Good morning, everybody. Welcome to day three of Morgan Stanley's Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference. We are starting bright and early, sort of the breakfast club. I'm Ben Swinburne, Morgan Stanley's Media and Entertainment Analyst. And we are really excited to welcome, technically for the first time, to the conference, TKO Holdings, President and COO Mark Shapiro. Mark, it's great to have you here. Ben, always good to be with you. Thanks for coming. It's actually the first time we've had a chance to chat, yeah, at length about this new company you guys created. Yeah. And I'd love maybe to start there. Give us the thesis around putting the UFC and WWE together and why you guys are so excited about this new company. Yeah, I mean, look, I would tell you that, first off, we're clearly very confident in the industrial logic of the transaction. We think these are highly complementary properties in the UFC and WWE. Obviously, we've done this before, meaning Endeavor and when we bought the UFC. So this is like running the playbook 2.0. From a financial profile standpoint, I mean, these are both properties coming off record years. I mean, both of them, WWE 2023, record revenue, record EBITDA. UFC, record revenue, record EBITDA. Every year, by the way, is a record for UFC. Right. Free cash flow conversion is an amazing story for us. I mean, we're, you know, we've guided to an excess of 50%, with a couple of one-timers that we have that we won't have next year. You're talking about a 60%+ situation here. I mean, that's in terms of investing in growth, investing in companies that produce cash, which is obviously a priority for all investors on both fronts. You're getting it in spades here. And then, you know, I go further to say that the experience economy is alive and well. Yeah. You know, it's Biden's taking a hit here on inflation. But having said that, jobs are good, wages are good, consumers are spending money. And where are they spending money? With their new Fridays off, they're spending money on events, experiences. So that bodes well from us, from an attendance standpoint, from a pricing standpoint, from a site fees standpoint. Add to that the Endeavor flywheel, which has a lot to do with why UFC's gone from what, 170 million of EBITDA when we bought it to three times that now, kinda going forward. Our integration's going extremely well. We're gonna be at the high end of what we've guided. And as I mentioned before, we've been here before. We've done this before. We know the playbook. And we are in the sports leagues business. If you wanna be in the sports ecosystem, if you wanna be with a company that controls all the different spokes of sports and ways to revenue, ways, excuse me, generate revenue, ways to monetize revenue, ways to have access, frankly, to teams and leagues that kinda everybody wants to be with these days, TKO's the place for you. Yeah. That's a great overview. You know, one of the big announcements, probably the biggest announcement that you guys have made year to date was your kinda landmark Netflix deal. Yeah. With WWE. Spence Neumann was here yesterday. We chatted a bit about that. Why did this deal make sense for WWE, especially when you think about how long, I mean, this could be a 20-year deal, and I'm sure in success it will be. Why did that make sense? What's so interesting about going with Netflix? First, my good friend Spence, who I worked with at Disney, I'll have to give him some shit 'cause he barely talked about us, when he was up here. But they like to downplay all their big hits. But they, you know, look, Ted Sarandos, Bela, Spence, all been big supporters of this. Look, I gotta tell you, there's no way to slice it. This is just looking at it objectively. This is a landmark deal. This is an industry-changing deal. This is a transformative deal. It's Netflix, right? We're not going to get into live sports. And even though WWE is quasi-live sports. Right. We're not going to get into it, and everybody was waiting for when the code would be cracked. We cracked the code, and it's $5.2 billion over 10 years. It's highly visible revenue. It's high-margin revenue. It's locked in. It's recurring. We de-risked the whole merger with that alone. Netflix itself has got unbelievable reach and scale globally. It's a global deal, and they're a marketing powerhouse. People forget that. Just the idea, you know, we, Andrew Schleimer, my CFO, and Nick Khan, who runs WWE, were just kinda chomping at the bit to the idea of turning to Netflix and 'cause they have the best marketing ever. It's just on their channel. They don't have to do much outside marketing. Whatever they put that starts rolling the second you come there is getting all kinds of attention and drawing viewership. And the fact that Raw will be there on a weekly basis as the first image you see when you go to Netflix, I mean, their marketing plan is insanely robust. And we're, we're really, really excited about it. And I would just tell you, lastly, when you look at TKO, you're talking about our properties being on Disney with UFC, being on