BT Sport to broadcast Ultimate Fighting Championship The multimillion-pound deal means Ultimate Fighting will join Premier League football, Premiership rugby and women's tennis in the new subscription channel's line-up from this summer. The sport is currently broadcast by ESPN in Britain, drawing audiences in the low tens of thousands. It pitches mixed martial arts fighters against each other in an octagonal ring for a maximum of five rounds. "We've said BT Sport will offer a wide range of sports that appeal to different audiences and we know that UFC has a huge, committed fanbase in the UK and Ireland and we hope they will be excited about our plans to develop the coverage of the sport," said BT Sport head Simon Green. The plans include more prime time magazine-style programming to run alongside live fights, which are held around the globe, often very late at night in Britain. "This agreement is a landmark step in UFC's development in the UK as it will increase our exposure to a much wider and more mainstream sporting audience," said Garry Cook managing director of UFC, the firm behind Ultimate Fighting, in Europe. Mr Cook is a former senior Nike executive and was chief excutive of Manchester City for three years until his resignation in September 2011. BT is due to launch BT Sport on Thursday at an event at the Olympic park in Stratford. The channel will be based at broadcast facilities built for the London Games. It is the centrepiece of BT's plan to win back broadband and telephone customers from rivals, especially BSkyB, by bundling exclusive television coverage with subscriptions.