Value Extracting Las Vegas To Death

Dana White spent UFC 313 Fight Week in New York helping the Saudis take over boxing.

It’s been almost 10 years since Hollywood (in the form of Ari Emanuel’s Endeavor) took over Las Vegas’ youngest entertainment powerhouse, the UFC.

Dana White and the Fertitta Brothers were the only players who could remake the boxing capital of the world into the MMA fight capital of the world. They developed a Las Vegas sports property into a global powerhouse valued at $4 billion dollars.

The Fertitta’s were native Las Vegas royalty and Lorenzo Fertitta, a nepo appointee to the Nevada State Athletic Commission, cast the deciding vote against sanctioning MMA in Nevada in 1999. The original owners were banned from pay-per-view at the time and desperately needed regulatory clearance to operate in the fight capital of the world.

SEG’s inability to get the NSAC’s blessing was a huge reason the UFC was for sale at such a low price when the Fertittas bought it in 2001. Over the next fifteen years, Las Vegas provided a perfect home base from which the UFC could conquer the world.

But then Hollywood, in the form of Ari Emanuel’s Endeavor, borrowed $4 billion and used it to buy the UFC. Since then, they’ve treated the UFC and Vegas the same way Hollywood has always treated Vegas — with contempt.

Now the King of Hollywood uses Las Vegas as a low-cost host body to manufacture slop MMA from the clinically dead APEX warehouse while they make even more money in Connecticut via the WWE.

There’s a good chance TKO marries WWE’s NXT and UFC’s minor-league operations out of Vegas (and Florida). But Vegas doesn’t get the big fight cards anymore. They get runt of the litter pay-per-view cards like Saturday’s UFC 313 and the recent UFC 310 Pantoja fight, while towns willing to pay bigger site fees get the really big cards.

Vegas is no longer about A-listing for Hollywood, as Endeavor would rather go big in another desert city like Riyadh or Abu Dhabi than hustle hard in their own backyard.

Why Dana was in New York, not Las Vegas this week

There was only one big story in combat sports yesterday: TKO’s announcement of a new boxing promotion “in partnership with Sela.”

According to the press release, Sela is “a Saudi Arabian company specializing in creating, constructing, and operating unique destinations and recreational experiences across sports, entertainment, culture, and hospitality sectors.”

More relevantly, “Sela has played a pivotal role in promoting and delivering some of the biggest international boxing events in recent years, including Terence Crawford vs. Israil Madrimov in Los Angeles, and Anthony Joshua vs. Daniel Dubois at Wembley Stadium, which set a new UK attendance record.”

Yes, they are bragging about Crawford vs Madrimov, a notorious flop reported to have lost $10 million for Riyadh Season (aka Sela).

I also have to note that the headline on the press release leads with the title “HE” meaning “His Excellency Turki Alalshikh.”

As a side note, most media talk about HE Turki Alalshikh as if he is personally financing and running this deal, but the press release is careful to distinguish Sela as its own entity with its own Managing Director and CEO, Dr. Rakan Alharthy.

Turki’s only title is His Excellency and his role may very well be limited to being the go-along, get-along ambassador who will get his favorite perks like on-air camera time and suite hangouts with Cristiano Ronaldo.

Turki himself said he’s ready to hand over the reins of the boxing operations to Dana.

Saudi Arabia is ultimately a one-man show and Turki isn’t the crown prince.

That aside, I’m told that virtually every major boxing promoter (except Eddie Hearn for some odd reason) spent the day in panic mode reacting to the news. Maybe they don’t like the idea of working for “His Excellency” or not working at all.

Pat McAfee certainly had no discomfort discussing the concept and vision behind the partnership with HE. As seen in the video embedded at the top of this article, Pat was spewing Saudi tourist board talking points with aplomb while hosting Turki on his show.

Pat lobbed this classic softball right down the middle:

“Can you tell me a little bit more about the vision of having sports be the bridge for Saudi Arabia in the rest of the world?”

This is exactly the kind of “mainstreaming” that we warned our readers about last week on the latest MMA Draw podcast.

Turki articulately replied, “First of all this is um like a private business between us and TKO. Our citizen in our country are more than 70% young people. We have a big vision from our leader, God bless him, the Crown Prince, the vision of 2030. One of the sections of this vision is the sport.”

Fortunately, Dana White was on hand to flesh out this vision.

“We're going to stack cards that start from the first fight of the night to the main event, that are packed with good fights. You're going to see a lot of guys who are undefeated fighting each other to work their way up to win the world title.”

Plus this hard sell.

“You know my big beef with boxing has always been nobody has ever invested back into the sport. All these promoters who take take take and never reinvest. Nobody in the history of the sport has invested more money in boxing in such a short amount of time than Turki has. He's very passionate about the sport.”

What about UFC 313 and poor old Las Vegas?

This flurry of New York activity, especially Dana ranting about fight cards stacked from top to bottom, almost made me remember that there is a numbered UFC pay-per-view card happening in another famous desert city founded by a criminal visionary — I’m referring to Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, of course.

I’ve been hearing nothing but bad news out of Las Vegas all year for sports business. News like this:

And this:

And this per Travel Weekly

The number of visitors, gaming revenue and hotel occupancy rates in the region are projected to fall over the next two years, the report said. Specifically, southern Nevada's visitor traffic may decrease by 5.8% in 2025 and 6.9% in 2026. Decreases in gross gaming revenue of 5.4% in 2025 and 4.6% in 2026 are anticipated.

