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UFC CEO Dana White has spent the past several years telling a story about U.S. President Donald Trump. The version he told CBS “60 Minutes” in 2025 is representative: When Zuffa bought the UFC in 2001, said White, no venues would have them. Trump saw the potential, offered them the Trump Taj Mahal, cut them a fair deal, showed up for the first fight of the night, and stayed until the last. "When the Trump brand was here," White said, holding his hand high overhead, "and the UFC brand was down there" — hand near the floor — "he saw it and said, 'I'd love to have this at my casino.'"
Trump has his own version. In the Oval Office earlier this year, surrounded by fighters who will compete at the White House on his 80th birthday, he said: "They couldn't get any arenas because it was so violent. I was able to give them the first four or five fights."
The problem with both versions is that there were witnesses, including James Werme.
Werme was a Semaphore Entertainment Group (SEG) executive and the UFC's on-screen interviewer during that Atlantic City period — present at every event in question, and whose job it was to put notable attendees on camera. In a series of posts on X in May 2026, he — and others — documented what actually happened, and it does not match the version that's been consistently retold on any significant point.
UFC 28, the company's first event held at the Trump Taj Mahal in November 2000, was not a Zuffa event. It was produced by SEG, the UFC's prior ownership.
SEG then booked the Taj Mahal again for UFC 30, scheduled for February 2001 — before the Zuffa sale closed in January 2001. White did not go to Trump and strike a deal that saved the promotion. The venue was already booked when White arrived.
As for Trump's attendance at UFC 28, UFC 30 and UFC 31, Werme wrote, "Not 28, 30 or 31, which were all at the Taj. We would have showed him … I would have interviewed him if he was [there]." Regarding White's claim that Trump watched the whole card, Werme added, "If he was anywhere at those shows there would be video or photographic evidence, and he would have been interviewed (by me). What's idiotic is thinking he was there all night and avoided every camera."
The first confirmed evidence of Trump at a UFC event — photographs and broadcast footage — is UFC 32 at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, New Jersey, on June 29, 2001. Not at a Trump property. The claim that Trump gave the UFC "the first four or five fights" also doesn't survive basic arithmetic. UFC had held 28 events before Zuffa purchased it, and the premise that no venues would have them isn't supported by the record either.
In the interim, Trump backed Affliction Entertainment, the UFC's short-lived rival, which collapsed after two events in 2008 and 2009.
Werme's conclusion on Trump's actual role is unambiguous:
Ant Evans spent 12 years at the UFC as head of public relations, creator of the modern UFC Hall of Fame, and content chief of UFC Fight Pass. He left in early 2019. His account matches Werme's: "Trump's name didn't appear in a single press release, one-sheet briefing, talking point, UFC-produced document, book, or piece of content before 2016,” Evans wrote in a May social media post. “The only time I recall his name being mentioned within my own earshot was execs laughing about his involvement with Affliction."
Evans, who has also worked in the past as a contributor for Uncrowned, added in a separate post: "The myth Trump helped UFC in some pivotal and profound way was invented whole cloth in 2016.”
The Trump Myth is a direct extension of the Zuffa Myth — the company-promoted narrative that White and the Fertittas rescued a dying UFC from oblivion, transformed it from no-rules human cockfighting into a real sport and global phenomenon because of their unique vision and sacrifice. Both were constructed retrospectively. Both serve the same purpose: Establishing a debt of gratitude that justifies loyalty, deference and reciprocity. The Zuffa Myth explains why fighters and fans should be grateful to the UFC and accept its terms. The Trump Myth explains why those same fans owe a debt of gratitude to Trump — and why everything that has followed should be understood as earned rather than extracted.
The Trump-White friendship is the public face of a relationship whose more consequential dimension perhaps runs through Ari Emanuel, CEO of TKO Group Holdings — parent company of UFC and WWE — and the Executive Chairman of the WME Group.
What makes Emanuel's position unusual is its scope. Through WME he represents some of the most commercially valuable talent in American entertainment — Martin Scorsese, Larry David, Mark Wahlberg, Peyton Manning, Tom Brady — while simultaneously running TKO, controlling UFC and WWE's broadcast and sponsorship relationships, and maintaining deep financial ties to sovereign wealth funds in the Gulf through TKO's Saudi partnerships and his new live events venture MARI, which counts the Qatar Investment Authority among its backers. He is, by any reasonable measure, one of the most powerful brokers in the American entertainment and sports industries. As Zach Arnold of The MMA Draw recently observed, TKO has constructed an unprecedented "unholy political and business alliance" that simultaneously strings together the White House, major media conglomerates, sovereign wealth funds and Silicon Valley tech giants.
November 20, 2016: Donald Trump, Mike Pence and Ari Emanuel pose for a photo before their meeting at Trump International Golf Club.
Drew Angerer via Getty Images
Emanuel's politics are nominally Democratic. His brother Rahm was Barack Obama's chief of staff, mayor of Chicago, and Joe Biden's ambassador to Japan. Emanuel himself donated nearly $1 million to Kamala Harris' PAC and campaign in the 2024 cycle. None of that has gotten in the way of his relationship with Trump, which predates and runs deeper than his association with the UFC.
