TKO held their investors conference call on Wednesday.
Some of the highlights from the Q&A call are as follows:
-TKO Chief Financial Officer Andrew Schleimer said they expect Saudi Arabia to host three WWE premium live events in 2026, with one being the Royal Rumble and one in 2025.
-TKO executive Mark Shapiro said the WWE/Peacock deal is up in March 2026. He also said that TKO and the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund are close to creating a new boxing league.
-Shapiro also said Raw is up 13 percent in viewership on Netflix from the USA Network last year and that the CW is “seeing a great uplift from NXT.”
-WWE President Nick Khan added that all they have seen from Netflix is an appetite for more WWE content and that said more WWE” and that more ancillary programming “is cooking in the pipeline.”
TKO Financial Highlights for 2024 are below:
-Earnings before interest, taxes, and amortization was $1.251 billion for 2024, with the fourth quarter finishing at $238.1 million.
-WWE saw yearly revenues of $1.398 billion while UFC had $1.406 billion. For the fourth quarter, WWE had $298.3 million in revenue, which is down nearly $33 million year-over-year), while UFC beat them out at $343.9 million – up by nearly $61 million.
-WWE took a hit in the fourth quarter with a revenue decrease of $32.9 million, offsetting a $61.1 million increase on the UFC side. It was noted the reason for the drop was WWE taking a smaller money media rights deal from NBCUniversal to stay on the USA Network through the end of 2024.
-WWE media rights and revenue finished at $865.5 million for the year, live events finished at $338.5 million, sponsorship was $83 million with consumer products finishing at $111.1 million.
-Comparing Q4 from 2023 to 2024, media rights took the biggest hit at $156.3 million, down from the $212.2 million from due to the deal they had to take from NBCUniversal.
-Live events (up by roughly $11 million), sponsorship (up by more than $7 million) and consumer products (up by nearly $5 million) did not experience drops.
-TKO’s low net income, which is down from $175.7 million in 2023, was attributed to several factors, including an increase in operating expenses to $679.6 million. This “reflected the inclusion of twelve months of WWE activity in reported results in 2024 as well as settlement charges of $375.0 million related to the UFC antitrust lawsuit.”
Source: F4WOnline