The southern Nevada economy will experience a slow contraction in 2025 and 2026, Stephen Miller, the center's director of research, told CDC Gaming. And that's assuming there will be no new wave of coronavirus and no financial crisis leading to a recession.

The modern UFC under Fertitta family ownership was made in Las Vegas but the current TKO brass doesn’t seem any more concerned about the city that used to be the international combat sports Mecca (get it?). For all they care about at Endeavor/TKO, Indianapolis, Kansas City, or Perth, Australia is as valuable as Vegas as long as those mega-million dollar site checks clear.

There’s too much money in management fees to be made trying to make Riyadh the new combat sports capital.

UFC fans pay a lot to receive very little

I also noticed this post quoting Democrat congressman Eric Swalwell, taking a shot at President Trump for only going to elite events for the wealthy.

Wait, what? He’s lumping the UFC in there with the Super Bowl and the Daytona 500 as fancy events for the wealthy?

A quick look at UFC 313 ticket prices shows, yeah, maybe he’s got a point (one he could have made without the cursing).

And when I hear Dana White talking about fight cards “stacked from top to bottom” and then look at the UFC 313 main card:

Alex Pereira vs. Magomed Ankalaev
Ok, this is a decent headliner. UFC light heavyweight champ against the #1 contender. Of course, it’s likely to be a wrestle-mugging that takes the title from one of the UFC’s last popular Brazilian strikers and hands it over to a semi-anonymous Dagestani, but, well, you know, Jon Jones and the UFC’s criminally low pay scale have decimated what used to be the promotion’s marquee division.
Justin Gaethje vs. Rafael Fiziev 2
I’ll cut them a little slack for booking a rematch no one wants to see for what is likely Justin Gaethje’s farewell bout since Dan Hooker bowed out late with a hand injury…but still Gaethje vs Fiziev 2 is the co-main?
Jalin Turner vs. Ignacio Bahamondes
Well Jalin, the #13 ranked lightweight at least gives us a second American fighter on the card but he’s 14-8 and has lost 3 of his last 4. At least his unranked opp has a Wikipedia entry.
Amanda Lemos vs. Iasmin Lucindo
Women’s strawweights, at least they’re both in the top 10 but UFC fans are sick of Women’s MMA because it’s just not often entertaining. Also, Lucindo doesn’t even have a Wikipedia entry.
King Green vs. Mauricio Ruffy
Who? What? King Green? Oh that’s Bobby Green, the 38 year old with the 32-16-1(1) record. But Ruffy is not only unranked, he doesn’t even have a Wikipedia entry.

This is anything but a card stacked from top to bottom. No wonder Dana spent fight week in New York with Turki Alalshikh instead of in Vegas promoting this dog’s breakfast of a card.

Naturally, TKO’s big plans for boxing are an exact copy of the system that has brought the UFC to its current low ebb:

• A highly structured system to develop new talent from around the world, including athlete combines and academies.

• Access for all boxers to the UFC Performance Institute, the world’s leading combat sports performance training, research, rehabilitation, and nutrition center, featuring locations in Las Vegas, Mexico City, and Shanghai.

Those UFC Performance Institutes have really been bursting at the seams with all the red-hot new talent they’ve been producing.

In fairness to Dana White, once upon a time when Zuffa owned the UFC, they regularly booked cards stacked from top to bottom.

Dana hasn’t updated his patter about boxing promoters not investing in the sport since Zuffa owned the UFC either.

TKO COO Mark Shapiro has a different line of patter about the UFC, one that emphasizes “value extraction” rather than investing in the sport.

Mark talks a little differently about the TKO boxing partnership, of course:

“This is a strategic opportunity to reimagine the sport of boxing globally. TKO has the deep expertise, promotional prowess, and longstanding relationships. HE Turki Alalshikh and Sela share our passion and vision for evolving the current model. Together, we can bring the sweet science back to its rightful place in the forefront of the global sports ecosystem.”

But maybe I should let former IBF and WBA champion boxer Paulie Malignaggi have the last word on Dana White and the UFC pay scale:

“Why would you align with a guy like Dana White who has such a bad reputation for being a PIG with the way he pays fighters?” “Francis Ngannou was the Deontay Wilder of his heavyweight division at the time. $600,000 for a main event? Dude, the guys in boxing make $30 million at that level” “I’m friends with more MMA fighters than boxers, with MMA fighters, I’ve never heard a single good thing said about Dana White”

And who else in the fight media is going to criticize this monopolization of fight sport? TKO already has a triple monopoly with Endeavor (media representation), wrestling (WWE), and MMA (UFC). Now they want to monopolize boxing AND they are quickly monopolizing fight media. Ari Emanuel will have complete and total control with Endeavor’s client base, KSA (Ring Magazine), Meta (Mark Zuckerberg), and X.com (Elon Musk, Ari’s AI asset).

If this doesn’t convince you to support the very few independent fight media actors left, nothing will. Nobody is going to come and save us.

We’re the last guard left before complete and total capitulation. The current fight media atmosphere may feel comfortable for you right now but expect narrative and scandal control plus censorship to pick up.

Boxing fans are notoriously rebellious but they’re about to discover what MMA and wrestling fans have found out the hard way. Ari Emanuel is one of the world’s most powerful people and he’s the front man for the world’s most powerful governments.

The King of Hollywood is turning Las Vegas into just another pit stop.

Nate Wilcox is Editor-in-Chief of The MMA Draw newsletter on Substack.