Comcast with WWE, and of course now being on Netflix. That's, that's a good neighborhood. Yeah. No, that's fair. Do you think that the products will change over time? Do you expect Netflix to sort of innovate with what WWE fans see from Raw, which has, you know, frankly been, you know, more or less, not the same. Yeah. But the same product for a long time on cable? That's a great question. The answer is they plan to be very innovative. Yep. What those plans are, we're still kind of in the laboratory, exploratory stage. But I have to give a lot of credit to Rick Cordella and Mark Lazarus at NBC. When they did that NFL wild card game, they paid a boatload for $110 million. But arguably, if you, if you look at the numbers, worth it for them. And the folks had their doubts. Can they pull it off just technologically? Would the stream be clean? Would there be any bumps or hiccups? And instead, not only was it clean and a great viewing experience, they added a whole bunch of accoutrements. Yeah. That really got the attention of Netflix. We don't wanna just put the property on. We do wanna be clean. They've had some troubles in the past of being clean. We wanna be innovative. We wanna add bells and whistles. We wanna add all kinds of new technology. You know, when I ran ESPN before this, we spent a lot of time K-Zone, which is the strike zone, right? Yeah. Coming up with that. The 1st & 10 line. You know, the Hawk-Eye, which is tennis where the ball is in or out. Like, those were all developed at ESPN. And Netflix is very, very, I would say, incentivized to bring that same kinda technological innovation and disruption to WWE, and we welcome it. WWE's been around, frankly, for decades. Let's talk a little about the UFC 'cause MMA and the UFC are, you know, to some extent, newer sports. I mean, do you, do you still look at the UFC and say this and even the broader MMA world is undermonetized relative to the popularity? Completely. You know, as I said, we've had a record year, year in and year out with the UFC. This has just been incredible. And I give the folks at Endeavor and IMG a lot of credit for enhancing and supporting the efforts of Dana White and Lawrence Epstein and Craig Borsari and what they're building at the UFC. It's been an incredible story. But let's just take a step back, if you will, right? In 2016, we weren't even legal in New York. UFC couldn't even put on a match there. And now we're sitting here as the premier MMA organization, just celebrated our 30th anniversary, 700 million fans, 170 million countries, 900 million households, 600 fighters. We have the best talent. We have a lot of competition now, a lot. And they're constantly chipping at us and trying to steal our fighters. But we have 600 of the best quality fighters. And we have spent money to incubate more fighters by having a PI, a Performance Institute in Mexico City that we built and paid for, by having a Performance Institute in Vegas that we built and paid for, by having a Performance Institute in Shanghai, which we built and paid for, by potentially having one in the Middle East. And we're looking to do that 'cause you never know where these fighters are coming from. And we want the best talent. On top of that, we're constantly live. We are year-round, so we're the antidote to churn. And I would tell you this, you know, I've spent a lot of time in sports in my career. I'm getting old now. And we always, once in a while, you hear, used to hear it more often than you do now. But it used to be the four majors, the four majors. Yeah. Frankly, what are you talking about? Like, UFC is now not only mainstream, it's one of the four majors. The ratings on ESPN and ESPN2, apples to apples against the NHL, even including the playoffs, we dwarf them. Yeah. You put a Fight Night, not a pay-per-view, guys, not a preliminary bout in front of the pay-per-view. A regular weekly Fight Night on ESPN does double-digit rating beats across the NHL against the NHL. The demos are anywhere from 20%-40% up. Not to smack Gary Bettman or anything. Right. I love the NHL. I'm a huge Chicago Blackhawks fan. But they're just not in our league. Yeah. It's just, it's just not the case, and keep in mind, when I rattle off those ratings, that doesn't include what we're doing on ESPN+, which they're not publishing, so we're that much bigger, so we're in a great place, and to give you a long answer to your short question, yes, it's undermonetized 'cause you have all those facts. Yeah. There's more money to be made in all the different places we're making it. But guess what? It's a growth story. We're gonna make that money. We're already making that money. We've gone, you know, three times on our sponsorship sales, and we're going to go further in time. Let me ask you, Mark, about the ESPN relationship, so you guys signed this deal, or at least it began, I think, in 2019, which is in many ways kind of a world ago. It's a unique deal where you have cable, you have broadcast, you have pay-per-view. You don't see a lot of pay-per-view deals anymore. Has this, what has this done over the course of this contract, which