TKO and Turki: Today, Tom Brady; tomorrow, the NFL
A round up of what the TKO top brass has been up to and it's a lot
Ari Emanuel kept his name out of the stories, but his fingerprints were all over one of the biggest sports announcements of this century: Turki Alalshikh will be hosting Tom Brady playing flag football in Saudi Arabia.
TKO wasted no time celebrating Canelo vs. Crawford (listen to our podcast on that fight). The success of their first boxing joint venture with Turki Alalshikh was declared, and then they moved right on to announcing their next steps.
I’ll connect the dots more later, but Zach Arnold asked me to point out that Flag Football is an NFL business interest that will also be part of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, an event Ari Emanuel is rumored to be obsessed with exploiting to the hilt.
Following TKO (and their WME Group majority owners) closely is like putting on the Roddy Piper glasses from They Live. Now that I’ve started looking for TKO’s tentacles, I see them everywhere.
Turning on any talking head in sports or entertainment forces the question: Does WME rep this guy? Is he in on it, too?
Ari Emanuel’s preferred cognomen may be “Hollywood super agent” rather than “combat sports monopolist,” but the reality is, Hollywood has pretty much dried up and blown away, and our boy has moved on to conquering the sports business world and he’s using his global political connections to do it.
We’re seeing the Hollywoodification of sports and fighting. It’s now all about the executives. They truly are the biggest stars in this Hollywood script. They are the scriptwriters, and fans are playing a strictly defined role as walk-on extras.
Ari Emanuel, Mark Shapiro, Nick Khan, et al are the scriptwriters for sports and entertainment, leveraging the multiplier effect of their multiple combat sports monopolies with their roles as agents, brokering deals for virtually every major player in sports.
Who are the main characters running the show?
Ari Emanuel, the Godfather of fixing all things Hollywood, media, and politics.
Mark Shapiro, Ari’s enforcer and talking head. He’s the bad cop to Ari’s good cop.
Nick Khan, the mind reader and soul catcher, is really The Dealmaker and The Cleaner. The swiss-army knife and showrunner who is obsessed with building and conquering all worlds while making everyone think they are a winner.
Triple H, lead WWE corporate front man and spokesperson, who understands his role to a T and knows that it’s about pushing the money marks and business suits as hard as the wrestlers. He’s fully all-in on this TKO game plan.
Dana White, the conflicted UFC and Zuffa Boxing front man, who is struggling to sell corporate properties while trying to sell himself. In this drama, he is facing a midlife crisis affecting his health, his business interests, and his legacy.
HE Turki Alalshikh, the world’s most dangerous money mark. He’s the Saudi Tony Khan on steroids. Ari and company have to mainstream this guy in order to make it just acceptable enough to the rest of the world that they should sell out all of Americana to Turki’s master, Mohammed bin Salman, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.
Vince McMahon, the lingering embarrassment that Mark Shapiro is now obsessed with eradicating and erasing. TKO disposed of Vince, and now they have to erase Vince McMahon’s legacy as the Billionaire Businessman to convince the public that ripping off the public is a good thing, not a bad thing, and that higher ticket prices are NORMAL because Vince was BAD at his job. It’s the definition of gaslighting.
Redbird Capital (Gerry Cardinale & Andy Gordon): The main financial muscle behind Ari Emanuel in a post-Endeavor take-private world. They are also deeply embedded in NFL affairs and are tied to Larry & David Ellison’s takeover at Paramount (and maybe TikTok and WBD too)
Silver Lake, which has majority control of WME Group, and therefore TKO, is now reportedly working with Larry Ellison to grab control of TikTok.
Here’s what The Boys (as we fondly call them) have gotten up to this week:
Ari Emanuel: Stayed out of the announcement news for The Fanatics Flag Football Classic on March 21 at Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, featuring long-time client Tom Brady and best pal HE Turki Alalshikh.
Mark Shapiro: Spoke at the IMG-Redbird Summit about the Paramount-UFC deal. Did a 1-on-1 with The Varsity’s John Ourand.
Nick Khan: Spoke at the IMG-Rebird Summit, where he announced yet another WWE international expansion after having “taken the baton from Vince McMahon and run laps with it.”
Triple H, aka Paul Levesque: Got in the gossip columns when father-in-law Vince McMahon broke relations with Levesque and wife Stephanie McMahon.
Dana White: Revealed his 2026 event schedule to Logan Paul, and hinted at making peace with Jake Paul (but not so much Ariel Helwani).
I’ll try to make sense of all of this frenzied activity behind the paywall.