TKO’s Mark Shapiro on a possible 2027 White House UFC card and slower WWE sponsorship growth

On June 14, the UFC staged the Freedom 250 on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C., and TKO president Mark Shapiro has discussed the possibility of staging another event there in 2027 during a recent interview with CNBC’s Squawk on the Street.

The Freedom 250 featured seven fights with two title bouts in the main and co-main slots and included live walkout music from “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band. Justin Gaethje defeated Ilia Topuria in the main event to capture the Undisputed Lightweight Title for the first time in his career. The promotion reported a $30 million financial loss on the event but drew President Donald Trump cageside and widespread mainstream media attention.

Shapiro spoke about the White House card and the financial outcome in a conversation that also included TKO CEO Ari Emanuel. He described the $30 million hit as a deliberate one-off business decision and said, “It is one time.”

On returning to the White House, Shapiro said: “If we could do another fight at the White House next year, we would.” He added that the event generated mainstream awareness beyond sports and used that exposure as a platform for future business growth, saying, “That kind of awareness for the UFC is truly unprecedented and something we’ll capitalize on in terms of business growth going forward.”

Shapiro addressed slower sponsorship growth for WWE under TKO and attributed part of it to a packed international schedule in the first half of the year that limited global sales opportunities. He said: “We grew 90 plus percent because WWE was new to TKO and we took the playbook from UFC, we applied it to WWE and we took down the low-hanging fruit. This year what you’ve seen is 2 and 8% respectively in the first two quarters because we have so many international events this first half of the year which don’t allow us to sell as much as many global partnerships as we otherwise would, but it’s backloaded. The second half, a ton of global partnership deals take effect, many multi-year, all high margin, all recurring and we will finish over 20 percent year-over-year increase on WWE partnership revenue for the year. So it’s more to come.”

Shapiro confirmed that, if feasible, TKO would pursue another White House fight in 2027 and reiterated that a slate of recurring, multiyear global partnership agreements scheduled to begin in the second half of the year should push WWE partnership revenue to a year-over-year increase of more than 20 percent.