is, you know, on the coming to the end over the next couple of years for the UFC product? Well, ESPN and Disney are the greatest partners you could ever have. I mean, if we can replicate that at Netflix, we're gonna be golden. They get the sport. They're fans of the sport. It was Bob Iger that frankly saw the vision. It was his decision to go bite off all the UFC, including the pay-per-views. But Jimmy Pitaro and Burke Magnus, and Roz Durant, who now runs programming, are huge fans of the UFC, and they support it in every way. So social, SportsCenter coverage, short-form content, long-form content. And they work with us on the scheduling about trying to get us the best windows. They want more UFC, not less. And by the way, they have a pretty crowded sheet of programming. You know, their schedule is a calendar is nip and tuck. What I would tell you is we love the marketing strength. I mean, we got out of the gate. Keep in mind, ESPN+ was in like four million subs, and Dana White was really concerned. Wait a second. We're gonna go on ESPN+, and no one there, and by the way, our advertisers, our sponsors, weren't too happy about it. We can't get any numbers. We don't know who's watching us. We're not gonna pay you these numbers for a small platform, and we took a shot, to ESPN's credit. They used the might of the entire Disney platform to market and promote the UFC in a way no other company could have done it. So to say we're loyal to them would be an understatement. I'm anxious to see where this all goes. ESPN Flagship. Yeah. What happened to ESPN+? Obviously, the cable bundle is completely imploding. ABC's kinda have a little resurgence right now. So we're gonna work with them behind the scenes to figure out what the next chapter of our partnership looks like. That was actually gonna be my next question, which is I think the window opens, I believe, January or so, 2025. Yeah. For your ESPN/UFC deal. So how are you, how are you approaching that? Are there things you're looking at for the rest of 2024, Mark, that will inform sort of how you think about maybe addressing some of these product, you know, ideas or expanding the calendar and all those kinda things? Well, I'll tell you yes on the '24 part. What, what we do now is, I mean, literally, the president of ESPN, Jimmy Pitaro, will fly into Vegas every quarter and meet with Dana White or, or at least three times a year. What are we doing right? What are we doing wrong? Where can we be more supportive? Where are we missing the boat? And also, what's important to them in terms of matchups and quality. And cities that we might go to, etc.? We really work with them on diagramming and letterboxing, if you will, the checkerboard in the schedule. So we wanna see them just continue to keep us kind of front and center, right? They have the NFL, right? They have college football now, and that's expanding. Not losing sight that we're, we are one of those majors and keeping us front and center. We'll be watching that. It is our preference to say Disney because of this history. But we've had kinda impromptu three different platforms inquire about that window you're talking about and when we might be able to sit down with them to discuss moving to another platform, which, by the way, we will do if we can't get the right deal. But the window opens in January. There's no reason we can't start talking about it earlier. We're curious to see what happens with the NBA. You'll be talking to Adam Silver later. That will have an impact on us. Are they getting more content? Are they getting less content? Right. And when they launch this ESPN Flagship, what price point? How are they gonna push it? What's gonna be on ESPN+? What's the long-term vision for ESPN, ESPN2, and ABC? There's a lot of questions that need to be answered if you're a premier property partner, which is what we are. I was gonna ask you what the answers were to all those questions 'cause those are the questions. I mean, what do you think of the streaming sports JV and the ESPN Flagship opportunity? 'Cause I, you know, you talked to a lot of investors, and I know you will today. There's a lot of concern that, you know, frankly, if you like sports, you have the bundle, and if you don't, you don't, and that's kinda the world we're in. So there really isn't that much of an opportunity. What do you think? Yeah. Look, here's what I would say. I'm not; it's not a criticism. But I think, like, this WBD, ESPN combination with Fox, you know, is a big nothing. That's what it is. It's just another bundle out there, right? Like, who's gonna go pay $40, $50, $60, depending on what you believe, to get half the NFL package? Right. That doesn't solve it. So now I'm at home. And by the way, I'm still a DirecTV user. I got cable. I have all the apps. Like, I'm as inefficient as you can be. Right. Because I just wanna make sure when I wanna see Caitlin Clark and Iowa women's basketball team playing, I actually have it, and I never know where it's gonna be, so you're not gonna get one-stop shopping. You're gonna be missing a lot of stuff that's on NBC and CBS, so why