How Donald Trump could unwittingly kill combat sports' cash cow

That's assuming he can get his policies passed

In yesterday’s podcast conversation with Zach Arnold, I rolled out something that just occurred to me as a possibility. I’m sure all you fight biz smarks are miles ahead of me and already figured this out, but I’ll repeat it for the back-of-the-class types amongst you.

Despite high expectations for Donald Trump to be a friend and ally of TKO and their key brands UFC and WWE, Trump may accidentally pull the plug on the biggest dumb money in combat sports.

Let’s review the context.

TKO, the publicly traded company that is majority owned by Endeavor, has a monopsony on combat sports and professional wrestling. Or as Zach likes to call TKO, a triple monopoly. Controlling these two distinct industries is extremely lucrative.

So much so that, as John S. Nash wrote for this newsletter, TKO’s 2022 profits “not only dwarfs what all the other MMA promotions - both major and minor- are estimated to make combined, it also dwarfs all the other major boxing promoters, also combined. It likely surpasses the total profits of all MMA and boxing promoters.”

This is happening simultaneously as professional boxing in the U.S. has lost deals with its major broadcast/streaming partners HBO (in 2018) and Showtime (in 2023), with DAZN functioning as a poor substitute.

So much so that the Saudi General Entertainment Authority and its Chairman Turki Alalshikh have funded the big fights — Fury vs. Ngannou, Fury vs. Usyk, Ngannou vs. Joshua — and even talking trash about monopolizing the sport.

It’s also a fact that money from Qatar backs One FC and that the sovereign wealth fund of the United Arab Emirates is backing the effort to take TKO’s parent company Endeavor private in 2025.

And now we’ve got Conor McGregor claiming (and Ariel Helwani confirming) that India’s oil-rich Ambani family is looking to back an exhibition boxing bout between McGregor and the WWE’s Logan Paul.

As we discussed on the podcast, the Ambani family’s money comes from oil refining, and in recent years they’ve enjoyed boom times by buying sanctioned Russian oil at a discount (and paying in rubles), refining it, and reselling it to Europe at a huge mark-up.

Trump is talking about executing popular policies like ending the war in Ukraine (and presumably cutting back on the sanctions on Russia) and increasing drilling in the U.S. to lower gas prices for Americans.

Ironically, this could cut off the dumb money spigot to combat sports.

This hit me like a ton of bricks when I was listening to contrarian energy analyst Doomberg and he pointed out that the Saudis need an oil price of $95/bbl to break even.

Given that it only costs them about $10/bbl to get the stuff out of the ground, that breakeven point is insanely high and is a direct consequence of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s “investment strategies” in stupid-ass shit like the linear city of NEOM and Turki Alalshikh’s spending spree on boxing.

Oil hasn’t been selling above $95/bbl since 2022.

The Saudis have huge cash reserves, but not infinite ones.

If oil prices drop in 2025, the Saudis (and their oil-rich rivals) will be forced to reallocate investments away from frivolous loss-leaders like combat sports and into serious businesses that produce a profit.

If Trump succeeds at bringing down oil prices, he may very well end up accidentally ending the dumb money combat sports party, too.

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