TKO Group Holdings Inc. went public on Tuesday. The much-awaited merger between Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) opened to trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The new publicly traded company has the ticker symbol TKO. Endeavor CEO Ari Emmanuel rang the bell to open trading while UFC President Dana White and WWE Executive Chairman Vince McMahon were present at the opening.
Many other top executives from WWE and UFC were also present and included the following:
Nick Khan
Paul Levesque (Triple H)
Bianca Belair
Daniel Cormier and many others.
The new sports entertainment company TKO is reportedly worth $21.4 billion, Endeavor Group Holdings owns 51 percent of the combined company TKO, while WWE shareholders own 49 percent of TKO. Endeavor’s assets include UFC and WME (a Hollywood talent agency).
Ari Emmanuel’s Endeavor had been working for the merger for months. As reported earlier, the sports giants had officially announced that they would unite their operations to create a sporting behemoth.
Ari Emmanuel said that although WWE and UFC are now one publicly traded company, their promotions will operate independently as before under the same leadership.
All the major executives released statements on the merger. Mark Shapiro is the president and chief operating officer of TKO. Ari Emmanuel is the chief executive while Vince McMahon is the executive chairman of TKO. Dana White is now the CEO of UFC, while Lawrence Epstein is the COO and executive VP of UFC. Nick Khan is president of WWE and board member of TKO.
In 2016, Ari Emmanuel’s Endeavor that also owns WME bought a major stake in UFC. In 2021, it acquired full ownership of the mixed martial arts league that is popular across the U.S., as well as the world.
Endeavor partnered with WWE to increase growth with live events. The popular wrestling action of WWE airs on NBCUniversal as “Monday Night Raw” and on Fox Corp. as “Friday Night Smackdown.” These media deals will expire by the end of next year.
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