would I get it? I might get it in addition, but it's an expensive in addition. So the idea that, like, oh, this is coming out and, you know, folks were going crazy about what? It's another bundle. Yes, it's got a lot more there on one package, but it's not the end-all, be-all, and frankly, for Disney, it's just moving money. If I'm gonna get that. Right. I'm probably not gonna go get ESPN Flagship when that comes out, or if I'm gonna get ESPN Flagship, I won't necessarily need to get that big bundle for Lachlan. So, you know, there's a lot being made out of it, and then, on top of it, five, six million homes in five years, which, you know, Lachlan told you the other day. I mean, really? What are we talking about? Right, right, right. Yeah. No, I, I hear you. You mentioned this before. I mean, ESPN+ and the UFC have sort of had this really nice growth trajectory over the last several years. Do you have a view of what happens to ESPN+ as we think about it today when ESPN Flagship launches? I mean, are those, those products sort of come together? And how does that impact your UFC deal? Yeah. Look, it's interesting. You read Nelson Peltz's white paper, and very interesting read, by the way. Long read, but interesting read, and obviously, his position is, you know, you can't do flagship. You can't do direct consumer. It'll kill ESPN+. Look, ESPN direct to consumer is the smartest thing ever. They absolutely should do it. They're going to get critical mass. And by the way, they're going to need premier properties to do that. Period. You're, if you're gonna get ESPN direct to consumer, you gotta believe I am getting the best of the best stuff that I necessarily can't get elsewhere, which, by the way, that's where we come into play. Yeah. ESPN+ grew from four million to whatever, 26 million because the anchor tenant is the UFC. Make no bones about it. And we're one of the only sports that is flexible enough to play in all these places and actually give you proprietary content you can't get elsewhere that you could potentially just get on ESPN Flagship. So I think they keep it all. There's definitely a place for ESPN+. They've got a lot of subs there. They've got a lot of programming. They've got a lot of secondary and tertiary sports. They've got a lot of library programming. You need that platform, frankly. Right. And you're off to the races already. So keep that puppy going. And then get ESPN Flagship going with just premier live stuff. Right. Maybe more First Take with Stephen A. Smith, who, full disclosure, we represent. Right. You know, maybe more Pardon the Interruption with Mike Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser. Like, give them the stuff they really, really want and they're willing to pay extra for. Yeah. And, you know, Disney's not stupid. They're, they'll make it work. And, by the way, they have the best portfolio of content. Nobody even close. Right, right. How does Dana feel about maybe expanding the calendar to more than 42 fights, more than 13 pay-per-views? Or are there other ways to give ESPN or your other potential partners more value? Yeah. Dana's the greatest. I mean, he really is. He's the greatest marketer. He's the greatest promoter. You know, he's always on. His life is the UFC. Obviously, he's got, he's building some other businesses now. But he is knee-deep in matchmaking and the Sphere. Like, it wasn't even a discussion. Like, we're going to Sphere, and we're gonna be the first sport. You know, and Dolan was like, "Well, we don't know that we can fit you in. And we don't know that, like, our venue is set up to hold a sport. We're doing it. We're gonna make it work." Okay, great. And then it was, you know, all this excitement. And when we have a fight there, I don't care who's fighting. It's going to be a spectacle. Right. And so when we talked to Dana about maybe adding a. Remember last year we had 13. Yeah, yeah. And this year we had 12. In a new deal, the answer is yes. We have the capability to do more pay-per-view. We have the capability to do more Fight Nights. And we're going to, you know, explore all that. Frankly, the Dana White's Contender Series, which is on ESPN, that's actually picking up some great traction. In the way The Ultimate Fighter used to be on Spike. So I think that's something we can toggle with as well. But we're gonna look to probably expand our content portfolio, live content portfolio, in order to maximize dollars in the marketplace. Mark, let's shift a little bit. I wanna ask about sponsorships. You're up to $200 million of sponsorship, revenue at the UFC. Is there a way for you to frame for us how what the opportunity is from here, how much more inventory you can create or verticals that you're not monetizing today? Yeah. Several categories we're not monetizing yet, QSR being one of them. Had plenty of conversations. For one reason or another, we're not finding the right marketing partner, the right brand, or the right dollars, right? It's a combination. We don't just want dollars. We need, we need marketing partners. Right. We need folks that are going to activate our brand, you