Dana White needs a win to keep up at TKO Hollywood
Everyone else is 'talking their book' but Dana only has UFC White House and promises of Zuffa Boxing.
Where does Dana White fit into the brutal spreadsheet culture of Moneyball Mark Shapiro at TKO?
We’ve been posting about the intra-TKO executive stakes, and it’s been a while since UFC CEO Dana White was leading the pack, or even keeping up.
Meanwhile, the big dogs at TKO are either coming down off making massive scores like Nick Khan (WWE PLE’s to ESPN), or pretending they made a massive score like Mark Shapiro (we believe Ari Emanuel landed the Paramount/UFC deal and included Shapiro in on the credit).
From what we can tell, Dana White is out of sorts and off his game. Some thoughts on recent Dana activities and his overall situation:
Dana snoozed through the Trump-Musk reunion like he was saying “hey” to his brother-in-law’s cousin at a family party, with seemingly no awareness that he was in the midst of a reunion between the feuding POTUS and the 2nd-wealthiest man in the world.
The Dana White reality shows (Dana White’s Contender Series, The Ultimate Fighter, etc.) were not included in the Paramount deal and remain unsold to date. If Paramount didn’t want them, who else does?
Zuffa Boxing, with no stars and in need of the Ali Revival act amendment to even function, is suddenly worth a rumored $50M a year to ESPN or Paramount? If ESPN is going to pay Nick Khan $50M for Callum Walsh, then he truly is the greatest businessman of all time because no one believes Dana White can sell that on his own. Zuffa Boxing isn’t sellable until the Ali Act “Reform” bill passes, and while everyone assumes it will pass because Trump, no one who is actually paying attention to the U.S. Congress in 2025 has any such confidence. These people are struggling to keep the government open; they rarely pass major legislation, and when they do, it’s in massive omnibus (“Big Beautiful”) bills that only come through once or twice per session. I’m not saying they won’t eventually get the Ali “Reform” Act passed in one of those monstrosities, but I am saying that until they do,
who’s going to pay Mark Shapiro prices for the Zuffa Boxing media rightsnothing is guaranteed.The UFC schedule is exhausting and demoralizing. The next month of UFC cards entails travel to: Perth, Australia; Las Vegas, Nevada; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Even if Dana only has to go to one or two of those cards, he’ll have to deal with employees traveling to each far-flung destination and will have to monitor their activities through multiple time zones, all while gearing up for New York (MSG) and Qatar in November.
And speaking of the Perth UFC show, an event the city fathers dropped millions to bring to their fair city, 7NewsAustralia is reporting that the venue is only half-sold and that tickets are being deeply discounted.
After the paywall, I’ll dive deep into Dana White’s plans for 2026, Zuffa Boxing’s prospects, Eddie Hearn on Dana White vs Turki Alalshikh, and a round-up of what Mark Shapiro, Nick Khan, and Triple H have been up to, plus some analysis of the UFC’s plans for its global media rights.
Based on some of our most recent reader reactions, we’re breaking news and providing analysis that even the insiders haven’t pieced together.