Emanuel was Trump's agent at WME during "The Apprentice" years. When Trump announced his presidential run in 2015, WME-IMG purchased the Miss Universe Organization from him; while corporate America was scrambling to distance itself from a candidate it considered radioactive, Emanuel brokered the deal. Trump called Emanuel "a very good friend of mine ... He calls me a lot. I call him a lot, and we talk" in a 2016 Hollywood Reporter interview. When Trump was inaugurated in January 2017, Emanuel was among the first private-sector figures to visit him at the White House and was reportedly vetted for a formal administration role.
Yet beyond the personal relationships is a shared personnel pipeline between TKO and the White House. Steven Cheung served as the UFC's communications director for three years before joining Trump's 2016 campaign. After working the 2016 and 2020 campaigns and Trump's first term as director of strategic response, he returned for the 2024 campaign as Trump's chief spokesman, then was named White House Communications Director in November 2024.
Reporters and campaign operatives credit Cheung as a driving force behind Trump's non-traditional media strategy — deliberately pivoting the campaign away from legacy press outlets and toward a hyper-masculine ecosystem of alternative podcasts, streamers, and live sports venues, a blueprint he first refined during his years at the UFC. His professional career ran from UFC communications to Trump politics and back again.
Steven Cheung (R) stands next to Donald Trump aboard Air Force One.
ROBERTO SCHMIDT via Getty Images
The TKO-Trump relationship's commercial dimensions came powerfully into focus during the negotiation of UFC’s new domestic broadcast rights package.
On a Q2 2025 earnings call, TKO COO Mark Shapiro told investors that TKO planned to split its broadcast rights into two packages — Fight Nights to one partner, numbered events to another — a structure designed to create competitive tension between bidders and maximize the return on each. Wall Street modeled the outcome accordingly: Citi estimated the deal would come in around $750 million annually, with Wolfe Research at $900 million, and J.P. Morgan, the most bullish analyst covering TKO, projecting it might reach $925 million. The UFC’s prior ESPN broadcast deal, by Shapiro's own characterization on CNBC, had averaged $500 million a year.
Paramount itself was not the obvious outcome as a partner. The company's well-publicized Skydance bid had faced competing offers and months of internal turmoil at Paramount's controlling shareholder Shari Redstone, with the merger process stalling repeatedly through the first half of 2025. More significantly, the merged company faced a specific regulatory obstacle that had nothing to do with antitrust: The Trump administration's open hostility toward CBS News over its coverage of the 2024 campaign.
The FCC under Trump's appointees had both the appetite and the apparent willingness to use the merger review as leverage. Whether Paramount would survive that process intact — and on what terms — was genuinely uncertain through the spring and early summer of 2025.
UFC CEO Dana White and TKO executive Mark Shapiro seen in attendance during UFC 306.
Jeff Bottari via Getty Images
On August 11, 2025 — four days after the Skydance-Paramount merger closed — Shapiro told CNBC the UFC’s new deal had been negotiated in just 48 hours. A single partner secured all packages for a total of $7.7 billion over seven years — a shocking $1.1 billion annual average. Almost 20% higher than even the most bullish analyst’s prediction. TKO stock rose more than 10% on announcement day. Paramount's fell nearly 4%. Morningstar, J.P. Morgan and Wolfe Research all subsequently described the deal as an overpay by Paramount.
Prior to that point, the Skydance-Paramount merger had been under FCC review for months. The commission finally approved it on July 24, 2025, along strict party lines — two Republican commissioners in favor, one Democrat dissenting. The conditions attached to that approval required the resolution of Trump's lawsuit against CBS over its editing of a Kamala Harris interview on “60 Minutes,” resulting in a $16 million settlement paid to a presidential library; the elimination of DEI programs across the company; and the appointment of a news ombudsman. FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, in dissent, described the process as "months of cowardly capitulation to this administration."
As it turned out, David Ellison, Skydance's CEO and the architect of the newly merged company, had attended UFC 314 in April 2025 as a guest of Ari Emanuel — confirmed by The Wrap — and UFC 316 in June 2025, per an FCC ex parte filing from a rival bidder. Both events fell during the period of active FCC review. The Los Angeles Times reported on two separate occasions, citing unnamed sources, that Emanuel "stepped in to help get the dealmaking back on track" when the “60 Minutes” settlement negotiations stalled.
Makan Delrahim ran the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division through Trump's entire first term. Before that, at Latham & Watkins, his disclosed client list included Endeavor/WME and the UFC. In October 2025 — two months after the Paramount deal closed — he was named Chief Legal Officer of Paramount Skydance. The man who ran federal antitrust enforcement during Trump's first term, while representing the UFC in private practice, is now the top lawyer at the company paying the UFC $1.1 billion a year.
Dana White and Paramount CEO David Ellison attend UFC 324 in Las Vegas.