know, across America to start with. And, so there's definitely more we can get from UFC. But the fact that, you know, we bought UFC, they were doing what, $30 million-$40 million. Yeah. Of sponsorship. And we're now at 200, you know, pinch me on that. We've got an amazing team led by Grant Norris-Jones, and Lou Koskovolis. And they are now fronting a best-in-class unified team with WWE that we just started in January. So we're just out of the gates. In fact, we haven't even made a pitch yet. On a combined sale. But think about it. And I'm not criticizing Vince McMahon. The WWE didn't activate and didn't do a lot of branding inside the arena. In fact, the canvas was blank. Right. Ours is arguably too muddy, but theirs is dead empty, and so, you know, we're gonna go to town on sponsorship. I think that, well, I'd like to help you model it. What does that turn out to be? It's still early going here. I think that the same $30 million to $200 million we did for UFC, we can do on the WWE side in roughly the same amount of time. Got it. Or maybe better 'cause we have a best-in-class organization going. But, you know, we're closing deals every week on the UFC, which is exciting. And we have a lot of work to do on WWE right now. Yeah. We're gonna get to WWE next, but just one more topic on the UFC, and these are sort of tying. Sure. A few things together that you've been asked about for, you know, all the years you guys have been public at Endeavor as well. You have incredibly enviable margins at the UFC, which, of course, the market looks at as saying, "Oh, that they're over-earning," right? That's the thanks you get for having 60% EBITDA margins. Can you talk a little bit about competition for fighters, which you did mention before? It would be great if you can also address the class action suits that are, you know, around the business and one of the trials set to start in April. So let's start just on the margins front. You know, that's only going to grow. Yeah. Because sponsorship's gonna go north. Site fees are significant. We have the majority of our fights aren't getting site fees. We just started getting into this business, if you will. And that's high margin and high visible. That's gonna drive the margin. Our ticket pricing, our dynamic ticket pricing, we're setting records everywhere you go. Every week we're putting on a press release, new record, which my follow-up to that, to Pete Dropick, who manages that for us, is, "You're not charging enough. Right. Tell me a day when we're actually at 97% capacity. So we're gonna get more there. And that margin's just gonna keep going. Plus the new media deals and our international media deals, which a third are rolling off every single year. So that margin just on the UFC is gonna keep driving. Now, if you think of the combined TKO, and I'm sorry, I'm. Yeah. I'm taking this maybe in another direction, but we're in excess of 50%. Keep in mind our year this year, we have one less UFC fight pay-per-view. And we have a fourth quarter with no rights fee for the WWE. If you put those two together, that's $100 million that just goes back in. So our, our cash flow is going to get, our revenue top line's going to get significantly higher, right? Yeah. That growth would be better. And on the cash flow side of things, we had a couple of advertising deals for 2024 that hit in December. And we had a one-time for the WWE headquarters, some CapEx that will be gone. So that's another, you know, roughly $100 million. So we're gonna be, when this thing starts rolling in 2025, we're gonna be in excess of 60% for the combined TKO. So this is, this is a continued growth story. In terms of the stable of fighters, look, it's competition's great. We welcome it. It's strong. And they're coming at us from all ends. We're seeing it everywhere. They want our fighters. They want what the UFC brand stands for. Hell, they'd buy Dana White if they could, but we're gonna be competitive. We're still paying our fighters more than anybody else. And we're giving them touches to more of the revenue streams. So they're getting a piece of the consumer product. They're getting a piece of the sponsorship. These, if you're winning on the UFC, you're gonna be making more and more money. And you're making great money as it is. Yeah. And then, as far as the antitrust goes, look, I would just tell you that we believe in the merit of the case strongly. Our trial's in April, we have every intention of going through with that. We feel very confident about where we stand. But on a parallel track, as you'd see in kind of any case of this nature, we are in mediation with the other side. And we'll see what happens. So, I don't wanna put words in your mouth, Mark, but it sounds like what you're saying is with the revenue growth you have ahead of you, even with all the competition for your talent, you can pay fighters, retain the best fighters, and grow margins at the same time, irrespective of these competitions. Absolutely. And you know what? We don't wanna lose fighters. By the way, there's no one fighter that you know, makes or breaks the UFC. It's