{"id":843145,"date":"2026-08-04T11:12:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T11:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/843145\/"},"modified":"2026-08-04T11:12:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T11:12:11","slug":"ufc-white-house-ufc-loses-30m-staging-freedom-250-event-at-white-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/843145\/","title":{"rendered":"UFC White House: UFC loses $30m staging Freedom 250 event at White House"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In May, reports suggested &#8216;high-roller&#8217; guests would need to spend<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/mixed-martial-arts\/articles\/cglp08jglpwo\" class=\"ssrcss-1fqyhkk-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> $1.5m (\u00a31.1m) for special access,<\/a> and while UFC sources confirmed to BBC Sport the existence of such packages for the event, they did not confirm how much they cost. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Trump has a long-standing friendship with UFC president Dana White and the event  coincided with his 80th birthday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Andrew Schleimer, chief financial officer of TKO Group, told investors on Monday they incurred significantly higher than normal costs for Freedom 250, which they &#8220;partially offset with sold-out global partnerships inventory.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He added: &#8220;Given the event&#8217;s profile, which as anticipated, resulted in an approximate $30m loss, our margins at UFC as well as on a consolidated basis were meaningfully impacted.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Last year, TKO Group signed a $7.7bn (\u00a35.7bn), seven-year contract with Paramount for the US channel to become the new home of UFC starting in 2026, with the White House event shown exclusively on its subscription streaming platform Paramount+. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The event attracted an average of 34 million viewers worldwide, making it one of the most watched mixed martial arts events of all time. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">TKO reported UFC&#8217;s revenue increased 29% year over year to $535.7m (\u00a3398.7m) for the second quarter of this year. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">This includes a $64.7m (\u00a348.2m) increase in media rights driven by the TV deal with Paramount. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In May, reports suggested &#8216;high-roller&#8217; guests would need to spend $1.5m (\u00a31.1m) for special access, and while UFC&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":843146,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-843145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843145","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=843145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/843146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=843145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=843145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=843145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}