Jeff Bottari via Getty Images
When Trump won the 2024 election, the UFC was facing potential threats on three federal fronts.
The UFC classifies all of its fighters as independent contractors rather than employees — a distinction that shields the company from minimum wage requirements, benefits obligations, workers' compensation liability, and the right to collectively bargain. Separate from that, its exclusive contracting practices, title retention clauses, and fighter mobility restrictions had been found by a federal court to constitute unlawful monopoly power over the market for MMA fighters' services.
Fighters' share of UFC revenue sits below 20% — a paltry fraction of what athletes receive in other major sports — a gap that exists precisely because of the structures a hostile regulatory environment could force the company to change. What TKO gained from a Trump administration was not a specific favor. It was the absence of federal attention across the aforementioned three distinct fronts: The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the DOJ, and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
In 2018, former UFC fighter Leslie Smith filed a complaint with the NLRB accusing the UFC of retaliating against her for attempting to organize fighters and misclassifying them as independent contractors. NLRB Region 4 found the complaint had merit — then, within hours, the case was pulled to Washington's Division of Advice under Peter Robb, a Trump appointee. It was subsequently dismissed without ever examining the misclassification question. Smith's attorney, Lucas Middlebrook, called it a political stunt and cited a recent meeting at the time between White and Trump as part of why Smith lost. Smith's own characterization was direct: Trump's appointees "commandeered my case" and dismissed it "without examining our status as statutory employees."
Leslie Smith (left) competed seven times for the UFC from 2014-17.
Craig Watson - PA Images via Getty Images
The antitrust front tells a similar story, and it goes to the heart of how much money TKO makes. In 2024, a class of UFC fighters reached a $375 million settlement in Le v. Zuffa, an antitrust case that established the UFC held unlawful monopoly power over the market for MMA fighters' services and had used that power to suppress fighter pay. The settlement was monetary only — it contained no injunctive relief, meaning none of the contract structures that produced the suppression were required to change. On July 7, 2024, lead plaintiffs' counsel Eric Cramer explained to Judge Richard Boulware why: "We have no ability and leverage, as you know, in Le to get injunctive relief."
He then added: "And then there are other potential mechanisms to achieve change. We have a very active Department of Justice."
At the same hearing, Cramer told the court something that reads differently in retrospect: "I worry about the political risk of this case. It is infamously known that one of the main executives of the defendant is friends with someone who might be president and who will appoint a lot more judges to the Ninth Circuit and to the Supreme Court."
Jonathan Kanter subsequently resigned as DOJ Antitrust Division head on December 20, 2024. Lina Khan was stripped of her FTC chairmanship on Inauguration Day. Rob Maysey, the architect of the original Le case, confirmed on the "Hey Not The Face!" podcast that DOJ and FTC officials under the Biden administration had genuine investigative interest in the UFC once the Le settlement concluded, and that the open case had been the reason they hadn't moved earlier. His assessment of Trump's first term was direct: DOJ Antitrust under Delrahim — the UFC's former outside counsel — had no interest in enforcing antitrust law against the UFC.
The mechanism Cramer named in open court was removed from the board five months later. The follow-on case, Johnson v. Zuffa, covers fighters from 2017 to the present and seeks the injunctive relief Le could not obtain — court-ordered modifications to the contract structures that keep fighter pay below 20% of revenue. But with Kanter and Khan gone, and a second Trump term reshaping the federal judiciary, the agencies and courts that could have pursued those structural changes are now led by officials whose appointments flow from the friendship Cramer put on the record.
TKO didn't just get a pass from federal regulators; it also got a bill written for it.
The Muhammad Ali American Boxing Revival Act passed the House by voice vote on March 24, 2026 — the first major piece of federal boxing legislation introduced in more than 25 years. Moving from introduction to floor passage in just eight months with minimal opposition, the bill was introduced by Rep. Brian Jack, who served as White House political director during Trump's first term. MMA analyst Luke Thomas reported that the bill was confirmed as a White House priority with instructions to move it through quickly. The speed with which it cleared the House reflects that. While the bill still needs to be passed by the Senate, given Trump's backing and what TKO's lobbying operation just demonstrated in the House, that may be a formality.
The legislation creates a new category of corporate entity called a Unified Boxing Organization (UBO), allowing a single company to simultaneously act as promoter, sanctioning body, and title authority. This mirrors the UFC's exact corporate framework in MMA — and it is precisely what the original Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act of 2000 was enacted to prevent. Pat English, a lead drafter of the original 2000 law, testified to the committee that the new Revival Act was "substantially drafted by lobbyists" for Zuffa and its subsidiaries. According to English, the text strips from boxers who sign with a UBO the three core economic protections of the original law: Prohibitions on coercive contracts, mandatory financial disclosures, and the firewall separating managers from promoters.
TKO's joint venture with Saudi Arabia's PIF-backed Sela — Zuffa Boxing, funded entirely by Saudi capital, at zero cost to TKO — seeks to operate under that framework.
