Gangster Government for UFC White House Media Rights
Network suits ready to pay Ari Emanuel for political protection?
Some might call it influence peddling. Ari Emanuel would likely call it public service.
Yes, it’s time to talk about a prospective UFC event at The White House to celebrate USA 250. I suspect it will become a TKO Takeover affair, but I digress.
The best of MMA media has already covered this affair and called out the obvious absurdities.
Brian Campbell of Morning Kombat is wondering how on Earth security from the Secret Service would work for such a spectacle. Karim Zidan is focusing on the authoritarian theatre aspect. Luke Thomas continues laser pointing on UFC’s profiting from the culture wars.
John Nash and Stephie Haynes are correct in terms of discussing TKO’s political machinations and how having everything in your life politicized is exhausting.
None of them is wrong.
But in today’s political and business climate, it can be very uncomfortable, specifically naming the key names of real decision makers. There’s little reward in doing so. A supermajority of the public only analyzes American politics on a superficial level.
The reward for being right — especially in politics or fight sport — is to get labeled as a conspiracy theorist. To be told that what is in front of your face is really not what it appears to be.
News flash: Donald Trump and Gavin Newsom don’t run the whole world. They’re just larger-than-life characters with a shared common interest of really loving Hollywood fame and cash.
When you comprehend that some of the real power players in American sports & politics are Ari Emanuel, Gerry Cardinale of Redbird Capital, and Larry Ellison of Oracle/Skydance fame then big cultural and political decisions make a lot more sense as soon as a person stops imposing their (often middle class) constructs and values in assigning motive to their behavior.
The people who shape US politics — and are uniquely interconnected in TKO business affairs through Ari Emanuel — are unapologetically transactional. They exploit systems and numbers, Billy Beane-style. Everything in life is about leverage. Branding and access are the two key components for building leverage, pitting humans against one another.
The smart ones learn this lesson earlier in life. The rest of us find this out decades later.
There is a reason we call TKO a political mercenary and a government contractor. They are what their record says they are. Yes, there is an element of culture war value extraction. Yes, there is the appeal of a Roman Gladiator spectacle.
However, one can’t understand today’s UFC business model without having deep background knowledge in business, law, accounting, and political science.
We are long past the simple days of Frank & Lorenzo Fertitta trying to market a boxing-style heavyweight prize fight. Even with financial exploitation happening in the background, understanding UFC was a “simple enough” affair.
Not anymore. UFC in 2025 is a financial frankenmonster. It is Ari Emanuel’s bully pulpit for leverage, pitting billionaires and top politicians against each other. The world’s largest financial institutions and sovereign wealth funds have a piece of TKO stock or debt.
In the process, TKO has built a political machine in which you pay big bucks for their big business.
And if you don’t pay up?
The brilliance of Ari Emanuel is that he doesn’t need to initiate his own punishment against rivals or engage in grand conspiracies. Other powerful players are happy to support him. Like President Trump. Worship and acceptance of Ari Emanuel’s business and political philosophy is why Entourage gained cultural acceptance.
Ari Emanuel has built up significant leverage points against media executives, advertisers, and politicians to expand the size and scope of his fight empire with a $30 billion market cap. He is a master of utilizing power through financing and networking. Ask Jeffrey Katzenberg. Mr. Emanuel is the master of The Chicago Way.
A major UFC event at The White House looks comical on the surface. Laugh at Steven Cheung at your peril.
The joke is really on individuals who don’t understand what Ari Emanuel wants to accomplish and who he is ready to exploit next.
President Trump 2.0 represents Ari Emanuel’s loudest political hammer to bludgeon current and future business partners into submission. Today’s friends are tomorrow’s enemies and vice versa.
Get on Trump’s bad side and you face potential lawsuits or government investigations through alphabet agencies like the FCC, FTC, or DOJ. The process is the punishment.
What’s a media executive — and prospective Ari Emanuel business partner — to do?
UFC is an increasingly visual tool for cultural communication. Those who apathetically dismiss it as “just cage fighting” are playing right into Mr. Emanuel’s hands.
Let’s peek behind the curtain and discover what is happening regarding TKO flexing its political muscle.