Why UFC fans should be watching oil prices
The easy chase for "oil money" is done. Now it's a race to see who else gets bought out.
It was nice and easy for Western wheeler-dealers to play Let’s Make A Deal with Middle Eastern power brokers when crude oil was $120 a barrel three years ago. On Monday, Crude futures ended up at approximately half that price:
As this chart shows, we’re a long way away from COVID-level pricing.
In the covid and post-covid era, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates have been busy beavers in buying up or financing as many transactions as possible in the sports and video game worlds.
Case in point: SNK, the Japanese video game maker that now is controlled by the Saudi Public Investment Fund. Their latest spin on Fatal Fury is drawing less than a stellar reaction:
“Despite Oda's assurances back in 2022, many people have pointed out that Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman's ownership of Al Nassr FC (the football club Ronaldo currently plays for) is surely no coincidence. The Crown Prince is also the lead figure in Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which owns a majority share in SNK.
Then, this week, it was revealed that DJ Salvatore Ganacci—who, surprise, is apparently quite close to the Saudi Royal Family and has performed at various events in Saudi Arabia—would be joining Fatal Fury's cast.”
The Kingdom has gone all-in on marketing Fatal Fury to combat sports fans. There’s the upcoming Times Square boxing event, which now apparently will be reserved only for a select few to watch.
Combat sports is a primary vehicle that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia utilizes to market its other ventures. Boxing is a growing part of that portfolio. UFC is obviously a very large key to the marketing campaign as well.
As Nate Wilcox recently pointed out on The MMA Draw, the Kingdom is now attempting to make a splash in cinema with Zack Snyder at the wheel.
Is Zack Snyder Ready to Work for Dana White & Turki Alalshikh?
On Monday, news broke that Zack Snyder, the director of such films as 300 and Zack Snyder’s Justice League, will be directing, co-writing, and producing Brawler, “a new feature about a L.A. man who rises in the world of Ultimate Fighting Championship.” Snyder will be “teaming with Dana White’s UFC for the film, as well as His Excellency Turki Alashikh.”
You might be wondering what any of this has to do with guys punching each other for a living. What does oil money have to do with the fights you watch?
It has everything to do with the current state of affairs.
It was an easy gamble for everyone to capitulate when oil was over $80 a barrel for the House of Saud. $60-65 is an entirely different story, especially if investments in fight sport don’t make the kind of profits they initially expected.
This was the point of TKO Boxing — scare away any potential troublemakers and have everyone fall in line under a “UFC model” so Silver Lake and the Kingdom could make the MMA-flavored business plan work.
TKO's monopoly mask-off moment for UFC & boxing
If this felt like one of the strangest, most unsettling weeks as a fight fan then you’re not alone. Something doesn’t feel right. The question is why.
As you can see, this is why Turki Alalshikh and SELA cut a deal with Nick Khan and Dana White to help navigate their boxing portfolio.
The growing marriage between the Mubadala-financed Silver Lake and the Kingdom is likely to grow, not shrink in size. But wait, you just warned us about those oil prices declining. What gives?
What gives is that declining oil prices, stabilizing at lower lows, means the Kingdom needs to spend their available cash quickly and diversify it with real professionals in various business ventures.
For example, here’s a speculative tweet from TKO-friendly Fight Oracle:
![@fightoracle Saudi Arabia will buy it alongside $TKO. TKO filed a shelf registration last December. It’s a filing that allows them to sell, in the future, securities to raise capital- stock, commons stock, preferred stock, debt instruments, warrants, etc. if you buy F1, you own MotoGP, too Quote Adam Stern @A_S12 · Apr 6 "Sources tell me that Liberty Media, the American mass media company that owns F1, is holding off from selling, that it is likely to go to market [to try to sell @F1] next year rather than this."](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F88d4b82d-2412-4e19-a088-cd33df148dbf_737x520.png "@fightoracle Saudi Arabia will buy it alongside $TKO. TKO filed a shelf registration last December. It’s a filing that allows them to sell, in the future, securities to raise capital- stock, commons stock, preferred stock, debt instruments, warrants, etc. if you buy F1, you own MotoGP, too Quote Adam Stern @A_S12 · Apr 6 \"Sources tell me that Liberty Media, the American mass media company that owns F1, is holding off from selling, that it is likely to go to market [to try to sell @F1] next year rather than this.\"")
We know that Mark Shapiro pays very close attention to Formula One and attempts to emulate some of their business tactics in TKO’s business affairs.
