Zuffa Boxing is expected to launch with its first event planned during the same weekend as UFC 324, which takes place at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on Jan. 24.<\/p>\n
The first Zuffa Boxing event takes place one night earlier on Jan. 23, although no location or venue has been confirmed yet for the show. With UFC 324 happening in Las Vegas, it makes sense that Zuffa Boxing would also happen in Sin City but no formal announcement about the card has been made yet.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are planning to launch our first fight on Jan. 23, which is the night before our first UFC fight on [Paramount+],\u201d TKO president and chief operating officer Mark Shapiro said during the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference on Tuesday. \u201cSo back to back nights, big weekend for TKO to say the least.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zuffa Boxing is being run by TKO Group Holdings \u2014 parent company to the UFC and WWE \u2014 with UFC CEO Dana White and WWE president Nick Khan handling the day-to-day operations with full funding for the promotion coming from Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n
Shapiro was quick to point out that TKO isn\u2019t taking any financial risk by getting involved with Zuffa Boxing, because of the investment from Saudi Arabia, but he also added that with success and growth, the ownership stake in the company will change.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been telling the street that roughly per fight we make about $10 million a fight,\u201d Shapiro revealed. \u201cI think there\u2019s upside there as well because we\u2019ve proven the model.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not taking any risk. We\u2019re being paid a management fee. We\u2019re going to build firm value. In the space of a couple of years, after we hit some thresholds that we\u2019re well on our way to hitting, we will roughly be at about 50\/50 ownership of that [joint venture].\u201d<\/p>\n
Right now, Zuffa Boxing is building a roster of fighters with signings underway ahead of the first event in January.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur plan is to build a promotion where we have a stable of 200 or so fighters that we are hard at work signing up,\u201d Shapiro said. \u201cFans see the fights they want to see, which means the best fight the best. You move up in the rankings, you fight someone else that has moved up in the rankings. That\u2019s really what we\u2019re building here with Zuffa Boxing.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Saudi Arabia provides the funding, Zuffa Boxing under the TKO umbrella handles everything else from a business standpoint and that included the broadcast deal with Paramount, advertising deals, ticket sales and more.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way we\u2019re going to build value here is one hand, you\u2019ve got this partnership we have with our friends in Saudi Arabia, who are spectacular partners. Spectacular,\u201d Shapiro said. \u201cThey say what they mean and they do what they say.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to run it like we do the UFC, bring the whole platform in and sell tickets and sell media rights and sell partnerships and marketing and ultimately consumer products and licensing off of our brand and our individual fighters and ultimately monetize the site fees the way we do UFC and WWE. Real opportunity there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shapiro also confirmed plans for \u201ctwo to four\u201d superfights per year similar to the recent Canelo Alvarez vs. Terence Crawford card that aired on Netflix.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no word yet when the first \u201csuperfight\u201d might happen but Shapiro confirmed that there are numerous broadcast partners interested in airing the event, including Netflix, after building a good relationship through the Canelo vs. Crawford card.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zuffa Boxing is expected to launch with its first event planned during the same weekend as UFC 324,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,802,1920,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-338077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-news","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}