{"id":50427,"date":"2025-08-07T13:03:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T13:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/50427\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T13:03:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T13:03:09","slug":"tkos-shapiro-details-low-risk-high-upside-opportunity-with-zuffa-boxing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/50427\/","title":{"rendered":"TKO\u2019s Shapiro details low-risk, high-upside opportunity with Zuffa Boxing"},"content":{"rendered":"

TKO Group Holdings has plenty to celebrate this week, from its financial success<\/a> to WWE\u2019s new deal with ESPN<\/a>. Amid a lengthy earnings call with analysts on Wednesday, TKO President & COO Mark Shapiro also dug into his company\u2019s move into boxing, including both the upcoming Zuffa Boxing promotion and TKO\u2019s role in promoting \u201csuper fights\u201d that could each net the company an eight-figure sum.<\/p>\n

TKO announced Zuffa Boxing in March<\/a>, launching the joint venture alongside Saudi General Entertainment Authority chair Turki Alalshikh and Public Investment Fund subsidiary Sela. Shapiro explained this week that the boxing endeavor provides TKO a \u201cfourth tentpole sports asset\u201d alongside UFC, WWE and PBR that has minimal downside.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is low risk, and TKO received a roughly $10 million fee for serving as managing partner and providing day-to-day operational management oversight,\u201d Shapiro said. \u201cThat\u2019s all margin for us. TKO has no funding obligation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shapiro also detailed how, separate from that joint venture, TKO will aim to deliver two to three boxing \u201csuper fights\u201d each year, like the Canelo Alvarez-Terence Crawford bout to be held at Allegiant Stadium and broadcast on Netflix<\/a> next month. Following its acquisitions of IMG and On Location<\/a> earlier this year, TKO will have multiple avenues to monetize its involvement.<\/p>\n

\u201cAgain, no risk to us on that deal,\u201d Shapiro said. \u201cWe get a fee to promote [it]. We get a fee to negotiate the media rights for each fight, which IMG does. \u2026 We get a fee for On Location to sell hospitality packages. And we will put Zuffa Boxing fighters on the undercard of each of these super fights. We expect to net, on average, another $10 million for every super fight we manage and promote.\u201d<\/p>\n

The quarterly earnings call marked the first time TKO executives have formally referred to the new property as Zuffa Boxing, as previously confirmed by SBJ<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Shapiro added that Zuffa Boxing\u2019s media rights have drawn strong interest \u201cfrom several domestic linear and DTC platforms,\u201d and that TKO will \u201chave something to announce soon.\u201d The boxing promotion is slated to debut in Q1 of 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TKO Group Holdings has plenty to celebrate this week, from its financial success to WWE\u2019s new deal with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50428,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85,787,14064],"class_list":["post-50427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-wwe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50427","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=50427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}