The long and short of this story is that the UFC is rushing to get a big new media rights package done. Formula One wants a new media rights deal. Once those deals are locked up, then the buying spree can happen.
The question is how much cash will be available for the Kingdom to spend if oil continues to stay below $70. US President Donald Trump has made it very clear in his latest tariff battle with other countries that he wants lower oil prices. Lower interest rates would also serve the US Government well in refinancing debt.
The balancing act here for actors like Silver Lake and the Kingdom is to try to time their spending spree right. Get the guaranteed deals locked up, then buy buy buy before the money runs out. And if TKO needs to gorge on a mixture of debt financing to buy new properties, the obvious hope is that they can do so during an environment with lower interest rates so that they can refinance some of their old debt (like UFC debt).
The impact of Trump 2.0 on debt financing is something we addressed on this week’s edition of The MMA Draw podcast.
UFC matchmaking: Big Money and creative bankruptcy
Can buying off the UFC buy you political protection?
As long as there is cash to spend, the Kingdom is going to continue spending big in fight sport and in the video game world. We’re already seeing a major push to buy out as many independent voices in the boxing media as possible. Turki’s The Ring Magazine is purchasing everyone’s services. Lost in the shuffle last week was a report from Front Office Sports that ESPN senior deputy editor Elizabeth Baugh made the jump to The Ring:
“Baugh had been at ESPN for almost 10 years. In her most recent role, she oversaw coverage of boxing, WWE, UFC, tennis, golf, and the NHL. At The Ring, she will be head of marketing, communications, and branding.”
ESPN is already exiting the Top Rank Boxing world. If they exit the UFC world, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see more familiar ESPN talent end up under the Kingdom’s fight umbrella.
You can’t avoid the Kingdom’s growing presence in global entertainment. But the party very well could end early if oil is lower than $80 a barrel for an extended period of time. Then it becomes a game of musical chairs for fight promoters leveraged to Riyadh.
And ancillary players like media scribes, those who haven’t already taken the Kingdom’s payday may be out of luck — especially if Trump gets his way with a revamped Drill, Baby, Drill energy policy.
Lower oil prices will likely translate into an itch to buy sports and gaming properties while the Kingdom still can before Trump — or Iran — reshapes geopolitical ambitions for the rest of this decade.
Zach Arnold is a lead opinion writer for The MMA Draw on Substack. His archives can be read at FightOpinion.com.
I'm glad we're still talking about the KSA's ownership of SNK and how it is directly affecting the development of the first real sequel of a beloved game that fans have been waiting just over twenty-five years for. These same fans are comprised overwhelmingly of gamers in the FGC--the fighting game community--who've been known to be, shall we say, very passionate about their specific gaming genre.
Case in point, here's one of the FGC's biggest commentators and influencers, Sajam, reacting to SNK's "special exhibition" of Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves: https://www.twitch.tv/sajam/v/2428497626?sr=a&t=3276s
Sajam can be snarky, but he's authentic and genuinely invested in the success of fighting games; it's his passion just as much as it's how he makes his living. As such, it's really jarring to hear just how down and angry he sounds about the game's inclusion of two real life celebs with really close ties to SNK's new owners when they have no game-related reason being there--and again, for a sequel fans have had to wait a quarter of a century for. Sajam straight up points out just how rushed and awful looking these characters are, almost as if...SNK were ordered at the twelfth hour to include them for whatever arbitrary reason.
If you watch further, you'll notice that he has nothing but praise for the Fatal Fury-native characters demoed in the game later on; he's just brutally honest about these two celeb randos because they very clearly were rushed into the game.
What I also find interesting is how his audience is backing him up in the comments. It's not just Sajam's audience though; I'm seeing a lot of the same sentiment in the fighting game Discord servers I'm a part of too. I think there's a lesson here for combat sports fans. They could really learn a lesson or two about standing up to capture, advocating for the sport they love, just like gamers are doing for their fighting games now.
Aren’t longer term low oil prices unlikely given that OPEC (which KSA is the major player) can just reduce production and raise prices at will?