David Ellison has been the chairman of Paramount for all of five days, but he already has something to show for it.
Paramount announced Monday morning that it had struck a seven-year $7.7 billion deal to claim exclusive streaming and broadcast rights in the United States for the United Fighting Championship. The deal will go into effect next year.
The agreement will give Paramount access to the full slate of U.F.C.’s 30 fight nights, along with 13 of the sport’s biggest events. All of the fights will be available on the Paramount+ streaming app, and some marquee matches will also broadcast on CBS, which Paramount owns.
“We could not be more excited about this,” Mr. Ellison said in a phone interview. “From my perspective, the U.F.C. is really a unicorn sports asset.”
Last week, Skydance Media, of which Mr. Ellison is founder and chief executive, finally took over Paramount — the parent company of CBS, Comedy Central and the fabled Hollywood movie studio — after more than a year spent wrangling to buy it.
Sports rights have become increasingly valuable to media organizations, as they attempt to sell more subscriptions to their streaming services, and to increase the amount of time people spend there. Paramount’s streaming services, which includes Paramount+ and the free streamer Pluto, accounted for just 2 percent of television viewing time in the United States in June, compared with Netflix’s 8.3 percent share and YouTube’s 12.8 percent, according to Nielsen.
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