The Professional Fight League’s CEO recently offered some not-so-positive insight into the MMA brand’s relationship with broadcast partner ESPN.
John Martin, who has served as CEO of the PFL since the start of this year, recently told Sports Business Journal that the company’s U.S. media rights partner, ESPN, has failed to help the competitor brand grow.
“I think what I’m saying is factually correct: They’re not doing anything to help promote and make it easy for our viewers and fans to find us,” Martin told SBJ. “I can’t tell you the number of incoming complaints that people write in — they say, ‘I was actively looking to find your event, and I couldn’t find it, I didn’t know when it was on.’”
He later specified that “better scheduling, better network access” as well as “marketing and promotion” from ESPN would help them.
PFL is currently shopping around their domestic media rights, and it seems likely that ESPN, which has become clear it has a contentious relationship with the combat sports brand, won’t be where they land.
Martin explained to SBJ that, while a new deal with ESPN doesn’t seem likely, such a development is in “never say never” territory. PFL’s CEO said the company has been in talks with Netflix and Fox regarding a future deal, which would begin in 2027.
ESPN added PFL to its programming in 2019 around the same time it inked a huge multi-year deal with UFC. The PFL agreement made it so that UFC wasn’t the only MMA programming available on ESPN+, a subscription service which launched shortly before both agreements were activated.
But ESPN’s portfolio has changed drastically since then. UFC has left for Paramount as part of a multi-billion-dollar deal, and other combat sports programming, like ESPN’s Top Rank Boxing broadcasts, have also disappeared. Combat sports have become a significantly smaller priority for the channel in recent years.
PFL will continue to broadcast on ESPN until the end of 2026.
