TKO boss Mark Shapiro can't name top UFC stars
Paramount politics got UFC paid big. ESPN wanted stars for PPV.
Surprise! Mark Shapiro isn’t the genius fight fan that he’s made out to be in business publications. But you already knew that.
For someone who views UFC & WWE as an advertising business first, you would think Mr. Shapiro have a clue as to the fighters he’s trying to sell to the public.
But this is America 2025 and corporations can strike billion-dollar deals not based on what they know but entirely on who they know and what political favors can be traded.
It’s one thing for a joker like me to tell you that Ari Emanuel is a billionaire because he sells perceived access and plays all sides of a business deal. It’s another thing to actually see this game in action.
We are starting to learn a lot more about how the UFC/Paramount deal came about, and it is confirming our suspicions.
Case in point: the Paramount-UFC marriage was an abrupt marriage. Based on various fresh media reports plus new insider accounts, one thing is universally agreed upon. The deal was sealed between Paramount and UFC at the last minute, and ESPN got the news on short notice, just like the rest of us.
What we are now discovering is a fascinatingly unique timeline that demonstrates Paramount was nowhere near the driver’s seat to acquire UFC rights… until they were.
Remember those UFC cage side meetings with Paramount boss David Ellison, US President Donald Trump, and Ari Emanuel? We all thought the horse trading was simply about greasing the wheels to get FCC approval for the Paramount-Skydance merger.
It turns out that these conversations likely ended up becoming a backdrop for TKO’s emergency media rights options after talks with both ESPN & Netflix occurred.
But what we didn’t know, until now, is why Ari Emanuel pulled the proverbial rip cord and landed the Paramount parachute for UFC. Now we have a better sense of what was happening behind the scenes. The timeline is our friend, and it tells an incredible high-stakes business story.
And thanks to his obsession with doing the media rounds, we now also know that Mark Shapiro has no idea what the hell he is talking about when it comes to UFC. This is the guy that the Wall Street Journal claims is getting more creative control over both WWE & UFC in the future.