UFC agrees to two-year deal with FOX Sports Latin America

The Ultimate Fighting Championship continues to expand its presence in Latin America.

The UFC today announced a new two-year partnership with FOX Sports Latin America that calls for 24 live events per year, beginning with this Saturday's UFC 133 event.

The new deal, which includes programming on the Latin American versions of FOX Sports, FOX Sports+ and FOX Sports HD, makes the UFC brand available to 29 million Latin American households in 19 Spanish-speaking countries.

"We felt the time was right to expand in Latin America," UFC president Dana White stated in today's release. "We launched with Globosat in Brazil in 2008 and saw the popularity for the sport to explode. We knew we had millions of fans in Latin America and wanted to give them access to content and programming developed exclusively for them."

In addition to the live events, FOX Sports Latin America will also feature taped and archived content including the highlight-based series "UFC Guerreros."

"We are excited to be able to bring our viewers a front-row seat to the fastest growing sport in world," FOX Sports exec Patrick Ilabaca stated. "Through our agreement with UFC, mixed martial arts fans throughout Latin America will for the first time be able to watch live UFC events exclusively on FOX Sports, which were traditionally only available on Pay-Per-
View."

FOX Sports boasts its position as the "No. 1 sports pay television network in the region." In addition to the new programming, FOX Sports Latin America has also launched a dedicated UFC page on the network's official website.

With the new deal in place, the UFC now broadcasts to 132 countries worldwide, reaching 597 million homes in 21 different languages. White said the company soon hopes to reach the 1 billion-home threshold.

This means Dana needs to make sure he does not look like he's about to vomit next time he puts the belt on a Latin American.