In its first full year as a standalone public company, TKO Group Holdings delivered strong revenue growth and a healthy profit. Now it expects to turbocharge that growth in 2025, with a number of big deals on the horizon.TKO reported its Q4 earnings Wednesday afternoon, with topline revenue of $642.2 million, net income of $47.5 million, and adjusted EBITDA of $238.1 million, with major growth at UFC offsetting a decline at WWE.UFC had revenue of $343.9 million, up 22%, while WWE had revenue of $298.3 million, down 10%.That decline was due to the transition of WWE Raw from USA Network to Netflix. With the Netflix deal kicking off last month (following a new deal with USA for Smackdown in 2024), WWE is likely to see continued rights fee growth for years.In fact, TKO says that it is projecting 2025 revenue of $2.93-$3 billion, and adjusted EBITDA of $1.35-$1.39 billion. Notably, those projections do not include any revenue from some businesses that the company will be acquiring soon.Last fall, the company agreed to acquire a handful of other Endeavor sports businesses, including IMG, On Location and Professional Bull Riders in a $3.25 billion stock deal. That deal is expected to close in the “near term,” TKO says, before the end of Q1.And 2025 is shaping up to big a big one for dealmaking beyond the Endeavor deal. TKO notes that it is in the midst of rights negotiating with ESPN for UFC, and if the exclusive window lapses, it will be able to take the Dana White-led MMA promotion to the open market. It will also open up talks for domestic rights to WWE premium live events like Wrestlemania and the Royal Rumble.And while the UFC and WWE will remain the top priority of the company, president Mark Shapiro told analysts on the TKO earnings call Wednesday afternoon, the company is also chasing another business: Boxing.Citing the enormous success of Netflix’s Jake Paul-Mike Tyson fight, Shapiro confirmed that TKO is close to being in the boxing business.“There’s an audience for boxing, and there’s a dearth of boxing on a national platform, and there’s a desire to have it back in the forefront of the American sports ecosystem. It’s just been broken for too long. It’s been fragmented. It’s been poorly managed,” Shapiro said, adding that the company held meetings with representatives from Saudi Arabia earlier this week, and that they are “awfully close” to a deal.''I will tell you that we are close on an agreement with the Saudis on the creation of a boxing league where we TKO would be the producer, the promoter, and responsible for all day to day operations of the venture whereby we would receive a fee of 10 million plus,” Shapiro said. “We’re not putting capital in… Additionally, we would have some earn-in equity over time, specifically over a five year period. But it would be dependent on us achieving certain milestones.”TKO was formed in the fall of 2023, with Endeavor merging its UFC mixed martial arts promotion with the WWE, betting that corporate synergies, aggressive rights negotiations and a clean balance sheet and story would propel the company’s share price.Earlier Wednesday, TKO announced a “takeover” of Kansas City, Mo., with PBR, UFC and WWE events to take place over a long weekend in April.“TKO delivered record financial performance in 2024 at both UFC and WWE, reflecting the strength of our IP, the dynamic audiences we serve, and the industry-best team of people we’ve assembled,” said Ariel Emanuel, Executive Chair and CEO of TKO. “In the year ahead, we will be focused on securing long-term U.S. domestic media rights agreements for UFC as well as WWE’s Premium Live Events; integrating IMG, On Location and Professional Bull Riders into our portfolio; creating even more compelling live events; and executing our robust capital return program for shareholders.”
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