On Sunday, the White House is hosting an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event for President Donald Trump’s 80th birthday. It’s widely expected to be one of the most obnoxious displays of try-hard faux-masculinity ever attempted on U.S. soil. And much like a car crash, you’re probably wondering how to hate-watch it.
Well, we’re here to tell you there’s no legal way to watch the White House UFC fight on June 14 for free. The fight, which is being dubbed Freedom 250, will only be livestreamed on Paramount+, which costs at least $9 per month for a basic package.
There will not be any traditional TV broadcast of the event, and you may be asking yourself why Paramount+ is the only option when this thing is ostensibly a celebration of the country. That might have something to do with the fact that every corporate entity involved in the fight is run by a close ally of President Trump.
CEO of UFC Dana White? Good buddy of Trump. Chairman and CEO of the recently merged Paramount-Skydance David Ellison? You bet that’s a Trump guy. In fact, Ellison is currently eroding CBS News and its venerable news magazine 60 Minutes to make their content more palatable to Trump. So it’s no wonder that Ellison’s Paramount+ will be the exclusive home of this event, in line with UFC’s relatively new streaming deal. The event will not be available on CBS.
At least $60 million has been spent on the event, according to PBS News, and countless hours of labor has been dedicated to building The Claw and a temporary 5,000-seat arena, pictured above. The White House claims that UFC is covering the costs, but as PBS notes, at least seven agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, have dedicated “significant resources and manpower” for the event.
The event will feature fights between Brazil’s Alex Pereira and France’s Ciryl Gane as well as Georgian Ilia Topuria and American Justin Gaethje, among others.
There are lots of concerns about the fight, including the heat (it’s supposed to be 90 degrees on Sunday in D.C.) as well as possible rain. There’s also the issue of bugs. The gigantic lights set up for the event might attract a few bugs.
“President Trump just opened the Rose Garden two nights ago, and he invited me to dinner there,” Dana White recently said on the Boardroom podcast. “The amount of gnats that were flying around, I’m like, ‘Holy shit.’ As soon as I got on the plane, I called my head of production and said, ‘Yeah, let me tell you about the gnat situation tonight.’”
There’s no legal way to watch this event without Paramount+, which begins at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT, but it’s an extremely safe bet that countless illegal streams will be available on every conceivable social media platform. The question is how quickly moderators will be able to knock them down as they play whack-a-mole with folks who try to share the event for free online.
If you don’t want to pay for Paramount+ and don’t want to find a pirate stream (which we would never encourage), you can also use the bar locator feature on the UFC website to see which live venue near you might be playing the event.
But depending on where you live, just keep in mind that many patrons probably won’t be hate-watching like you. They’re probably going to be earnestly hooting and hollering for our geriatric president, who will no doubt be the star attraction.
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