Yahoo Finance UFC, DraftKings extend partnership with 5-year, $350M deal
LAS VEGAS — Two days before it promotes a highly anticipated pay-per-view card with three championship matches, the UFC came to terms on a partnership renewal with DraftKings that a source familiar with the talks said is for five years and worth more than $350 million, including more than $100 million in cash.
DraftKings will be the UFC’s official sportsbook and daily fantasy sports partner in the U.S. and Canada.
In addition, DraftKings will be the presenting partner of the UFC’s new timekeeping system, which will be used for the first time on Saturday at UFC 259 at Apex on the company’s campus.
Yahoo Sports has a partnership in sports betting with BetMGM.
“When you look at these kinds of deals, obviously, one of the things we look at is money,” Lawrence Epstein, the UFC’s chief operating officer, told Yahoo Sports. “Secondly, and more importantly, we look to affiliate ourselves with brands that are best in class, and certainly DraftKings is one of those brands.
“The third part of the puzzle is fan activation: How do you use partnership relationships like this to activate the existing fan base and attract new fans? And so as part of that process, we were looking for something that would be sort of game-changing with respect to the events themselves.”
That’s where the clock comes in. Because of proprietary software the UFC has created, the clock is connected to the clock of the official timekeeper, who on Saturday will be appointed by the Nevada Athletic Commission. That time will also be fed to television.
There will be three large clocks around the Octagon which attendees will be able to see without looking away from the action. Most importantly, it will also be available for fighters to see at all times.
It’s very common during a fight, particularly when a fighter is caught in a submission, to look up at the clock to determine how much time is remaining.
The Nevada commission has been using the clock for the last several shows at Apex. But on Saturday, the clocks around the cage will be unveiled.
“This has been a little bit of an issue in combat sports for a long time,” Epstein said. “In every other sport, you have a clock and that’s it. People know how much time there is, and it’s official. But in combat sports, there has been this disconnect. There was the TV clock and the official clock and there was no integration and a lot of times, you’d see at the end of the round, the TV clock would go away and [the fight would continue for a few more seconds].
“That’s going to go away now. Everything is integrated and so what people are seeing on TV and what they’re seeing inside the arena is going to be exactly the official commission time, so to speak.”
Prior to the start of the pandemic, Epstein said the UFC noticed that betting on its events had increased. But it really took off during the pandemic.
That helped push along the talks with DraftKings about an expansion of the partnership.
“There was a very dramatic increase in interest in betting on UFC events after the pandemic began,” Epstein said. “We had seen that prior to the pandemic because we have a bunch of relationships and we do a lot of bet monitoring for integrity purposes. As a result, we saw in general terms handles and growth rate with respect to betting on UFC increase tremendously.
“We’d seen that growth coming, and we saw it increase dramatically in the Covid Era. We were the first organization to get back into the world of sports and we’ve just seen it continue. This is a result of a significant increase in betting on UFC.”
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