TKO Group Holdings, Inc. TKO

The business

TKO sells access to live combat-sports and entertainment events and the media rights that carry them. The revenue building blocks, in order of durability, are media rights (multi-year contracts, the most predictable line), live events and site fees (gate, venue, and the fees governments and partners pay to host events), sponsorship, and consumer products and licensing. Since the 2025 Endeavor asset transfer the company reports across UFC, WWE, and a combined IMG segment that now folds in On Location premium hospitality, IMG media and licensing, and PBR bull riding. UFC and WWE are the two engines: in Q1 2026 UFC ran a 63% adjusted-EBITDA margin and WWE roughly 54%, while the IMG segment, the largest by revenue at $655.4M in the quarter, converted only about 15% to EBITDA ($97.3M). Put plainly, UFC and WWE are where the profit lives, generating the large majority of segment EBITDA on well under half of consolidated revenue; IMG adds scale and event reach but dilutes the blended margin.

The qualitative fact the financials do not yet fully show is that the media-rights cycle is the entire story. UFC moved its full slate to Paramount and CBS in a seven-year, $7.7B deal averaging $1.1B a year that began in January 2026, ending the pay-per-view model and roughly doubling UFC's prior US rights value. WWE's Raw moved to Netflix in January 2025 on a ten-year, $5B contract ($500M a year, up from ≈$250M on USA), with SmackDown on USA Network (≈$1.4B over five years) and Premium Live Events plus international on Netflix and Peacock. The structural tailwind is scarcity: live sports is the last appointment-viewing content advertisers and streamers will pay almost any price to lock up, and cord-cutting has turned Netflix, Amazon, and a recapitalized Paramount Skydance into bidders who did not exist at the last renewal. The step-ups are contracted, not hoped for, and they land on incremental margins close to 100%.