The Business of UFC: How Dana White Turned a $2 Million Purchase Into a $12 Billion Brand

TKO Group Holdings, the parent company of the UFC, closed the 2025 fiscal year with record revenue of $1.38 billion, a 14 percent year-on-year increase, according to its February earnings report. The UFC segment alone accounts for roughly $1.1 billion of that total, a commercial scale few could have forecast when the Fertitta brothers and Dana White bought the promotion for $2 million in January 2001.

White, 56, has served as UFC president for 24 years and remains the public face of the brand after its 2023 merger with WWE under Endeavor's Zuffa Parent LLC. The company was valued at roughly $12 billion when TKO was spun out as a publicly traded entity in September 2023.

The Media Rights Deal That Changed Everything

The UFC's transformative commercial moment came in 2019, when the organization signed a five-year, $1.5 billion broadcast deal with ESPN+. The agreement moved the promotion's pay-per-view model from traditional cable carriers onto a streaming platform, doubling average PPV buy-rates within three years, according to figures disclosed in TKO's SEC filings.

A renewed deal announced in October 2025 extends the ESPN partnership through 2032 at a reported annual value of $375 million, per The Wall Street Journal. The deal preserves the pay-per-view structure for the UFC's marquee events but moves certain Fight Night cards behind ESPN+'s subscription paywall.

Sponsorship and International Growth

Venum's exclusive apparel partnership, renewed in 2024 for $175 million over eight years, per Sportico, is among the largest single-brand deals in combat sports history. Crypto.com's multi-year sponsorship of the Octagon branding generates an additional $175 million, though the agreement was restructured in 2023 amid the broader decline in crypto marketing spend.

International growth has driven much of the revenue expansion. The UFC held 43 events in 2024, with 14 outside the United States — in Abu Dhabi, Manchester, Mexico City, Paris, Perth, Rio de Janeiro, Riyadh, and Shanghai. The Riyadh agreement, part of Saudi Arabia's Sports Boulevard investment program, pays a reported $100 million site fee per year for exclusive event rights.

The Fighter Compensation Question

Fighter pay remains a public pressure point. The UFC's disclosed athlete costs accounted for 15.7 percent of revenue in 2024, according to TKO's annual report — a figure antitrust lawyers in the 2024 class-action settlement argued was suppressed by the promotion's monopolistic position.

The $335 million antitrust settlement, finalized in March 2024, compensated more than 1,200 fighters who competed under UFC contracts between 2010 and 2017. A separate class action covering the 2017-2025 period remains pending in federal court in Las Vegas.

Saudi Arabia's Influence and Event Scaling

Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund has emerged as the UFC's most important sovereign partner. The 2024 UFC 308 event at Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi — technically outside Saudi Arabia but within the Gulf sponsorship sphere — drew 16,400 fans and generated an estimated $15.8 million in live-gate revenue, according to industry tracker MMA Payouts.

White said in a December interview with CNBC that the UFC would host at least four events in Saudi Arabia in 2026, up from two in 2025. "The Saudis want a long-term partnership on their terms, and so do we," he told the network.

Succession and the Road Forward

White signed a long-term contract extension with TKO in July 2024, a deal that runs through 2030. The promotion's future programming slate includes the launch of UFC 400 at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas in November 2026, a card TKO has projected will set a new pay-per-view record.

Succession planning remains opaque. Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel and TKO CEO Mark Shapiro have publicly deferred to White on UFC leadership questions. "As long as he wants the job, the job is his," Shapiro told investors on the company's Q4 earnings call.