The Worldwide Leader in Sports added another league to its rolodex as ESPN and UFC reached an agreement on a new five-year contract. The deal will start in 2019 and UFC's entire rights package will air on the ESPN family of networks.

According to Variety, the entire package will cost $1.5 billion which comes out to $300 million per year. ESPN will air 30 UFC Fight Night events per year including 10 main cards on ESPN's tv channels. The other 20 events will stream on ESPN+.

UFC has relied heavily on pay-per-views and those are not going anywhere. But ESPN will take over the preliminary bouts on the PPV events and 12 of those will air on ESPN in 2019.

"Every year for the last 18 years, we've done something to take the sport to another level, and we did it again with this deal," UFC president Dana White said. "It's massive on so many different levels. We're on what everyone looks at as the world leader in sports."

According to the official press release announcing the agreement, the only place where fans will be able to watch UFC programming is through ESPN television or the ESPN app.

Fox Sports had been UFC's exclusive rights partner since 2011 and they were looking to hammer out a new deal with the MMA promotion. But once SmackDown Live left NBC Universal for Fox, it appears the budget at Fox wasn't big enough for both WWE and UFC so they passed on a renewal.

ESPN obviously believes that UFC can create big stars that will draw viewers to its network. The promotion has had no shortage of big names in the past, but most of them are currently inactive for various reasons. Jon Jones, Georges St-Pierre, Brock Lesnar, Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey have carried the promotion over the last few years, but all are M.I.A. for the time being.

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