just a fact. It's not a slam. We have an incredible stable. We respect them, and we spend a lot of money on these performance centers where our fighters can come to these cities and train and eat for free, right? I mean, we have hundreds of fighters coming in every week getting physical therapy in Las Vegas for nothing. That's just part of getting them back into the octagon. That's part of the deal. We have to support them, so we will continue to spend. We will continue to be the leader in spending on wages and incentives for our fighters, and yes, we believe that when it, you know, comes to the competition, we have to continue to be innovative. Yeah. Or else you're gonna fall back. We take nothing for granted. Nothing for granted. Okay. Let's shift to WWE. I mean, the biggest focus on the business, I think, is still in 2025, but the PLE, the premium live events opportunity. So that is on Peacock in the U.S. today. Now that you own the asset, you've sort of seen the data, are you excited about the opportunity to reprice that business? How do you think it fits into sort of the sports landscape that's pretty dynamic? Look, that's underpriced. And everybody likes to talk about the Disney UFC deal being underpriced. But that's either neither here nor there. The PLE's not underpriced 'cause a bad deal was cut. A great deal was cut. And then the market catches up. That's just what happens. New deals get cut. But these are essentially pay-per-views that are once a month. Obviously, now you just get them on the WWE Network that are massively performing. For NBC. Massively performing. I think higher than their expectations. Certainly way higher than what Steve Burke envisioned when he greenlit this. So there is insatiable demand for the PLEs. When that window becomes available in 2026. But we are loyal to NBC and Peacock. We do think they've been a great partner. They know how to market the WWE. It's become appointment viewing for their platforms and their viewers. We like the neighborhood around us, meaning the Premier League. Yeah. Supercross, etc. And, you know, we'll look to renew with them. But I would tell you that, this'll be one, you know, hotly contested property. Just knowing Netflix and watching how they operate, they like global rights. That's not a comment per se, just on WWE, but in general. Why wouldn't we want to expect them to look hard at, at it? 'Cause they have these, they have this content outside the United States starting next year. I'll tell you this. When we met with Netflix, when we met with Apple, when we met with other streaming platforms, the conversation always started with, "When are the PLEs up? Oh, when you met on Raw. Yeah. When we met on Raw. Always started with that. We're like, "We're not here to talk about the PLEs." We are in the sense that it's part of the narrative, right? I mean, if you watch Raw and SmackDown, the things lead in and out of, they weave in and out of these PLEs. So it's an important part of the narrative. Right. Concept and continuum to your point. So why would Netflix be there? Look, let's just, let's just get out of the gate with Raw strong, right? We have time. Let's see how that partnership goes. Let's see that that marketing really delivers. Let's see that the viewership shows up. Let's see that we're monetizing it from a sponsorship, consumer product, site fee standpoint. And then we'll talk about, you know, where it goes if it doesn't go back to NBC, Peacock. We're patient. And I think that has bode well for us. You know, we had a lot of pressure when we announced the SmackDown deal. And you and I had conversations about that. The market was freaking out. You know, Raw, NXT, why didn't they announce it? They don't have anybody. There's no demand. They're not gonna get the 1.4 increase. There was, and I'm not saying that to be a, "Hey, we did it, you know, look at us now." There was pressure, right? Yeah. Yeah. But we said from the beginning we're going to be patient and it's going to work in our favor. And it over-delivered on our expectations. Never did I think Netflix was coming in, just to be clear. Not in my wildest dreams did I think Netflix was coming in. And when we first started talking to Netflix, it was frankly about NXT. It wasn't even about Raw. And then that just turned into a bigger conversation. And then the Raw conversation became a global conversation. So, you know, I think they certainly have the wherewithal to do more. I think they have an appetite to do more. But let's walk before we run. Okay. That makes sense. That's quite the upsell from NXT to global almost everything. I give the credit to Andrew Schleimer and Nick Khan, who are in the room kinda back and forth. 