The world is on fire. The media world is also on fire.
Larry & David Ellison have leveraged the Oracle family business on the premise of taking over the global media and entertainment space by spending nearly $120 billion dollars on the UFC, South Park, and Warner Brothers Discovery. No one else would have paid $7.7B over seven years for UFC. No one else would pay $31/share for Warner Brothers Discovery, a stock that was $8/share two years ago.
The MMA Draw provided five quick takeaways about the Paramount/WBD deal. All of those points are very relevant right now.
And your life as a fight fan is about to change in a hurry. All of this spending by major players involved in the AI boom means we are about to become guinea pigs as customers. It’s a race against the clock to see if AI can replace humans in producing original content that doesn’t exclusively involve political memes.
This week’s MMA Draw podcast is one of the most intensive news & analysis shows we’ve ever produced.
There has been so much news going on that this podcast post is our attempt to fill you in on everything that transpired — including some late Sunday developments that caught our attention in a big way.
Executive Summary
On this week’s podcast, Nate and Zach discuss how military conflict in the Middle East complicates the financial stability of major players like the UFC, TKO, and Paramount, all of which rely heavily on United Arab Emirates funding.
Mark Shapiro and Nick Khan pulled a fast one on Eddie Hearn by signing Conor Benn, reportedly for a one-fight $15M deal. Netflix announced Benn will be fighting veteran Regis Prograis in the semi-main event of the April 11th Tottenham card headlined by Tyson Fury.
Eddie Hearn may have taken a flesh wound, but his premise that boxing-level money would cause some unrest among UFC fighters is absolutely proving to be correct. It’s a storyline that is starting to drive Mark Shapiro nuts. He constantly wants to control “the narrative.” Money talks. Saudi Arabian investment is disrupting traditional promotional power structures.
What Eddie Hearn and Frank Warren did for the Saudis was provide a carnival barking platform to sell fights. Without them, who does TKO currently have as a frontman to make the sale? They have a bunch of guys in their mid-to-late 50s who either have rabbit ears or are completely checked out. If Dana White’s video from Friday night is any current indication, he’s no longer the man for the job.
Ultimately, the business of fighting has become a primary tool for geopolitical influence and corporate power, often overshadowing the actual athletic competitions. All of the interesting content is happening outside of the ring and cage, not inside of it. Unless UFC can deliver Alex Pereira vs. Jon Jones, they don’t have a fight that can match the star power of Ronda Rousey vs. Gina Carano. So, what is UFC exactly delivering to Paramount right now?
Given Ari Emanuel’s unique and close relationships with both Ted Sarandos of Netflix and David Ellison of Paramount, TKO is in an extraordinarily unique position. For better and for worse.
Netflix reveals Paramount's financial promises and secrets
In a candid Sunday interview with Bloomberg, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos let it rip regarding his various reasons for dumping Paramount and letting it win the $111 billion fight over Warner Bros Discovery assets.
Long story short? Netflix wasn’t going to overpay. Ted Sarandos wasn’t going to fight an irrational actor like David Ellison. Most importantly, Mr. Sarandos framed Paramount’s bid as insanely over-leveraged. The cost? A lot of humans are losing their jobs. A bet against Hollywood and humanity at the expense of betting the farm on AI doing all of the work.
This agenda fits right into the ethos of Mark Shapiro’s TKO.
In December of 2023, Spreadsheet Shapiro made it very clear that AI was going to be rapidly integrated into WWE & UFC programming.
“Just think of how many events we televise, we put on, we bring the show on the road, we bring trucks out to different cities, whether it's a cloud or it's cameras or it's tape machines, replay, graphics, operators, stuff we can do AI back at our headquarters in either Vegas for UFC or our Stamford production facility for the WWE. There are a lot of production efficiencies. Even if our production chiefs want to tell me there's not, frankly, I worked at ESPN for 12 years, I oversaw all production. I've been through all the song and dance with every producer who treats every tape machine and camera like it's a baby and doesn't want to give it up. And we're here to improve our margins. So we're going to scrutinize every dollar on the production end of every single one of these events, every single one of these telecasts, and we're going to realize substantial savings.”
If Mark Shapiro could fire all the humans and replace them with a bunch of Mac Minis running Claude AI macros, he might consider it.
Human work product and quality don’t matter to the tech bros. Larry & David Ellison want to take over both the AI and media worlds. A mind meld. TKO is all too happy to grab billions of dollars in media rights fees to go along with this experiment under the guise of being fight promoters.
The Paramount/TKO marriage with the UAE & the Saudis
The war between America and Iran is bringing a clear focus on the financial and military relationships America has with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates.
The Iranian government is ready to burn Dubai down if it has to.
At The MMA Draw, we have spent the last two years’ worth of coverage talking about the nexus between Ari Emanuel, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, Marty Edelman (of Trump’s Board of Peace), TKO, Turki Alalshikh, and the Trump White House.
Everywhere you turn, you see the same global players, no matter whether it’s boxing, wrestling, MMA, politics, military, or AI.
The UAE & KSA are key drivers behind Paramount financing. They are involved in powerful financial entities such as Mubadala, Silver Lake, and TKO (via Endeavor).
This financial dominance allows these Gulf States to punch way above their weight, becoming the sugar daddies that enable massive American media and sports mergers. Fight sport is at the heart of this project.
To impress Wall Street and continue the storyline that TKO is a growth stock, Mark Shapiro is rapidly increasing the EBITDA figure year-over-year on their spreadsheets by having an escalating media rights fee with Paramount for UFC.
Now the tech bros have to deliver real subscription numbers. For Paramount to even make a 50% dent on their UFC investment, Andrew Root of Penske Media recently wrote in Sportico that UFC would need to deliver approximately 23 million subscribers to Paramount.
This is why TKO is now obsessed with boxing. A year ago, Mark Shapiro didn’t even want to touch upon the subject. Then he dipped his toes into the water, saying boxing would be “value accretive” for TKO’s portfolio. Today’s sales pitch? Boxing is the next $20 billion growth property for TKO, a sport ready to be monopolized thanks to the Ali Revival Act. That piece of legislation is now ready for a floor vote in the US House of Representatives.
Boxing also gives TKO an additional tool to acquire media rights deals that box out any potential competition on (current) non-TKO networks.
Everything you need to know about TKO’s recent Wall Street earnings call is available on this week’s MMA Draw podcast.
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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.
