Want to know why everyone in the customer class is so psychologically overwhelmed this Christmas season?
We can’t blame you. Maybe you can’t put your finger on it but you know whatever is going right now is NOT NORMAL.
Let us do the dirty work on this week’s edition of The MMA Draw podcast and fill you in on what’s really happening in this brave new world of fight economics.
MMA Draw subscribers were months, if not years, ahead of the curve on why the not-so-crazy billionaires in fight sport were beta testing much bigger deals to come. Some of those same players now want to take over everything in your life. Your favorite media platform. Your favorite comic books and video games. Your favorite fighters.
There is one major common factor: Sovereign Wealth Funds.
The world has moved away from a financialized economic system to a politically-controlled economic system utilizing financialization. There is a difference.
You used to have to go to capital markets to raise cash. Stocks. IPOs. Rounds of fundraising. You had to impress many important people to get cash for projects, especially if they weren’t turnkey.
Today? Ari Emanuel only needs to win over a couple of individuals running sovereign wealth funds to make multi-billion-dollar deals a reality. Like his friendly associate Nicolai Tangen, who manages the massive Norwegian sovereign wealth fund flush with oil cash.
Ari Emanuel can make these blockbuster deals happen within 48 hours, just as we saw with the $7.7B dollar seven-year UFC media rights deal with David Ellison of Paramount.
Sovereign Wealth Funds have changed the game. Taxpayers have far less control over the capital they contribute voluntarily & involuntarily to governments. Politicians are on a giant spending spree, rapidly accelerating big business offerings in the billions of dollars overnight.
This is why the fight over Warner Bros. Discovery with Netflix vs. Paramount is so jaw-dropping. We are living in a new world where countries, overnight, can spend billions upon billions of dollars to completely change your life, whether you like it or not.
Who would have ever thought a couple of years ago that someone like Nick Khan, with relative ease and zero resistance, would be able to create the legislative conditions to sideswipe the Ali Act?
This week’s MMA Draw podcast has an in-depth look at the game plan TKO is running to create their own waiver to the current Ali Act, and how the financing of Zuffa Boxing is all about leveraging fighters into the Riyadh Season silo for much bigger fight financing. Plus, we offer up some hypotheticals on how TKO may end up utilizing UBOs as franchises to lock in key fighters into their brand ecosystem. The size and scope of this undertaking are incredible.
If you really, truly want an education on global finance, pay attention to what’s happening in the fight business. The same billionaire behemoths making breathtaking business deals in sports and entertainment used combat sports as their playground to test out various experiments.
This is why becoming a paid subscriber to The MMA Draw is so important as a fight fan this Christmas season. Your life is about to change in a big way. Let us do the analysis for you on how and why. You owe it to yourself to be the smartest person in the room this Holiday season.
You can check out The MMA Draw Podcast on Substack via the following feeds:
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.
