TKO Group Holdings, which owns the UFC and WWE, says it’s “near an settlement” to kind a brand new boxing league funded by Saudi Arabia.
It has been reported Saudi Arabian traders are eager to kind a league after investing considerably to often host heavyweight fights together with Tyson Fury, Anthony Joshua and Oleksandr Usyk within the kingdom.
The UFC and WWE maintain occasions in Saudi, as do boxing promoters Matchroom and Queensberry, and TKO president and chief working officer Mark Shapiro informed traders on Wednesday concerning the potential boxing deal.
“We’re near an settlement with the Saudis on a creation of a boxing league the place TKO could be the producer, the promoter and answerable for all day-to-day operations of the enterprise, whereby we’d obtain a charge of $10m (£7.8m) plus,” Shapiro mentioned.
“We’re not placing any cash in, we’re not placing any capital in, we’re not on the hook for any [costs].”
It’s unclear what the league would seem like and who would compete in it, with most of boxing’s largest stars beneath contract with key promoters resembling Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom, Bob Arum’s High Rank and Frank Warren’s Queensberry.
Shapiro additionally mentioned TKO could be answerable for overseeing “4 giant scale super-fights” throughout 2025 and 2026.
“These might or might not fall into the boxing league itself, they might simply be one-offs, however we’d be paid a charge to behave because the promoter, the producer and the occasion operator,” he mentioned.
Turki Alalshikh, chairman of Saudi Arabia’s basic leisure authority, has been the face of Saudi involvement in boxing in recent times.
Saudi affect over the game has elevated considerably, with lots of boxing’s largest occasions going down within the kingdom together with Fury’s two bouts in opposition to Usyk in 2024.
Occasions have additionally taken place exterior Saudi under the ‘Riyadh Season’ banner, one in Los Angeles headlined by Terence Crawford and one at Wembley Stadium headlined by Daniel Dubois.
Saudi Arabia has spent about £5bn in sport since 2021 – saying the funding is getting used to diversify the economic system away from a dependency on oil.
Critics counsel Saudi’s funding in sport is to realize legitimacy and deflect consideration from controversy over its human rights file, a follow referred to as ‘sportswashing’.
Creation of a boxing league would additional improve the involvement in boxing of Saudi Arabia, which via the Public Funding Fund – the dominion’s sovereign wealth fund – has created its personal golf circuit, the LIV Golf League.
Matchroom and Queensberry avoided making any touch upon TKO when requested about the potential for the brand new league and BBC Sport has additionally contacted Riyadh Season.
