WWE PLEs take over ESPN & Ari Emanuel invades Paramount

TKO is closing the doors on any potential media outlets for current & future rivals.

Two months ago, we warned you in a highly-explosive article at The MMA Draw that ESPN wanted UFC, boxing, and professional wrestling programming from TKO.

Money quote from our June 2025 article on the future of PBC & Al Haymon:

Second, ESPN wants to build a real fight portfolio for the 2026 campaign. A key industry source, on background, has told The MMA Draw that Disney would like to have a piece of the action for boxing, UFC, and some wrestling-related content. Despite a seemingly hard cap on weekly hardcore customer numbers, wrestling programming drives traffic and action to big media platforms.

On Wednesday, ESPN and WWE dropped a major bombshell announcement. Premium Live Events, currently airing on Peacock in The United States, would be relocating to ESPN starting in 2026.

It is not a coincidence that this news landed before regular trading hours on Wall Street. TKO stock is up 4% before the opening bell rings in New York. Expect a big juice-up to happen after today’s earnings call, where record revenues are expected to be reported.

There are several major takeaways from today’s big announcement.

First, WWE is the straw that stirs the drink right now for TKO. It is the biggest mover-and-shaker in terms of what streaming platforms want for live and scripted content. RAW and Unreal on Netflix have gotten more-than-satisfactory numbers with the powers-that-be.

Second, TKO is positioning all of its properties on all the major media platforms to ice out the competition. ESPN, Netflix, NBCUniversal (with Smackdown), and potentially Paramount. (More on that development in a minute.)

The oxygen is being completely sucked out of the room for any current and future rivals in combat sports, both on a media rights front and on an investment front. Donn Davis made a sneaky and accurate calculation in fundraising for PFL by arguing to big money that they should be part of the system, not compete against it: The duopoly argument. Big money, especially from hedge funds and Venture Capital firms, is proving to be both scared and lazy.

With TKO completely defining what combat sports should look, taste, and smell like, it is going to be next to impossible to fundraise against it. Forget getting tens of millions. Finding underwriting for a few million dollars is going to be next to impossible. The lines of credit are drying up fast. It’s almost like everything is going according to plan for Ari Emanuel’s multi-monopoly.

The biggest component in this multi-monopoly is media control.

Ari Emanuel digs his claws into Paramount

With the upcoming Skydance/Paramount merger in the process of being cemented in stone, guess who the big winner is going to be?

You guessed it, Ari Emanuel.

In the post-Endeavor take-private world of Ari Emanuel and his former partner Patrick Whitesell, Mr. Emanuel has focused entirely on process, and Mr. Whitesell has focused largely on substance. Mr. Whitesell is investing deeply into Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions and is playing ball in a space that includes powerhouse production companies like Words + Pictures.

Meanwhile, Ari Emanuel is focused entirely on controlling the politics and the plumbing of media pipes. He has deep ties to ESPN & Netflix. There are still ties with NBCUniversal. And now Paramount is on the table.

Since the take-private of Endeavor, Gerry Cardinale of Redbird Capital has emerged as Ari Emanuel’s key financial muscle. Redbird Capital is a principle investor in Skydance, the Larry & David Ellison shop that is taking over Paramount from Shari Redstone.

Guess who is now going to be running management in Paramount? Guess who’s going to be on Paramount’s Board of Directors?

Andy Gordon, former heavyweight from Goldman Sachs, is now COO and Chief Strategist (Redbird) at Paramount. Justin Hamill, Chief Legal Officer of Silver Lake, is going to be on Paramount’s BOD. Silver Lake and Mubadala are the main financiers behind Endeavor.

Heads, Ari wins; tails, you lose. That’s how this works.

What does this mean for you as a fight fan? It means that Ari Emanuel’s power in a post-take-private Endeavor world is massively growing and consolidating.

It means that Paramount is now a player for a piece of the UFC media rights package and TKO Zuffa Boxing.

Ari Emanuel is dreaming some very big dreams right now. Is grabbing the LA 2028 Olympics Game away from Casey Wasserman next on his agenda?

Ari is already preparing to fundraise heavily for his brother Rahm to run for the White House in 2028. He’s on another level, and everyone else is struggling to find some pocket change.

For everyone on the outside-looking-in, there’s no time to waste. Either you’re in the game now to fight TKO, or you are permanently on the outs. The avenues for opportunities are shrinking at an accelerated pace.

Zach Arnold is the lead opinion writer for The MMA Draw Newsletter on Substack. You can e-mail him at fightopinion - at - protonmail dot com.