There's nothing All-American about Paramount & TKO

Surprise! Almost Half of Paramount WBD Will Be Owned By Foreign Countries

Heading into America’s 250th birthday, one sports promotion has worked harder than any other to slather patriotic associations all over itself.

Well, OK, not exactly the date of America’s divorce with British Royalty, which is July 4th, the anniversary of the 1776 signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Irony of ironies, given that King Charles and King Trump met on Tuesday in DC after a series of “No Kings” protests in America, and the White House social media Twitter couldn’t resist trolling its political opponents with a “Two Kings” caption.

Instead, the UFC will be celebrating on June 14, 2026 — President Donald Trump’s 80th birthday — at the White House, which is probably even more patriotic than celebrating on July 4th. Right?

Never mind about the whole exact date thing, let’s focus on America 250, baby!

For the next six weeks, America 250 is going to be advertising everything everyone loves about America — freedom, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, all made in America!

Except nothing is made in America anymore. Not the fireworks, not the patriotic paper plates, not the flat screen TVs, not the cars, not even state-aligned propaganda.

Trump’s Favorite Media Empire Sells Out to Foreigners

That’s how we felt on Monday when The MMA Draw learned that Paramount-WBD — aka WarnerMount, the brand-spanking new media empire assembled by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and his son David — had filed paperwork seeking approval from the FCC and President Trump to have 49.5% foreign ownership.

The current cap on foreign media ownership in America is 25%, before government approval is required.

This isn’t just any media ownership. The new Paramount-WBD (WarnerMount?) will own CBS, CNN, HBO, Pluto TV, Warner Brothers, DC Comics, and even BET (and many, many more).

The Hollywood Reporter has some key details:

In a petition for declaratory ruling to the FCC signed by Paramount legal chief Makan Delrahim, Paramount asks the Brendan Carr-led commission to sign off on the deal involving Saudi Arabia’s PIF (public investment fund), L’Imad, an Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, and a Qatar Investment Authority fund.

Paramount notes that David Ellison and his father Larry Ellison, as well as RedBird Capital, will control all voting shares in the company, and that the sovereign funds are only acquiring non-voting equity shares.
…
Paramount is asking for a ruling that would allow up to 100 percent of equity or voting shares to be owned by foreign holders, though that is a procedural maneuver rather than a sign of any future plans.
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The three Middle East funds were reported to be providing $24 billion of capital to back the Warners deal. The FCC filing confirms that the PIF will be the largest contributor, owning 15.1% of Paramount’s equity after the deal closes, with L’Imad owning 12.8%, and Qatar’s fund owning 10.6%. Collectively those three funds will control 38.5% of Paramount equity shares (again, non-voting shares). The remaining foreign equity owners include passive investors in RedBird funds, and entities that have acquired Paramount shares and have filed Form 13F with the SEC.

But, wait a second, where did this 49.5% foreign ownership figure come from?

Take a look at this Axios report and accompanying graphic. Notice the “11.0% other” bar chart:

So yeah, wow, the media home of UFC White House is anything but All-American. Not exactly Made in America. And definitely not American Owned-and-Operated.

The face of this campaign? UFC President Dana White.

This is like one of those mini-Fourth of July American flags that says “Made In China” in small print on the back, except Paramount-WBD isn’t a children’s toy.

Paramount-WBD is the most ambitious attempt to control and influence what Americans see, hear, read, think, and believe in the history of American media.

And it’s getting its financial backing from a trio of feuding petrocracies on the Arabian Peninsula.

Even though it’s not part of the Paramount-WBD deal, we should also mention TikTok, which is partly owned by Larry Ellison, thanks to an assist from the Trump administration and the US Congress, which forced the sale.

The jury is still out on how successful Ellison’s content control will be with the “new and improved” TikTok algorithms.

We like to flatter ourselves that readers of The MMA Draw will not be surprised by any of these new developments, even as we ourselves are shocked by the flagrant blatancy of the subversion and the grotesque scope of this influence peddling.

In the UAE, with Larry Ellison and Tony Blair

After all, there’s a reason Larry Ellison and his top political fixer, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, hang around UAE circles discussing ways to take over the world with AI and surveillance.

Skynet’s not going to build itself after all, and it’ll get built a lot faster with big heaping helpings of cash from the Sovereign Wealth Funds of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar.

Sure, Larry Ellison pledged to backstop the WBD acquisition deal with $40 billion of his personal fortune last December. However, with Oracle’s stock price down 40% from its all-time high last Fall, why not reach out for a little help from his friends?

Even rich people don’t like losing money. They just like finding the next money marks to pick up the tab.

It’s not just Oracle’s market cap that is way, way down. Conversely, Oracle’s corporate debt is way, way up, too. According to Fortune.com, Oracle was by far the most heavily indebted of the major tech companies competing in the cloud computing and AI data center spaces:

That’s almost a quarter of the company’s market cap and more than twice its cash on hand. And Oracle’s got big plans to borrow even more money in 2026 and 2027.

So they needed to find $110 billion to buy WBD somewhere, and that somewhere was in a trio of Gulf States known for being brutal dictatorships with nothing resembling freedom of speech or freedom of the press.

