The UFC owners at TKO Group Holdings are nearing a deal to launch a new boxing league in 2025.
On Wednesday during a financial call with investors, TKO president and chief operating officer Mark Shapiro revealed that negotiations are ongoing with Saudi Arabia to fund a new boxing endeavor with executives from the UFC and WWE would run but wouldn’t involve any additional financial investment.
“Everybody knows we’re in talks with the Saudis but to give you a little more color, I will tell you that we are close on an agreement with the Saudis on a 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, where by we would receive a fee of $10 million plus,” Shapiro said during the call. “Again, we’re not putting any money in, we’re not putting any capital in, we’re not on the hook for any [costs].
“Additionally, we would have some earn-in equity per 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 that five years.”
From the sound of things, TKO expects a deal to get made any day now, especially with serious talks already happening over the past few days.
“We’ve just sent a delegation to London to meet with the Saudi delegation led by Andrew Schleimer, our [chief financial officer] and Nick Khan, of course who runs WWE, and Lawrence Epstein who runs UFC,” Shapiro said. “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 [with the news].”
The deal would effectively allow TKO to oversee every aspect of the day-to-day operations of the new boxing league but without any potential for financial loss while the organization gets up and running.
In addition to plans for a boxing league, Shapiro also teased plans for a pair of mega-cards that would most likely happen in 2025 and 2026 as part of the deal.
“I think I’ve given you at least a framework of what the deal would be,” Shapiro explained. “Its own league and we’d have consistent fights throughout the year. I think on top of that you should know as part of the partnership, we would be the promoter, producer and event operator for four large scale kind of superfights, as I call them, that would air 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.”
Of course, Saudi Arabia — primarily funded through the country’s General Entertainment Authority headed up by Turki Al-Sheikh — has completely shaken up the sport of boxing over the past few years. Major fights that seemed almost impossible to make have actually been happening largely due to funding providing by Saudi Arabia with the majority of the events taking place in Riyadh.
Shapiro believes TKO leadership headed up by UFC CEO Dana White and WWE president Nick Khan could provide valuable insight in further growth for boxing with the launch of this new league.
“There’s still strong interest in the sport around the globe and particularly in the U.S.,” Shapiro said. “[Mike] Tyson and Jake Paul on Netflix isn’t the best example because come on, even the casual viewer wants to see that because everybody wanted to see Mike Tyson back in the ring. That event in November 2024 attracted 100 million worldwide viewers and 65 million worldwide concurrent streams with just about 40 million of those in the U.S.
“There’s an audience for boxing and there’s a dearth of boxing on the national platform. 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.”
While boxing may become a new part of the business for TKO, Shapiro promises that the company isn’t losing sight of what primarily drives revenue and that’s the UFC and WWE.
“Our primary focus, I don’t want to get away from that is continuing to drive value to our core business and our core business — even with adding Endeavor assets of IMG, On Location and PBR — make no mistake about it, our core business is UFC and WWE,” Shapiro said. “We’re focused on the integration of IMG, On Location and PBR, both as stand alone businesses but also to help power and fuel our two battleships that are UFC and WWE. 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.”
With TKO obviously getting close to a deal to launch a boxing league, Shapiro also addressed comments previously made by company CEO and executive chairman Ari Emanuel about potential changes to the Ali Act — a federal law enacted in 2000 that provides additional protection for boxers including that promoters must divulge all revenue to fighters, limits the amount of time promoters can maintain exclusive contracts with boxers and dealing with other conflicts of interest in regards to relationships between fighters, managers and promoters.
At the time, Emanuel said that the Ali Act actually “hurt” the sport of boxing and “who knows what’s going to happen” in the future. Perhaps the biggest criticism regarding the Ali Act is that it’s rarely been enforced, which has led to questions about the effectiveness of the law in the sport of boxing.
Of course, Emanuel’s comments raised more than a few eyebrows considering the close relationship both he and White maintain with President Donald Trump, who also governs over a Republican led Senate and House of Representatives currently.
Despite mentioning the Ali Act by name, Shapiro promises that TKO isn’t getting involved in legislation when it comes to that law, although he agrees there are problems that should be addressed.
“Look, the Ali Act has flaws,” Shapiro said. “We believe it is actually possible to improve the current system, to facilitate more opportunities for boxers and to regrow the sport of boxing in America. That’s where we’re at.
“We’re not in there, active, inside, pushing, drafting legislation, lobbying legislators, that’s ultimately somebody else. Whether it stays or goes, we think the opportunity for boxing is extraordinary for us in particular.”
Fuck the Saudi’s.
Not surprising…Ari let this news slip on The Pat McAFee Show during the week of the SuperBowl…but none of the MMA media seemed to pick up and run with it
i posted a while back
You posted this twice?
Big bad TKO can’t do it without the Saudis?
Turki is putting on all the best boxing matches anyway.
What would they need Mr Powerslap for?
UFC’s production has been stale for ages. Their walkouts are lame. They barely do anything right other than have the best MMA roster
I have 0 interest in them being involved in boxing.
Dana after getting the TKO bag anyway:
UFC fighters are gonna cry when Dana starts handing out $50 million paydays to boxers.
This. They’re already putting on deeper and better promoted cards with better production. Not sure what TKO adds at all.
Are they going to avoid the Ali act by having events over there?
Dude right. Bring back the pride production.
I would be much more interested in the ufc launching a kickboxing promotion.
Western broadcasting and Hollywood hype
Boxing already gets that on its own when the fights are right. TKO can’t magically make the wrong fights right or they would already be doing it with UFC.
Even something as simple as the announcer announcing from the outside would be a breath of fresh air compared to the stale, drawn-out chore of Buffer being front and center for 3-5+ minutes for every fight.
Also no interviewer. Just hand the winner the mic and let him go.
I was reminded how much better this format is while watching Rizin recently.
Boxing is dead in America. None of the Saudi fights have resonated. Tko will make boxing big again.
Certain fights and fighters are still big - In America, a Canelo fight is probably the biggest show in combat sports today outside of McGregor.
Others are not big (like a lot of the Saudi fights you mentioned).
Big requires fighters with mass appeal. It can’t be manufactured by a promoter.