Saudi Arabia's Turki Alalshikh and Dana White have partnered up for Zuffa Boxing.
Chris Unger via Getty Images
On the "Pat McAfee Show" in February, Shapiro said: "UFC and WWE are $20 billion properties — $20 billion each. Boxing, give us some time. If it's five, if it's 10, give us some time. Like, that's a huge grower." Emanuel, sitting next to him, added: "I think that business for us can be as big as our UFC and WWE business." A company already worth an estimated $40 billion — built substantially on the backs of athletes receiving less than 20% of the revenue they generate — stands to become considerably more valuable still, if the Senate follows the House.
The Trump relationship has been good for business in other ways as well. Brands with conservative audience problems have been willing to pay significant sums for what the UFC represents to that audience. Anheuser-Busch paid more than $100 million to make Bud Light the UFC's official beer in October 2023, weeks after the brand's conservative boycott had cost it the top-selling beer position in the United States. White joined Meta's board on January 6, 2025, as Silicon Valley coordinated its courtship of the incoming administration; a Meta sponsorship deal followed in April 2025, with TKO's own partnerships head acknowledging the White-Zuckerberg relationship had provided "air cover" for the commercial arrangement.
In March 2026, FBI Director Kash Patel announced a training partnership with UFC fighters at Quantico via a press release posted by the UFC itself. Three months later the State Department announced that Secretary Rubio will sign a Memorandum of Understanding with Dana White this Thursday, June 11, formally designating the UFC as a partner in U.S. sports diplomacy. In both cases, the federal government was doing the UFC's marketing for free. For TKO's international site fee negotiations — what Shapiro has described as approaching "like a heat-seeking missile" — a State Department MOU is worth real money. TKO isn't required to disclose how much.
The UFC also provided something money couldn't easily buy. After January 6, 2021, Trump's presence at mainstream sporting events was politically toxic. UFC arenas were not. They gave him a venue, a receptive crowd, and a credibility transfer at the moment he needed it most. White, who's three times spoken at the Republican National Convention, then facilitated Trump's podcast appearances on Theo Von, the Nelk Boys, and Joe Rogan during the 2024 campaign — a strategy aimed directly at young men through UFC-adjacent audiences. As Thomas has observed, the UFC was more instrumental in Trump's political rehabilitation than virtually anything else.
Then there is the money.
TKO COO Mark Shapiro told analysts at the Morgan Stanley TMT Conference in February that Sunday's unprecedented UFC Freedom 250 fight card on the White House's South Lawn will cost the company more than $60 million — approximately three times the cost of UFC’s 2024 event at the Sphere in Las Vegas. He described this as an investment in earned media and longterm brand value, offset by approximately $30 million in sponsorship revenue from co-presenting sponsors Crypto.com and Ram, along with Octagon canvas and apparel partners whose deals were announced in the weeks surrounding the event. The net loss, by Shapiro's own accounting, is around $30 million. TKO, he said, is "not profiting" from Freedom 250.
On paper, a $60 million production cost outpaces $30 million in direct sponsorships. But the event does not exist in a financial vacuum.
The event's official fight kits — co-branded with the White House and America250, produced in collaboration with Venum and Fanatics, bearing an exclusive USA 250 patch created with White House input — are sold through UFC's own retail infrastructure. What the official White House logo on a piece of UFC merchandise is worth, Shapiro's accounting doesn't attempt to say.
U.S. President Donald Trump has been a fixture at UFC events in recent years.
Ed Mulholland via Getty Images
Paramount is also already paying TKO the aforementioned $1.1 billion a year for 30 Fight Nights and 13 numbered events — Freedom 250 simply took the place of one of those contracted numbered event slots. Combined, those revenue streams make Shapiro's claimed $30 million loss very difficult to locate. Paramount has not volunteered to fill the accounting gap, and the UFC did not respond to requests for comment regarding the broadcast rights fee allocation for Freedom 250.
Trump additionally purchased between $15,000 and $50,000 of TKO Group Holdings stock on March 25, 2026 — disclosed in his May 12 financial filings, approximately two weeks after UFC Freedom 250 was formally announced at UFC 326 on March 7. The White House's position is that the assets are held in a revocable trust managed by his sons and present no conflict of interest. What the trust structure doesn't change is who benefits when TKO's stock goes up.
TKO stock rose 8.86% in the seven days following the Freedom 250 announcement.
Then there are the coins.
On June 9, 2026, the Trump Organization and the UFC began selling co-branded commemorative coins — ranging from $249.99 to $11,999.99, bearing Trump's face — listed in the Freedom 250 merchandise section of the official UFC store and fulfilled through Fanatics. The UFC's IP is on the product. The UFC's distribution infrastructure is the sales channel. No revenue split between TKO and the Trump Organization has been disclosed. There is no requirement for it to be. The stock purchase is small and disclosed. The coins are neither.
