Dana White believes a cocaine scandal helped UFC land $1.5BILLION deal

UFC president Dana White has spoken about an extraordinary sequence of events, based on a cocaine scandal that he says landed the MMA franchise a lucrative television deal.

White, who is worth an estimated $500 million, believes the 2017 resignation of ESPN president John Skipper to a public extortion attempt from his drug dealer paved the way for the UFC to sign five-year terms with his successor Jimmy Pitaro, worth a reported $1.5 billion.

Skipper, White explains, was not a big fan of the UFC where Pitaro was. Before the $1.5 billion deal was reached, White and the UFC were seeking a deal in the region of $450 million, according to MMAmania.

UFC boss Dana White talked about landing a $1.5 billion deal with ESPN

White believes a cocaine scandal involving then-chairman John Skipper helped him close the deal: Skipper wasn’t a big fan of the UFC and MMA

The supreme of the UFC he told Grant Cardone on his YouTube channel: ‘Have you ever heard of John Skipper? John Skipper ran ESPN. Now, I think he runs DAZN. Run ESPN, darling, he looks like the squarest guy on the planet. Older guy hates the UFC. he hates it. He hates the UFC. Great footballer. For whatever reason, people like different things.

And I’m not fucking John Skipper. But this is a fact, this happened and this is a true story. John Skipper, beloved at ESPN, ESPN is on top of his game. These guys are killing it in revenue, they’re getting $5 per subscriber when cable was the biggest there ever was.

‘So our deal with FOX is over and we’re probably not going to do another deal with FOX. They are selling cable networks and restructuring. So they are not the same company when we signed with them. And John Skipper will never, ever take over the UFC. So we’re in a really tough place.

John Skipper’s cocaine dealer is going to rat him out. So he has to tell Disney ‘My cocaine dealer is going public’ or whatever, so he has to leave ESPN, right at the time we’re trying to make a new TV deal.

‘Who do they make president? Jimmy Pitaro, who ran Yahoo! Sports for years. I’ve known him for a long time. He’s a great guy and he loves the UFC. Now you have it, you have a guy named Kevin Mayer, who is very closed to [Endeavor CEO] ari [Emanuel], and we ended up doing the deal with ESPN when our deal ended. So you want to talk about time!’

Jimmy Pitaro, who succeeded John Skipper, was a huge fan and supporter of the UFC.

White and UFC agreed to a $1.5 billion deal over five years with ESPN after Skipper quit

Skipper said in his resignation statement that he has “fought substance abuse for many years” and later spoke about the extortion attempt in March 2018.

“Someone I bought cocaine from tried to extort money from me,” Skipper told The Hollywood Reporter. “I was threatened and I understood immediately that the threat put me and my family at risk, and this exposure would also put my professional life at risk.

‘I got some therapy. I went through the treatment. I thought the best thing to do was take the time to register with a center and I was able to understand a little more about substance use and think about how it intersects with my life.

‘Therapy is not easy, particularly for a southerner closely tied to traditional values. I haven’t necessarily felt comfortable reflecting and being self-reflective.

‘I have come to learn that taking care of oneself is an ongoing process that lasts a lifetime. What I have done is take some time to reflect. I’ve had the opportunity to not use for a long period of time and I have resources to help me now, which are ongoing.’

Skipper was then signed to DAZN in 2018 and in 2021, he launched Meadowlark Media.