Paramount+ wins UFC rights in Canada, ending pay-per-view model
Canadian fans will get all 13 UFC numbered-event main cards on Paramount+ in 2027, replacing pay-per-view with one streaming subscription.
Canadian fight fans will soon get the UFC’s biggest cards in one place, but only behind a Paramount+ subscription. Beginning in 2027, Paramount+ Canada will carry all 13 numbered-event main cards each year live at no additional cost, ending the sport’s traditional Canadian pay-per-view model and making the service the exclusive home for UFC’s marquee events north of the border.
The six-year agreement extends Paramount Skydance’s broader UFC strategy, which already gave Paramount+ the exclusive U.S. home for all numbered events and Fight Nights under a seven-year, $7.7 billion deal. Paramount said the Canada pact expands that multi-territory partnership and reinforces Paramount+ as a destination for UFC fans across North America, Latin America and Australia. The company has leaned hard on combat sports as a way to win subscribers and keep them from canceling in a crowded streaming market.
That matters because Canada had only recently settled into a different rights structure. Sportsnet and TVA Sports became UFC’s exclusive Canadian broadcast partners in 2024 under long-term agreements announced in late 2023. Sportsnet carried Fight Night cards and pay-per-view prelims, TVA Sports served French-speaking viewers, and UFC Fight Pass still offered eight exclusive Fight Nights a year plus early prelims. The numbered-event main cards remained tied to separate PPV purchases, a costly setup that the Paramount+ deal now replaces.
Paramount said UFC on Paramount+ in the U.S. and Latin America has already become the service’s biggest exclusive live event, with more than 10 million households watching more than 100 million hours of programming. The company said that was more than 15 times the average pay-per-view event over the previous two years, a sign that premium live sports can pull large audiences into streaming bundles and give a platform more staying power than a stand-alone monthly fee.
Dana White said the new arrangement would make it easier than ever for fans in Canada to watch the sport’s biggest fights and said he loved Canada and was excited for fans to enjoy “the Paramount experience.” Rodrigo Mazón, Paramount+’s head of direct-to-consumer in Latin America and Canada, said the deal serves a deeply engaged MMA audience and strengthens the service’s focus on premium live sports. For TKO Group Holdings, which owns the UFC, the shift broadens distribution and pushes more fans into one platform, while Rogers and TVA lose one of the most valuable pieces of Canadian combat-sports inventory.
The UFC has staged 37 premier sporting events in 11 Canadian cities since debuting in the country with UFC 83 in 2008, a reminder of how deeply the promotion has rooted itself in the market. The new deal leaves Canadian fans with one less paywall, but it also tightens Paramount’s grip on one of the clearest live-sports subscriptions left to sell.
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