Well, this sure turned out to be one intensive deep dive of a podcast.
This week’s edition of The MMA Draw podcast is all about the financial, legal, and political consequences of the United States/Iranian war in the Middle East and how the damage has forced the investments of very rich governments to converge into consolidation.
Nate wrote about Oracle’s financial peril and its potential to unravel the nascent Ellison Paramount/WBD/TikTok media empire under his Nat Wilson Turner nom de blog, and we referenced that quite a bit in this discussion.
Ed Zitron has a big update about Oracle’s AI debt bomb and how leveraged Larry Ellison is financially both to AI and Paramount. Turki Alalsheikh and SELA have managed to consolidate the boxing world through Nick Khan and TKO. The biggest fights will happen on Paramount or Netflix, while DAZN has control of the legacy promoters for the rest of the boxing world.
Saudi Arabia is a key financial backer of the Paramount/Warner Brothers Discovery merger deal.
Meanwhile, Mark Shapiro is running wild with his fingerprints all over UFC & WWE matchmaking. Shapiro is not only imposing his sports fandom onto TKO audiences, he’s primarily booking “moments” for his big financial backers like Michael Rubin of Fanatics. On this week’s MMA Draw podcast, we explain the entire Tom Brady/TKO marriage and the role of Silver Lake boss Egon Durban.
The heart of this week’s MMA Draw podcast is all about our go-to streaming expert, The Entertainment Strategy Guy. We recently conducted a Q & A with ESG on a number of your most requested questions regarding UFC on Paramount.
Did Paramount really overpay for the UFC? What the data tells us so far
If you know the history of American television, you also know that combat sports is often a leading indicator of the future.
So much of Larry Ellison’s Oracle fortune is tied to Paramount. As Nikkei recently reported, there is a massive off-the-books campaign by the world’s biggest tech companies regarding how much debt is in the dark from investors.
If you want to know how all of this is tied into Paramount and big UFC + Zuffa Boxing fights airing on the Ellisons’ streaming platform, this week’s MMA Draw show is the place to go for prime time storytelling.
It pays to become a paid subscriber to The MMA Draw and this week’s podcast is living proof of listener benefits.
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Nate Wilcox is Editor-in-Chief of The MMA Draw. He founded BloodyElbow.com in 2007 and sold it in 2024.
Zach Arnold is a lead opinion writer for The MMA Draw on Substack. His archives can be read at FightOpinion.com. Contact Zach: fightopinion at protonmail dot com.
