Furyk is open to more broadcasting opportunities after his lead analyst debut for the Golf Channel’s Arnold Palmer Invitational presentation drew mostly positive reviews. He’s working this week’s Players Championship as well.
• Pro tennis player Nick Kyrgios is continuing his push into pickleball with a new deal with The Picklr that will see him invest in the popular pickleball club operator and become a sponsor, writes SBJ’s Rob Schaefer.
• Unrivaled drew its third-best audience yet with this season’s championship game, with TNT/truTV averaging 314,000 viewers last Wednesday as the Mist defeated the Phantom, notes SBJ’s Austin Karp.
• Raiders RB Ashton Jeanty, Eagles WR DeVonta Smith and Saints RB Alvin Kamara are among the latest players confirmed to participate in the Fanatics Flag Football Classic, reports SBJ’s Ben Fischer.
• Apple and F1 haven’t disclosed viewership for F1’s season opener on Apple TV, but downloads for the streaming service more than tripled their daily average last weekend on Android devices, writes SBJ’s Adam Stern.
• The NBA nixed the Hawks’ planned “Magic City Night” on Monday after a swath of stakeholders — and even a current player — objected to an in-arena promotion being tied to an Atlanta-based strip club, notes SBJ’s Tom Friend.
• AI sports podcast startup Vokol signed its most high-profile user to date with the UFL, which will use its tech to automate the creation of audio content before, during and after games from the perspective of teams in all eight UFL markets, writes SBJ’s Joe Lemire.