'Cause Netflix, everybody thinks they just spent a lot of money. They are terrific negotiators. Right. And they are smart. And And they are bright. And they don't leave a kernel on the table. That could be a little side, like a series like Drive to Survive where they're watching the negotiators. Oh. No, I wouldn't even go to it. I call me in the breaks. Okay. Cause this is gonna be bloody. Okay. Let me ask you about, you already sort of talked about sponsorship at WWE. What about live events? You know, that's coming out of the pandemic. Live events sort of went down. They came back up at WWE. How are you, Nick and the team thinking about the right live event schedule for WWE? And what's the opportunity to maybe do more with UFC? As you know, we just a couple weeks ago did a combo i n Anaheim. How'd that go? Which was terrific. Just, I'm focused on the cost structure too. So, like, okay, if we go to the same city on the same weekend, how can we cut costs? Production, trucks, bandwidth in the old days, satellite time, labor, tape machines, you know, bundling ticket pricing on the revenue side, obviously local and municipality monies to get us to come, rent. Like, where can we squeeze and make this equation a big winner on the top line and on the cost structure? And it was a great, a great test, if you will. We signed a long-term deal. Oh, that. We're going to look to further that as we proceed. Plus, you gotta love the fact we had WWE fighters coming to the UFC fight, making noise, and UFC or WWE superstars going to the UFC fights, making noise. We had UFC fighters, you know, going to the WWE events and making noise. I mean, it was unplanned synergy. Really, it was spontaneous. It was a great story for us. We're going to look to replicate that. But those'll be select. Right. For the most part, especially in 2024 and a little bit of 2025, we've already calendared this out. We already have commitments to certain arenas, etc., that we just can't break out of. That's a long-term play for us. It'll, it'll help us on both sides. We're, I would say we're keenly, keenly focused on it. That's helpful. And you mentioned site fees a few times. Is that an opportunity at WWE and the UFC? And as you think about site fees, often that's sort of international events. The time zones aren't great for. Yeah. U.S. broadcast. Is that something you have to balance? Absolutely. But there's, as long as there's demand for your product, folks will work the local governments to come up with dollars to get you there, to get their hotel rooms booked, to get people in their restaurants, to get the foot traffic in their cities. And there is great demand for that, as evidence why we're getting, you know, paid a nice sum to go to Saudi Arabia with UFC on the heels of the WWE, of course, having their deal. We have an amazing partnership with Abu Dhabi and DCT that's expanding every day, not just in Abu Dhabi, but now partnering with them to look for more countries to bring the UFC, in tandem. So the site fees are there. This actually isn't a tough business. You know, we'll be aggressive to make sure we kinda get our share, if you will. Okay. In the time we have left, I wanna talk a bit about your balance sheet, capital allocation. You talked about free cash flow conversion. So on your earnings call, Mark, you and the team talked about the fact you believe the business can support up to three times leverage. Yes. You're obviously below that today. I think in the near term, you will delever. So can you talk a little bit about what went into the decision to sort of set that kinda leverage comfort range, but also why deleveraging near term makes sense? Look, I think we're gonna deleverage just naturally by our performance. The cash we're going to generate, especially from a net debt perspective. I think, look, the topic, which is top of mind, is really, you know, what are you gonna do with all that cash? Why haven't you announced the capital return program? You know, are there reasons that we don't know about that you're look, let's go generate the cash first, right? I mean, we closed this deal in September. You know, we're infants when it comes to this merger. So I think what we said on the call is, you know, what I'm gonna stick to today, which is we're going to be prudent with our cash. We're gonna generate our cash. We're gonna be extremely careful and deliberate and strategic about the way we ultimately spend that cash. We are absolutely focused in the long term on a capital return program that is robust and sustainable and consistent, and that should be music to the ears of our long-term investors, whether that's a dividend, whether that's a share buyback program, whether that's just in the form of continuing to kinda bring our leverage down. As you recall, Vince McMahon believed in no debt and had no debt on WWE. We're not there. We're gonna carry leverage, obviously. But we guided to the fact that we'd like to, you know, remain under that three times, if you will. You know, it's gonna be a good place to be in terms of M&A. Very high bar. Very high bar for us right now for us to look at something or think about going anywhere. We're more focused on what we can do organically and internally with investments that have significant ROI tied to it. Got it. Mark, are you able to comment as to whether TKO participated in the Vince McMahon's recently announced share sale? Yes. We did not participate in the recent sale on Vince McMahon's, you know, load that he dropped off. This is now his