Surprise  breaking news in the UK with the UFC’s website listing Sky Sports as the new British home of The Ultimate Fighter. Episodes will premiere on Sky Sports 2 the Tuesday after they have aired in the USA. This will mean that many weeks the lead-in will be UEFA Champions League football, usually the channel’s most watched event.

Ever since the failure of UFC 38 on pay per view in 2002 Sky Sport has not been keen to feature UFC programming, instead working with local promotions to produce limited MMA programming. It decision to accquire the rights to The Ultimate Fighter may be a sign that the UK’s dominant sports broadcaster (imagine ESPN, HBO and Showtime rolled into one, but bigger) is once again taking MMA seriously.

There is no word about what happened to the organization’s previous deal with entertainment channel FiveUSA, who had shown the last two seasons of the reality show on Saturday nights. There is as yet no indication that this has any immediate implications for the UFC’s television deals with FiveUSA’s parent station Five or its main broadcast partner in the UK, ESPN.

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Tags: Sky Sports, The Ultimate Fighter 12, UFC