Paramount is paying TKO $1.1 billion a year for broadcast rights — between 18% and 47% above what any analyst thought the deal was worth. The new Ali Act, if it passes the Senate, hands TKO the legal framework for a boxing venture its own executives say could be worth $20 billion. UFC fighters are still receiving less than 20% of the revenue they generate. Nobody in the federal government is currently interested in changing any of that. Instead, the federal government is actively working to improve TKO's stock price.
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Trump has his own version. In the Oval Office earlier this year, surrounded by fighters who will compete at the White House on his 80th birthday, he said: "They couldn't get any arenas because it was so violent. I was able to give them the first four or five fights."
The problem with both versions is that there were witnesses, including James Werme.
Werme was a Semaphore Entertainment Group (SEG) executive and the UFC's on-screen interviewer during that Atlantic City period — present at every event in question, and whose job it was to put notable attendees on camera. In a series of posts on X in May 2026, he — and others — documented what actually happened, and it does not match the version that's been consistently retold on any significant point.
The Trump myth
UFC 28, the company's first event held at the Trump Taj Mahal in November 2000, was not a Zuffa event. It was produced by SEG, the UFC's prior ownership.
SEG then booked the Taj Mahal again for UFC 30, scheduled for February 2001 — before the Zuffa sale closed in January 2001. White did not go to Trump and strike a deal that saved the promotion. The venue was already booked when White arrived.
As for Trump's attendance at UFC 28, UFC 30 and UFC 31, Werme wrote, "Not 28, 30 or 31, which were all at the Taj. We would have showed him … I would have interviewed him if he was [there]." Regarding White's claim that Trump watched the whole card, Werme added, "If he was anywhere at those shows there would be video or photographic evidence, and he would have been interviewed (by me). What's idiotic is thinking he was there all night and avoided every camera."
The first confirmed evidence of Trump at a UFC event — photographs and broadcast footage — is UFC 32 at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, New Jersey, on June 29, 2001. Not at a Trump property. The claim that Trump gave the UFC "the first four or five fights" also doesn't survive basic arithmetic. UFC had held 28 events before Zuffa purchased it, and the premise that no venues would have them isn't supported by the record either.
In the interim, Trump backed Affliction Entertainment, the UFC's short-lived rival, which collapsed after two events in 2008 and 2009.
Werme's conclusion on Trump's actual role is unambiguous:
Ant Evans spent 12 years at the UFC as head of public relations, creator of the modern UFC Hall of Fame, and content chief of UFC Fight Pass. He left in early 2019. His account matches Werme's: "Trump's name didn't appear in a single press release, one-sheet briefing, talking point, UFC-produced document, book, or piece of content before 2016,” Evans wrote in a May social media post. “The only time I recall his name being mentioned within my own earshot was execs laughing about his involvement with Affliction."
Evans, who has also worked in the past as a contributor for Uncrowned, added in a separate post: "The myth Trump helped UFC in some pivotal and profound way was invented whole cloth in 2016.”
The Trump Myth is a direct extension of the Zuffa Myth — the company-promoted narrative that White and the Fertittas rescued a dying UFC from oblivion, transformed it from no-rules human cockfighting into a real sport and global phenomenon because of their unique vision and sacrifice. Both were constructed retrospectively. Both serve the same purpose: Establishing a debt of gratitude that justifies loyalty, deference and reciprocity. The Zuffa Myth explains why fighters and fans should be grateful to the UFC and accept its terms. The Trump Myth explains why those same fans owe a debt of gratitude to Trump — and why everything that has followed should be understood as earned rather than extracted.
A very good friend
The Trump-White friendship is the public face of a relationship whose more consequential dimension perhaps runs through Ari Emanuel, CEO of TKO Group Holdings — parent company of UFC and WWE — and the Executive Chairman of the WME Group.
What makes Emanuel's position unusual is its scope. Through WME he represents some of the most commercially valuable talent in American entertainment — Martin Scorsese, Larry David, Mark Wahlberg, Peyton Manning, Tom Brady — while simultaneously running TKO, controlling UFC and WWE's broadcast and sponsorship relationships, and maintaining deep financial ties to sovereign wealth funds in the Gulf through TKO's Saudi partnerships and his new live events venture MARI, which counts the Qatar Investment Authority among its backers. He is, by any reasonable measure, one of the most powerful brokers in the American entertainment and sports industries. As Zach Arnold of The MMA Draw recently observed, TKO has constructed an unprecedented "unholy political and business alliance" that simultaneously strings together the White House, major media conglomerates, sovereign wealth funds and Silicon Valley tech giants.
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November 20, 2016: Donald Trump, Mike Pence and Ari Emanuel pose for a photo before their meeting at Trump International Golf Club.
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Emanuel's politics are nominally Democratic. His brother Rahm was Barack Obama's chief of staff, mayor of Chicago, and Joe Biden's ambassador to Japan. Emanuel himself donated nearly $1 million to Kamala Harris' PAC and campaign in the 2024 cycle. None of that has gotten in the way of his relationship with Trump, which predates and runs deeper than his association with the UFC.