second time. He's gone from 28 million shares to 15 million shares. He now roughly has 8.5%. We're not in conversations with Vince. We don't, I said this on the call, we don't talk to him. We don't have conversations. We don't know his motives, his plans, his timelines, what if any. He doesn't consult with us. You know, he doesn't work for the company. He doesn't work at the company. He doesn't come into the offices of the company. And he's not coming back to the company. That's where we sit. That's pretty clear. We've been talking to investors quite a bit about your corporate structure. It's pretty unique with, I think, a Double Up-C, which is fun to say, but very hard to explain. Is this the right long-term structure for the company in your view? Would you like to see, is there a natural way to evolve this over the longer term to something more, I don't know, standard, for lack of a better term? No. Okay. No. I mean, we're comfortable with where we are. You know, obviously a lot of time, thought, energy, strategy, and, and mapping went into this plan. Look, we're focused on, on doing what we said from the get-go. We've run this playbook before with UFC. We're gonna run it with WWE. And, oh yeah, we're gonna have the benefit of having the UFC while we do it, which we didn't have in other sports leagues at the time when we made the UFC such a success. So, different audiences, by the way, both have strong female bases, frankly, 40%. I mean, it's pretty significant. WWE tends to have more kids at their events, and we're going to make sure that we maximize the monetization opportunities 'cause we are under-monetized. So it's, we're focused on those site fees. We're focused on selling more sponsorship and partnerships. We're focusing on the consumer products. We're focused on dynamic ticket pricing, which we just started at WWE. They weren't even doing at the time. We're focused on these media renewals. UFC coming up before you know it. PLE's right behind it, and we intend to make some noise with that. Well, that's great. Thank you, Mark. Anything you wanna highlight for WrestleMania, which is, I think, the road to WrestleMania's approaching like less than a month out? Yeah. These, look, these, I'm actually pleasantly surprised at how much noise Elimination Chamber and Royal Rumble, I mean, these, these PLEs make a lot of noise. Our event coming up in April is gonna be heavily attended. You're gonna see a little WME influence there 'cause we've got a lot of celebs coming. We got a lot of partners that are coming, a lot of, you know, folks that are invested in one or two of the different sports properties. Our ticket sales are off the charts and went fast. We're in a stadium. I mean, enough said right there. And our sponsorship sales for just that event, I'd frankly not like to do that in the future. We wanna bundle and package. But those are going extremely well on that front. And the event we're launching with Michael Rubin with Fanatics beforehand, sort of a W, I think they're calling it WWE World, which is a fan experience, hot cakes and tickets, and more spending opportunities as you go. I mean, it's really turned into sort of a festival. And I think that's a blueprint for what we can do going forward, not just on the WWE side, but on the UFC side. We festivalize UFC a little bit, music. Obviously, we have the weigh-ins. You know, we do a lot to make it a weekend. But I think partnering with Rubin on the Fanatics side with collectibles and merch and celebrity appearances and meet and greets and music, you know, that could turn into a hell of a roadshow. Absolutely. Mark, anything you wanna wrap up with as we finish our conversation and leave this room and audience on TKO's outlook? Yeah. No. No. I appreciate, you know, I'd like to see you be a little more bullish in your reports, now that you've seen this, but. Right. Right. Let's, you know, let's. You know, I asked one question too many. No, no. I would just tell you, look, you're talking about a company that doesn't spend much in CapEx, right? Yeah. You know, doesn't have much debt and dropping. The free cash flow is enviable from any other company. And we're in the space that matters. Whether you're watching on old screens or new screens, sports is where it's at. Music's strong too, by the way. But sports is where it's at. You can't get away from it. It's live. I mean, what that Caitlin Clark coming back to that women's basketball game is like the second highest viewed basketball game in college basketball of the year, men or women. The highest women's viewership in 25 years. Travis Scott's flying out to Iowa City to be there. We rep him, full disclosure. Like, this is, this is incredible. Like, sports is just hot and getting hotter. And we sit at the epicenter with one of the majors in the UFC and WWE, which gets to double down as a sports and an entertainment property. So we're not, we're not arrogant about it. We're not overconfident. We are prudent. We are flexible. We are patient. And we are all about overdelivering. And I thank you for your time today. Thanks, everybody. Thanks, Mark.