TKO announces boxing intentions for Saudi (Super) League

The gloves are off for Endeavor to pummel the Ali Act. What's the price tag?

The Ali Act is not going to stand in the way of TKO taking over boxing events.

For the first time, Endeavor management on Wednesday’s TKO investor call made it clear that what had been previously rumored in The New York Times about an entry into boxing was no longer a fantasy.

Lost in a vacuum of scripted buzzwords on the TKO conference call Wednesday afternoon, Mark Shapiro had his favorite media personality/analyst — Brandon Ross of Lightshed — tee him up to announce the big news.

A “Saudi Super League” boxing series in which Endeavor would receive “at least” a $10 million management fee plus equity over time to oversee four major boxing events, two in 2025 and two in 2026.

"When it comes to other opportunities, we intend to be selective, disciplined, thoughtful, but we will consider other opportunities to create long-term value for our shareholders as they present themselves but they must be value accretive.

When you look at boxing, it checks the boxes of all of that. It's thoughtful. It's the right strategic place for us to be. We have experts in Nick Khan and Dana White, among others, that can drive that business. We can be selective in terms of how we participate and whatever we do we will not take risk and it will definitely be value accretive.

I would tell you that there's still strong interest in the sport around the globe, in particularly the US.

There's an audience for boxing and there's a dearth of boxing on the national platforms and there's a desire to have it back in the forefront of the American sports ecosystem. It's just been broken for too long. It's been fragmented. It's been poorly managed and we think we can do a lot with it.

What I would tell you in terms of our specific opportunities, which we've spoken to, everybody knows we're in talk with the Saudis.

We are close on an agreement with the Saudis on the creation of a boxing league, where we TKO would be the producer, the promoter, and responsible for all day-to-day operations of the venture whereby we would receive a fee of $10 million-plus.

Again, we're not bringing in any money, we're not putting capital in, we're not on the hook for any CAPEX. Additionally, we would have some earn-in equity over time. Specifically, over a five-year period but it would be dependent on us achieving certain milestones including us exceeding board-approved annual budgets over those five years.

So, we've just sent a delegation to London to meet with the Saudi delegation led by Andrew Schleimer our CFO and Nick Khan who runs WWE and Lawrence Epstein who runs UFC and they had a full-day meeting earlier this week and we're getting awfully close and when we have something official, we'll come out. But I think I've given you a framework of what the deal will be, it's own league and we'll have consistent fights throughout the year.

I think on top of that as part of the partnership, we would be the promoter, the producer, and the event operator of four large-scale super fights as I call them that would air really probably two this year and two in 2026. Those may or may not fall into the boxing league itself, they may just be one-offs but we would be paid a fee to act as the promoter, the producer, and the event operator.

So, a lot going on in boxing. We're not talking our eye off the ball. We are squarely focused on UFC and WWE, as you can see from our earnings today. We're growing. We're picking up audience. We're increasing engagement. We're adding tremendous success and new partners on the WWE front and we are excited about the opportunities that will present themselves with the UFC renewal."

For anyone else, a $10 million management fee would be a lot of money. For Endeavor, it feels… small? I suspect there is more than meets the eye.

Endeavor really loves management fees. They announced that UFC & WWE had their “service fees” to Endeavor increase in 2024. This means there’s plenty of room for Endeavor to grab big management fees from boxing and nothing will stop it from being both producer and promoter in Mr. Shapiro’s own words.

One thing is for sure: the Ali Act is not going to stop TKO from doing whatever they want to accomplish in the boxing space.

"Look, the Ali Act has flaws. We believe it is actually possible to improve the current system to facilitate more opportunities for boxers and to re-grow the sport of boxing in America. That's where we're at.

We're not in there, actively, inside pushing, drafting legislation, lobbying legislators. That's ultimately for somebody else. Whether it stays or go, we think the opportunity for boxing is extraordinary for us in particular.

It's a clear opportunity and we are chasing it."

And with that, the buzzwords started flying from TKO management. It was only last year when Mr. Shapiro and others at TKO expressed negativity about the margins and growth prospects of boxing.

Well, that suddenly has changed. The Saudis are paying the bills and TKO sees an opportunity to grab American cash for media rights on major boxing events.