Emanuel was Trump's agent at WME during "The Apprentice" years. When Trump announced his presidential run in 2015, WME-IMG purchased the Miss Universe Organization from him; while corporate America was scrambling to distance itself from a candidate it considered radioactive, Emanuel brokered the deal. Trump called Emanuel "a very good friend of mine ... He calls me a lot. I call him a lot, and we talk" in a 2016 Hollywood Reporter interview. When Trump was inaugurated in January 2017, Emanuel was among the first private-sector figures to visit him at the White House and was reportedly vetted for a formal administration role.
Yet beyond the personal relationships is a shared personnel pipeline between TKO and the White House. Steven Cheung served as the UFC's communications director for three years before joining Trump's 2016 campaign. After working the 2016 and 2020 campaigns and Trump's first term as director of strategic response, he returned for the 2024 campaign as Trump's chief spokesman, then was named White House Communications Director in November 2024.
Reporters and campaign operatives credit Cheung as a driving force behind Trump's non-traditional media strategy — deliberately pivoting the campaign away from legacy press outlets and toward a hyper-masculine ecosystem of alternative podcasts, streamers, and live sports venues, a blueprint he first refined during his years at the UFC. His professional career ran from UFC communications to Trump politics and back again.
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Steven Cheung (R) stands next to Donald Trump aboard Air Force One.
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‘Capitulation to this administration’
The TKO-Trump relationship's commercial dimensions came powerfully into focus during the negotiation of UFC’s new domestic broadcast rights package.
On a Q2 2025 earnings call, TKO COO Mark Shapiro told investors that TKO planned to split its broadcast rights into two packages — Fight Nights to one partner, numbered events to another — a structure designed to create competitive tension between bidders and maximize the return on each. Wall Street modeled the outcome accordingly: Citi estimated the deal would come in around $750 million annually, with Wolfe Research at $900 million, and J.P. Morgan, the most bullish analyst covering TKO, projecting it might reach $925 million. The UFC’s prior ESPN broadcast deal, by Shapiro's own characterization on CNBC, had averaged $500 million a year.
Paramount itself was not the obvious outcome as a partner. The company's well-publicized Skydance bid had faced competing offers and months of internal turmoil at Paramount's controlling shareholder Shari Redstone, with the merger process stalling repeatedly through the first half of 2025. More significantly, the merged company faced a specific regulatory obstacle that had nothing to do with antitrust: The Trump administration's open hostility toward CBS News over its coverage of the 2024 campaign.
The FCC under Trump's appointees had both the appetite and the apparent willingness to use the merger review as leverage. Whether Paramount would survive that process intact — and on what terms — was genuinely uncertain through the spring and early summer of 2025.
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UFC CEO Dana White and TKO executive Mark Shapiro seen in attendance during UFC 306.
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On August 11, 2025 — four days after the Skydance-Paramount merger closed — Shapiro told CNBC the UFC’s new deal had been negotiated in just 48 hours. A single partner secured all packages for a total of $7.7 billion over seven years — a shocking $1.1 billion annual average. Almost 20% higher than even the most bullish analyst’s prediction. TKO stock rose more than 10% on announcement day. Paramount's fell nearly 4%. Morningstar, J.P. Morgan and Wolfe Research all subsequently described the deal as an overpay by Paramount.
Prior to that point, the Skydance-Paramount merger had been under FCC review for months. The commission finally approved it on July 24, 2025, along strict party lines — two Republican commissioners in favor, one Democrat dissenting. The conditions attached to that approval required the resolution of Trump's lawsuit against CBS over its editing of a Kamala Harris interview on “60 Minutes,” resulting in a $16 million settlement paid to a presidential library; the elimination of DEI programs across the company; and the appointment of a news ombudsman. FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, in dissent, described the process as "months of cowardly capitulation to this administration."
As it turned out, David Ellison, Skydance's CEO and the architect of the newly merged company, had attended UFC 314 in April 2025 as a guest of Ari Emanuel — confirmed by The Wrap — and UFC 316 in June 2025, per an FCC ex parte filing from a rival bidder. Both events fell during the period of active FCC review. The Los Angeles Times reported on two separate occasions, citing unnamed sources, that Emanuel "stepped in to help get the dealmaking back on track" when the “60 Minutes” settlement negotiations stalled.
Makan Delrahim ran the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division through Trump's entire first term. Before that, at Latham & Watkins, his disclosed client list included Endeavor/WME and the UFC. In October 2025 — two months after the Paramount deal closed — he was named Chief Legal Officer of Paramount Skydance. The man who ran federal antitrust enforcement during Trump's first term, while representing the UFC in private practice, is now the top lawyer at the company paying the UFC $1.1 billion a year.
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Dana White and Paramount CEO David Ellison attend UFC 324 in Las Vegas.
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The defendant is friends with the president
When Trump won the 2024 election, the UFC was facing potential threats on three federal fronts.
