To the conference this year, Mark Shapiro. Mark is the President and COO of TKO Holdings. Mark, great to see you. Great to be here, Ben, with you. Thanks for being here. In particular. Everything okay with the mic? No, you know, a little better dressing. In my ESPN days, we really dressed that mic a little better. Okay. We've got to get some extra support back there. We'll work on that for next year. So we're about, what, 15 months into the life of TKO Group Holdings, plus or minus, merging the UFC and WWE. Why don't you take a step back and just talk about how the business has performed versus planned and where you see the biggest opportunity to drive value from here? Yeah, I'll tell you, when we set up here a year ago, same place, same Bat- channel. Smaller room. Yes, it was a smaller room. We've reached the main stage here. Right. I would tell you that our conviction for the industrial logic behind this merger has only grown with the way the narrative has taken hold in the marketplace and also given the acquisition of the Endeavor assets in IMG and On Location and PBR, them coming over. So that's first off. We're coming off 2024 where we've just announced record revenue and record adjusted EBITDA. Our balance sheet is strong. Our net debt is sitting at $1.8 billion. We have significant free cash flow. We are looking at EBITDA margins at 46%. It's to the midpoint of our guidance. Our free cash flow conversion, if you subtract out the one-time payment for the UFC lawsuit and the fees we're paying on the Endeavor assets acquisition, our free cash flow conversion sits normalized at 60%. So we're feeling good there. We have a capital return program that's just taking shape. We will spend $2 billion in the next three to four years buying back shares. Our dividend program actually launches on March 31st, and that's $75 million a quarter. So, sitting good there as you look at the financial profile. At the same time, the experience economy remains strong. Our KPIs are trending in the right direction. The value of media rights, sports in particular, premium content, sports premium content has never been higher. From a live event standpoint, just extraordinary revenue growth last year that drops to the bottom line in a very high-margin way. At the same time, we're seeing strong attendance. We're seeing pricing power. We're seeing site fees. And then you look to 2025, and we've got a UFC renewal in front of us that we feel very, very good about. I mentioned the capital return program. We've got integration savings still to get our arms around. We hit our number of $100 million net savings bringing UFC and WWE together. We think there's more there. And then, of course, there's more with the acquisition of the Endeavor assets. So all in all, it's a profile we're excited about. We're optimistic, but we've still got a lot of wood to chop. Early days. Yep. So this conference over the years, one of the big themes has always been the movement of sports to streaming and Netflix in particular. Will they, won't they? Yeah. You guys are on Netflix, I guess, what started early January with Raw and around the world. I know it's early, but can you tell us anything about the impact that distribution model is having on your WWE franchise? Yeah, great question because it's obviously front and center for us. We may have gotten out of the gates in a strong way, but this is a long deal. Look, this is a transformative deal any way you look at it. $5.2 billion, 10 years for Raw on Netflix in a deal that everybody said would never get done because Netflix won't go into sports or even quasi-sports. So in that way, it's strong. It's strong. It's highly visible and stable revenue. It's high-margin revenue. You're talking about a platform that really at this point has no equal. They're in over 300 million subs worldwide. And so far, to your point, strong returns. When you look at views, which is the way to measure this, the most analogous way with Nielsen, we're up 13% year to date versus USA last year. That doesn't include the premiere, the big spectacle that you mentioned at the Intuit Dome. If you include the premiere, which some do, we're up 38%. But what I've really seen excited about, and I know that Perry Sook and Nexstar are also sitting on stage here with you, it's really affected the rest of the lineup the rest of the week. It's trickled. So Tuesday night is NXT. And NXT has now, as you know, moved to CW. And NXT is up 22% year to date over last year. So that has turned out to be a good move for us. And I would just tell you that Netflix is a marketing powerhouse. Just pick your poison. Whether it's the second season launch of Squid Game, it's the NFL Christmas Day games, it's the Mike Tyson, Jake Paul fight. When they want to create a spectacle, a must-see global event, they really have no peer. Yeah. We'll talk more about the Netflix relationship in more detail in a minute. You mentioned before the Endeavor acquisition. So I guess that closed. So now you own the businesses, I think as of what, late last week? Yes. $3.25 billion. What's the opportunity ahead for these