...+ U.S. mixed martial arts (MMA) promoter and producer UFC Holdings LLC (UFC) announced that it reached an agreement with ESPN and ESPN+ for UFC's U.S. multimedia rights, which will include 42 fight events to be broadcast on linear and digital channels. The deal is reportedly for five years and $1.5 billion in aggregate revenue. + We believe the contract will meaningfully increase UFC's revenue and EBITDA starting in 2019 and represents the realization of amounts we had assumed in our previously published base-case forecast on UFC and its parent company WME Entertainment Parent LLC (d/b/a Endeavor). + As a result, we are revising our rating outlook to stable from negative. + We are also affirming all ratings, including the 'B' corporate credit rating. + The stable outlook reflects our expectation for an improvement in total lease- and preferred stock-adjusted debt-to-EBITDA to about 7x by fiscal year-end 2019. We expect this will be primarily driven by growth in domestic media rights revenue,...
