TKO has built the sports media rights portfolio of the future

There was a moment during last week’s TKO earnings call in which Mark Shapiro admitted to being “triggered” by a question.

Noting the surprising timing of WWE’s deal to air its Premium Live Events on ESPN, LightShed analyst Brandon Ross questioned whether that indicated TKO was having a tougher time than expected shopping its UFC rights. Shapiro was quick to dispute such a notion, indicating that an announcement regarding the MMA giant’s highly anticipated media rights deal was just around the corner.

“The first [question] that triggered me was the — was it more challenging for the UFC? Have we found that to be more challenging than we initially thought? The answer is unequivocally no,” the TKO president and chief operating officer said. “And I’ll leave it at that.”

On the surface, Shapiro’s answer might have seemed insecure — a high ranking sports executive eagerly dismissing any indication that his company’s negotiations weren’t going according to plan. Then again, anybody who thought TKO wasn’t going to make good on Shaprio’s confident stance clearly hasn’t been paying attention, as there may not be a sports property that has proven to be more in-tune with the media rights landscape than the one formed by of the 2023 merger between UFC and WWE.

A mere four days after Shapiro’s comments, his unwavering optimism unsurprisingly proved prophetic. On Monday morning, UFC announced its long-awaited media rights deal: an exclusive seven-year, $7.7 billion pact with Paramount, which will bring an end to the company’s pay-per-view model.

News of UFC’s transformative deal comes on the heels of WWE’s new partnership with ESPN, which will pay the pro wrestling promotion $1.6 billion for its monthly PLEs over a five-year period. Time will tell how the deals perform for Paramount and ESPN. But it’s hard to view either of them as anything but decisive victories for TKO in terms of both monetary value and exposure.

It’s also worth considering how the company’s latest media rights deals fit into its larger portfolio and strategy. Factor in WWE’s preexisting rights deals, and TKO now has partnerships with not only Paramount and ESPN, but also Netflix (WWE Raw), Comcast (WWE SmackDown on USA Network, Saturday Night’s Main Event on NBC), Nexstar Media Group (WWE NXT and PBR on The CW) and Fox (WWE Evolve on Tubi).

At this point, Amazon, Warner Bros. Discovery and Apple stand out as the only media rights partners TKO isn’t tied to. And the company still has even more inventory to offer, including the upcoming Zuffa Boxing promotion, NXT’s PLE rights and WWE’s archives library.

While the idea of a sports property taking a diversified approach to its media rights is nothing new, it’s tough to think of a non-NFL comparison that has mirrored the wide-ranging nature of TKO’s strategy. Whether it’s broadcast television, cable, streaming or a combination of all of them, both WWE and UFC have made themselves widely accessible — and whole lot of money in the process.

Perhaps the biggest key to all of this has been TKO’s abundance of inventory, which is why you’ve begun to see leagues like the NBA find new ways to slice and dice its own offerings. It’s also why the WWE-ESPN deal was such a big win for TKO, as the company was able to sell its PLE rights while maintaining the NXT PLEs and archives library they were previously packaged with on Peacock.

Whether you’re a fan of real fighting, fake fighting, or bull-riding, TKO has plenty to offer and the market has clearly spoken with the company’s two latest deals. In retrospect, it may not have been Ross’ actual question that “triggered” Shapiro. Rather, it was likely that he still had to wait 96 hours to announce the deal that would further position his company’s rights portfolio as one of the most impressive in all of sports.