The UFC classifies all of its fighters as independent contractors rather than employees — a distinction that shields the company from minimum wage requirements, benefits obligations, workers' compensation liability, and the right to collectively bargain. Separate from that, its exclusive contracting practices, title retention clauses, and fighter mobility restrictions had been found by a federal court to constitute unlawful monopoly power over the market for MMA fighters' services.
Fighters' share of UFC revenue sits below 20% — a paltry fraction of what athletes receive in other major sports — a gap that exists precisely because of the structures a hostile regulatory environment could force the company to change. What TKO gained from a Trump administration was not a specific favor. It was the absence of federal attention across the aforementioned three distinct fronts: The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the DOJ, and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
In 2018, former UFC fighter Leslie Smith filed a complaint with the NLRB accusing the UFC of retaliating against her for attempting to organize fighters and misclassifying them as independent contractors. NLRB Region 4 found the complaint had merit — then, within hours, the case was pulled to Washington's Division of Advice under Peter Robb, a Trump appointee. It was subsequently dismissed without ever examining the misclassification question. Smith's attorney, Lucas Middlebrook, called it a political stunt and cited a recent meeting at the time between White and Trump as part of why Smith lost. Smith's own characterization was direct: Trump's appointees "commandeered my case" and dismissed it "without examining our status as statutory employees."
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Leslie Smith (left) competed seven times for the UFC from 2014-17.
Craig Watson - PA Images via Getty Images
The antitrust front tells a similar story, and it goes to the heart of how much money TKO makes. In 2024, a class of UFC fighters reached a $375 million settlement in Le v. Zuffa, an antitrust case that established the UFC held unlawful monopoly power over the market for MMA fighters' services and had used that power to suppress fighter pay. The settlement was monetary only — it contained no injunctive relief, meaning none of the contract structures that produced the suppression were required to change. On July 7, 2024, lead plaintiffs' counsel Eric Cramer explained to Judge Richard Boulware why: "We have no ability and leverage, as you know, in Le to get injunctive relief."
He then added: "And then there are other potential mechanisms to achieve change. We have a very active Department of Justice."
At the same hearing, Cramer told the court something that reads differently in retrospect: "I worry about the political risk of this case. It is infamously known that one of the main executives of the defendant is friends with someone who might be president and who will appoint a lot more judges to the Ninth Circuit and to the Supreme Court."
Jonathan Kanter subsequently resigned as DOJ Antitrust Division head on December 20, 2024. Lina Khan was stripped of her FTC chairmanship on Inauguration Day. Rob Maysey, the architect of the original Le case, confirmed on the "Hey Not The Face!" podcast that DOJ and FTC officials under the Biden administration had genuine investigative interest in the UFC once the Le settlement concluded, and that the open case had been the reason they hadn't moved earlier. His assessment of Trump's first term was direct: DOJ Antitrust under Delrahim — the UFC's former outside counsel — had no interest in enforcing antitrust law against the UFC.
The mechanism Cramer named in open court was removed from the board five months later. The follow-on case, Johnson v. Zuffa, covers fighters from 2017 to the present and seeks the injunctive relief Le could not obtain — court-ordered modifications to the contract structures that keep fighter pay below 20% of revenue. But with Kanter and Khan gone, and a second Trump term reshaping the federal judiciary, the agencies and courts that could have pursued those structural changes are now led by officials whose appointments flow from the friendship Cramer put on the record.
Bespoke legislation
TKO didn't just get a pass from federal regulators; it also got a bill written for it.
The Muhammad Ali American Boxing Revival Act passed the House by voice vote on March 24, 2026 — the first major piece of federal boxing legislation introduced in more than 25 years. Moving from introduction to floor passage in just eight months with minimal opposition, the bill was introduced by Rep. Brian Jack, who served as White House political director during Trump's first term. MMA analyst Luke Thomas reported that the bill was confirmed as a White House priority with instructions to move it through quickly. The speed with which it cleared the House reflects that. While the bill still needs to be passed by the Senate, given Trump's backing and what TKO's lobbying operation just demonstrated in the House, that may be a formality.
The legislation creates a new category of corporate entity called a Unified Boxing Organization (UBO), allowing a single company to simultaneously act as promoter, sanctioning body, and title authority. This mirrors the UFC's exact corporate framework in MMA — and it is precisely what the original Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act of 2000 was enacted to prevent. Pat English, a lead drafter of the original 2000 law, testified to the committee that the new Revival Act was "substantially drafted by lobbyists" for Zuffa and its subsidiaries. According to English, the text strips from boxers who sign with a UBO the three core economic protections of the original law: Prohibitions on coercive contracts, mandatory financial disclosures, and the firewall separating managers from promoters.
TKO's joint venture with Saudi Arabia's PIF-backed Sela — Zuffa Boxing, funded entirely by Saudi capital, at zero cost to TKO — seeks to operate under that framework.
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Saudi Arabia's Turki Alalshikh and Dana White have partnered up for Zuffa Boxing.
