TKO Group Holdings is nearing a signed agreement and official announcement on its plans to get into boxing, President and COO Mark Shapiro said during an earnings call this afternoon. It’s become clear over the last six months that TKO was exploring getting into boxing based on various comments from UFC President and CEO Dana White and Shapiro, as well as multiple published reports on the topic. But Shapiro’s Wednesday comments, which came in response to an analyst question, were the most direct confirmation yet that TKO will be getting into boxing as soon as this year.
With TKO already deeply working with Saudi power broker and government official Turki Alalshikh, Shapiro revealed on the call that a group from TKO, led by CFO Andrew Schleimer and COO Lawrence Epstein, was in London this week meeting with the Saudis about finalizing the agreement to create a boxing league. He said TKO would produce, promote and operate the league and would stand to make management fees of over $10 million on it while also having a path to owning equity in the property over a five-year period if it hit certain incentives. He did not disclose the name of the potential league. Shapiro said boxing is the sort of sports and properties TKO looks to get into, noting that the sport is global and referencing the Jake Paul-Mike Tyson event on Netflix last November that drew around 65 million concurrent accounts on Netflix. He also noted that White and WWE President Nick Khan will likely help on the venture, something that White had told SBJ was a real possibility.
“When you look at boxing, it checks the boxes of all that (TKO looks for). It’s thoughtful, it’s the right strategic place for us to be, we have experts in Nick Khan and Dana White among others that can drive that business, we can be selective in how we participate and whatever we do we will not take risks and it will definitely be value accretive,” Shapiro said. “I can tell you there is still strong interest in the sport around the globe and particularly in the U.S. … There’s an audience for boxing, and there’s a dearth of boxing on the national platform and there’s a desire to have it back in the forefront of the American sports ecosystem. It’s just been broken for too long, it’s been fragmented, it’s been poorly managed and we think we can do a lot with it."
Shapiro said an announcement could be coming in the next couple weeks. He was speaking after TKO’s Q4 and full-year 2024 earnings report, which initially sent the company’s stock tumbling over 4% in after-hours trading. However, those losses had pared to a 1.6% after-hours drop as of 6:05pm ET Wednesday.
