TKO blames ESPN for price hikes, increased piracy

Meanwhile they had a lot of nice things to say about Netflix on today's earnings call

Aug 08, 2024

∙ Paid

Today’s third quarter TKO earnings call went well. They had lots of good news to report and investors responded immediately as you can see in the chart below. They even peaked at $119.82 briefly but closed at $116.92, up from $112 even to start the day.

Given that our own Zach Arnold has been calling out TKO’s major moves toward a government contracting business model for over a year, I read Variety’s headline with a certain degree of satisfaction.

TKO Q2 Earnings Grow on Higher Site Fees, Sponsor Sales for UFC and WWE

Jonathan Snowden rightfully pointed out that they’re still primarily in the content/media rights business, so it certainly is interesting that they’re emphasizing the site fees in the TKO earnings press release.

Media rights are almost double every other form of revenue combined. 🤣

Let’s read what Ari Emanuel had to say to open the call:

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