It’s almost as if someone wrote about this business pathway last year on The MMA Draw. It pays to be a subscriber!

Talk about cashing in on the hidden secrets of UFC & WWE’s magic formula and applying it to everything else they want to grab in combat sports.

This was always a predictable option for the Saudi boxing monopoly attempt. The only question is the size and scope of TKO’s newest boxing play.

Now the big questions:

• What happens next for promoters currently under the Saudi umbrella?

• Who from TKO will be negotiating the marquee fights? Dana White or Nick Khan?

• How much power is Turki Alalshikh going to have in this new venture?

• Who’s calling the shots and who has the final say as matchmaker?

• Where will be home? London? Texas? APEX in Vegas?

• Which athletic commission director will be the first to jump ship and either join TKO Boxing or oversee operations in the Marc Ratner role?

This feels very much like a soft launch that ultimately could turn into a hard asset for TKO. The marriage of boxing, MMA, and wrestling into one giant cartel works for TKO and will definitely work for whoever buys these assets (eventually) from Endeavor.

Way to steal the thunder from the other headlines made in the TKO conference call.

Cash flow monsters

Read the down and dirty financial details for yourself.

Both UFC & WWE are free cash flow monsters. They generated $2.8 billion dollars in revenue for 2024 and have EBITDA of $1.251 billion.

In 2025, TKO forecasts similar revenue and EBITDA increased by a couple hundred of million dollars.

• UFC surpassed WWE in 2024 revenue ($1.406B vs. 1.398.1B).

• UFC generated $251.4 million in sponsorship. Media rights was $879.4M. Live events was $251.4M.

• WWE generated $83M in sponsorship. Media rights was $865.5M. Live events was $338.5M.

Where WWE is beating UFC, handily, is on merchandising. Where UFC is beating WWE, handily, is on sponsorships. Naturally, we can see where the growth patterns will emerge.

And then there’s the giant elephant in the room — the new UFC media rights negotiations.

When Brandon Ross asked Mark Shapiro about a status report on ESPN’s exclusive negotiating window with UFC, one thing became clear: Mr. Shapiro was not going to let ESPN dumping Formula 1 and Major League Baseball get in the way of selling his story.

His story? The streaming rights market remains very good and UFC has a lot of value because there’s no off-season, which means the churn rate is lessened for their media partners. Active. Urgent. All the usual Shapiro slogans.

The most interesting number from the TKO financials? UFC’s media rights revenue in 2024. $879 million dollars.

Given the lofty expectations that UFC management has floated into the ether about a 1.6x (or even 2x) increase in rights, how much more do they need to get to satisfy analyst and investor expectations?

Good luck, Mark!

The obsession over government contracts

The lust for taxpayer cash is real and spectacular.

Site fees. Value accretive. Cost savings. Synergy. Premium. TKO fight weeks. Takeovers.

Whatever corporate buzzwords TKO wanted to use, Ari Emanuel — in a prepared statement — along with Andrew Schleimer made it very clear that government contracts is where they are heavily focused for TKO business.

Paid subscribers to The MMA Draw newsletter on Substack were way ahead of the curve on his shocking development.

Tourism Western Australia just signed a new massive deal with both UFC & WWE.

Kansas City just announced a PBR, UFC, and WWE Takeover week.

All is proceeding as I warned you about in my now famous December 2023 article about the ruthless message Mark Shapiro was sending to TKO employees.

The end game of merging government contracts with Wall Street financing is to create a global fight cartel. Everything must be bundled to extract as much value as possible.

Which brings us back to TKO’s arrangement with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

TKO will have one WWE PLE/PPV in 2025 and three major Saudi events in 2026. Throw in the new Saudi Super League for boxing plus UFC big events and the marriage is heating up rather quickly.

Which is why Endeavor can continue to rack up massive debt. UFC has $2.78 billion dollars in debt. It recently cost them $32 million dollars to refinance debt. Pocket change, right?

But who cares when the world’s largest financial institutions are your backers? The system is generating a hell of a lot of cash and Ari Emanuel’s sphere of influence shows no signs of slowing down any time soon.

Zach Arnold is a lead opinion writer for The MMA Draw on Substack. His archives can be read at FightOpinion.com.