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On the "Pat McAfee Show" in February, Shapiro said: "UFC and WWE are $20 billion properties — $20 billion each. Boxing, give us some time. If it's five, if it's 10, give us some time. Like, that's a huge grower." Emanuel, sitting next to him, added: "I think that business for us can be as big as our UFC and WWE business." A company already worth an estimated $40 billion — built substantially on the backs of athletes receiving less than 20% of the revenue they generate — stands to become considerably more valuable still, if the Senate follows the House.
The Trump relationship has been good for business in other ways as well. Brands with conservative audience problems have been willing to pay significant sums for what the UFC represents to that audience. Anheuser-Busch paid more than $100 million to make Bud Light the UFC's official beer in October 2023, weeks after the brand's conservative boycott had cost it the top-selling beer position in the United States. White joined Meta's board on January 6, 2025, as Silicon Valley coordinated its courtship of the incoming administration; a Meta sponsorship deal followed in April 2025, with TKO's own partnerships head acknowledging the White-Zuckerberg relationship had provided "air cover" for the commercial arrangement.
In March 2026, FBI Director Kash Patel announced a training partnership with UFC fighters at Quantico via a press release posted by the UFC itself. Three months later the State Department announced that Secretary Rubio will sign a Memorandum of Understanding with Dana White this Thursday, June 11, formally designating the UFC as a partner in U.S. sports diplomacy. In both cases, the federal government was doing the UFC's marketing for free. For TKO's international site fee negotiations — what Shapiro has described as approaching "like a heat-seeking missile" — a State Department MOU is worth real money. TKO isn't required to disclose how much.
This is a reward
The UFC also provided something money couldn't easily buy. After January 6, 2021, Trump's presence at mainstream sporting events was politically toxic. UFC arenas were not. They gave him a venue, a receptive crowd, and a credibility transfer at the moment he needed it most. White, who's three times spoken at the Republican National Convention, then facilitated Trump's podcast appearances on Theo Von, the Nelk Boys, and Joe Rogan during the 2024 campaign — a strategy aimed directly at young men through UFC-adjacent audiences. As Thomas has observed, the UFC was more instrumental in Trump's political rehabilitation than virtually anything else.
Then there is the money.
TKO COO Mark Shapiro told analysts at the Morgan Stanley TMT Conference in February that Sunday's unprecedented UFC Freedom 250 fight card on the White House's South Lawn will cost the company more than $60 million — approximately three times the cost of UFC’s 2024 event at the Sphere in Las Vegas. He described this as an investment in earned media and longterm brand value, offset by approximately $30 million in sponsorship revenue from co-presenting sponsors Crypto.com and Ram, along with Octagon canvas and apparel partners whose deals were announced in the weeks surrounding the event. The net loss, by Shapiro's own accounting, is around $30 million. TKO, he said, is "not profiting" from Freedom 250.
On paper, a $60 million production cost outpaces $30 million in direct sponsorships. But the event does not exist in a financial vacuum.
The event's official fight kits — co-branded with the White House and America250, produced in collaboration with Venum and Fanatics, bearing an exclusive USA 250 patch created with White House input — are sold through UFC's own retail infrastructure. What the official White House logo on a piece of UFC merchandise is worth, Shapiro's accounting doesn't attempt to say.
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U.S. President Donald Trump has been a fixture at UFC events in recent years.
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Paramount is also already paying TKO the aforementioned $1.1 billion a year for 30 Fight Nights and 13 numbered events — Freedom 250 simply took the place of one of those contracted numbered event slots. Combined, those revenue streams make Shapiro's claimed $30 million loss very difficult to locate. Paramount has not volunteered to fill the accounting gap, and the UFC did not respond to requests for comment regarding the broadcast rights fee allocation for Freedom 250.
Trump additionally purchased between $15,000 and $50,000 of TKO Group Holdings stock on March 25, 2026 — disclosed in his May 12 financial filings, approximately two weeks after UFC Freedom 250 was formally announced at UFC 326 on March 7. The White House's position is that the assets are held in a revocable trust managed by his sons and present no conflict of interest. What the trust structure doesn't change is who benefits when TKO's stock goes up.
TKO stock rose 8.86% in the seven days following the Freedom 250 announcement.
Then there are the coins.
On June 9, 2026, the Trump Organization and the UFC began selling co-branded commemorative coins — ranging from $249.99 to $11,999.99, bearing Trump's face — listed in the Freedom 250 merchandise section of the official UFC store and fulfilled through Fanatics. The UFC's IP is on the product. The UFC's distribution infrastructure is the sales channel. No revenue split between TKO and the Trump Organization has been disclosed. There is no requirement for it to be. The stock purchase is small and disclosed. The coins are neither.
Paramount is paying TKO $1.1 billion a year for broadcast rights — between 18% and 47% above what any analyst thought the deal was worth. The new Ali Act, if it passes the Senate, hands TKO the legal framework for a boxing venture its own executives say could be worth $20 billion. UFC fighters are still receiving less than 20% of the revenue they generate. Nobody in the federal government is currently interested in changing any of that. Instead, the federal government is actively working to improve TKO's stock price.
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