Paramount’s seven-year, $7.7 billion UFC coup had its genesis, perhaps fittingly, last September in a luxury box at the Las Vegas Sphere. TKO’s Ari Emanuel and Mark Shapiro were hosting Disney’s Bob Iger and Jimmy Pitaro for a UFC pay-per-view event. Jeff Bezos was also present, and so was David Ellison—still nearly a year away from taking control of Paramount, but already plotting how to reshape the business. That night, Ellison made his ambitions clear to Emanuel and Shapiro: If his takeover succeeded, he was interested in the media rights to UFC for Paramount+. It was an offhand remark between principals, but it set the stage for one of the sports media world’s most stunning deals in recent memory.