Haughty Americans, especially those at Saturday night’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, like to tout freedom of the press. The Gulf States are demonstrating their freedom to buy the press.

The caveat? Paramount and its attorneys are relying upon $24 billion in Gulf State financing in the form of non-voting stock shares.

That’s because a series of Class B stock shares were issued.

So, in theory, the three Gulf States can’t possibly be expecting any influence on news and entertainment content produced by Paramount-WBD.

Of course not. No way, no how.

These Gulf State powerhouses are purely investing in David Ellison because this deal looks like a sure-fire money maker, right?

I mean, after all the last few times Warner Bros was bought and sold, it was a bonanza for the shareholders of Time, AOL, AT&T, and Discover, right? Someone check and see if Randall Stephenson is still around.

Remember Dana White holding a tombstone picture of all the promotions that UFC killed? The tombstone of media executives and conglomerations who’ve met their maker by banking on Warner Bros. Discovery IP is just as haunting.

OK, sure, it’s true that Discover shareholders (and especially WBD CEO David Zaslav) were the big winners in this bizarrely high-profile bidding war between Netflix and David Ellison. The reason, of course, is that Mr. Zaslav found a pair of Greater Fools named Larry and David Ellison.

The odds of David Ellison turning Paramount-WBD from a melange of under-performing media properties into Free Cash Flow monsters seem daunting.

Paramount, combined with WBD, currently accounts for a whopping 3.4% of the American streaming market as of February 2026, per Nielsen:

So, How Does that $7.7B UFC Deal Fit in All This?

Well, it’s probably not likely to result in a direct bottom-line benefit to the new corporation or its international investors.

After all, Front Office Sports spoke to several analysts about the Paramount/UFC deal when it was signed in August 2025, and the consensus was that it was a dramatic overpay for the fight promotion’s media rights:

“We think Paramount overpaid for these rights,” Morningstar analysts wrote in a research note, but added that the deal can “only be judged as part of a bigger vision.”

According to Bobby Hacker, longtime VP of business and legal affairs for Fox Sports, that bigger vision appears to be staking a claim in the sports world.

“In the bigger picture, paying double what was being paid might seem absurd, but it could be the hook for subscribers,” Hacker tells Front Office Sports.

The UFC-Paramount arrangement wasn’t solely a money deal. It was a very highly political Hollywood marriage, with Ari Emanuel as the yenta.

It was also believed by some to be a cash payback for all the political favors the Ellisons owed TKO boss Ari Emanuel for helping convince Paramount to sell to the Ellisons and the Trump administration to clear the Paramount-Skydance deal.

It was obvious to almost everyone who hasn’t been living in a cave for the past six months that David Ellison paid Ari Emanuel for access to get his business merger(s) approved, although apparently, a lot of the commenters responding to Luke Thomas’ interview with Pablo Torre are such troglodytes.

But given Ari Emanuel’s pre-existing business relationships with Qatar, the UAE, and the Saudis — three petro powers who have feuded viciously with one another in recent years and months — it’s not insane to speculate that he could have helped secure the current round of Gulf State financing for Paramount.

These intra-Arab state conflicts have only intensified since Donald Trump attacked Iran in February.

No one has been hurt more by Trump’s war than the UAE and Saudi Arabia, which are scaling back on their current sporting investments on an accelerated timeline.

Just last week, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent discussed the UAE and other Asian countries engaging in talks over a currency swap due to stress from the US/Iran conflict.

Hell, the UAE just announced it is quitting OPEC, the cartel of oil-producing states that has influenced global petrol prices since the 1970s.

That’s why there is a mad rush to secure Gulf fundraising before the money dries up. As we recently outlined here, Mark Shapiro is trying to get as much WWE & UFC cash as possible for the rest of 2026 before the real impact of oil shocks and inflation is baked into the 2027 cake.

So why Paramount? Why would the Gulf States join Larry Ellison’s WBD play?

It’s about AI. It’s still about President Trump. It’s about the same financiers who are interconnected with both Silver Lake (which owns a huge chunk of TKO) and Paramount.

We are living in a very dystopian financial, political, and entertainment world shaped by Ari Emanuel’s vision. The infusion of the State into the fight business. The obsession with pure process over substance. It’s not about winning mass-appeal campaigns aimed at consumers.

Ari Emanuel and Team WME are about winning the one-on-one with the richest person in the room and getting that bag.

This is the defining characteristic of Larry Ellison, Ari Emanuel, Mark Shapiro, and Nick Khan. They win the one-on-one with the Media Executive, the Venture Capitalist, the Private Equity bros, and the Sovereign Wealth Fund leaders.

TKO has married its interests to the State and created a soft form of State TV like Paramount under the premise of AI and sport. Control.

It’s also a big IF that requires constant politicking and triangulation.

This is why it is so important to understand who the Top 10 TKO Power Players are in 2026. If you understand who the leaders, financiers, and public front-facing actors are, then you can understand the global fight and entertainment financing story much better. It also explains global politics in 2026.

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.