businesses? And why does it make sense to own these along with the UFC and WWE? How does it all fit together? Yeah, look, it sits and fits right into our wheelhouse. I mean, first of all, it cements our position, our thesis, our objective, our mandate, which is for TKO to be pure-play sports. When Endeavor ultimately goes private, Endeavor will be a pure-play representation private company. TKO will be pure-play sports. Period. That's where we want to sit. So it really serves as the foundation for that. It fits strategically right into that conversation. It's also going to be value accretive, which is important. And it underscores our MMA strategy. I mean, when Ari and Andrew Schleimer and myself are looking at opportunities, we want to be disciplined. We want to be selective, but we want to be opportunistic. We talked about where our balance sheet is. And at 1.8 net debt, we probably have room to go to three times and still be comfortable. We're significantly free cash flow positive, as we've talked about, so we have room, but we need to be prudent, and it fits right into that strategy of being disciplined yet being opportunistic. These are industry-leading assets. All of them by themselves are industry-leading assets, and I'll give you at least one line on each of them in a second, but that in and of itself is a good winner and a good story, but truly, they power the turbo engines that are WWE and UFC, so you name it, live events, global sponsorships, consumer products and licensing, site fees, and of course, media rights. It plays right into it. IMG is by far renowned and known as the global leader in media rights distribution. They have 150 properties that they service year-round around the globe, and that includes, by the way, the UFC. So having them really inside our tent with their capabilities in negotiating, their leverage, their scale, their expertise, their relations, their relationships, their market intelligence, and by the way, they're pioneers when it comes to sports production. Huge for us. On Location, of course, is the industry leader in sports premium hospitality and live experiences from the Super Bowl to the Olympics to the World Cup. And they're doing gangbusters already this year with WWE and UFC. So that makes sense. And PBR, while smaller and certainly niche, it's a Western lifestyle. It's just adding another league, very similar to UFC and WWE. So we're excited about these assets. And at the same time, I'll remind you, we know these assets very well. We've been undercover with these assets because they've been part of the Endeavor umbrella for so long. Even if you don't buy all that, keep in mind, 85%-90% of our adjusted EBITDA annually will still be the turbo engines that are the UFC and WWE. Probably the biggest, I think, proof point on the On Location side will be the L.A. Olympics. I just wanted to ask you if your expectation is bullish and that that's going to go on as originally planned? Because obviously, with all the fires, there was definitely some concern that maybe it would have to be altered. Yeah, I would tell you that I think LA is going to be out of control good for a number of reasons. One, I think it's going to be the LA is back. I mean, they've got time to rebuild, and it's going to be a coming-out party sort of at the other end of the spectrum from where the Oscars were last night when they celebrated LA and the pageantry and the history and, of course, encourage folks to give back and support the rebuild. But at the same time, President Trump is going to walk out of office with the trophy that is the LA Olympics. That I did it, I brought it back, I was behind it, I put the resources to support. He'll be sitting front and center. I'm a true believer that this will be his Olympics as much as anything else. So when we look at Milan, which is just a year away, we've actually already gone on sales to go to onlocation.com if you want to buy some packages for the Milan Olympics. But between Milan and LA, we're forecasting to do $2 billion in revenue and $130 million in adjusted EBITDA. So it'll be a good story. More importantly, I think what Paris did for us, and Paris was a challenge because the French are always a challenge. I would tell you that it really was proof is in the pudding. It gave us the credentials. We got a lot of learnings out of it. It was a very successful Olympics from their standpoint. And our reputation was really certified with that Olympics. And it allowed us to then win the World Cup. I truly don't believe we would have won the World Cup in LA or extended our NFL Super Bowl deal without doing so well critically in the Paris Olympics. I feel like I want to ask you about the French and the Trump Olympics, but I'm going to move on to my next question. Did I trademark that? Where's the IMG licensing when you need it? Exactly. Last sort of maybe consolidated question. We'll dive into the segments a little bit. So site fees is an area you guys have been very excited about. Some of the other global sports have made a significant amount of money in the site fee opportunity. Can you size that for us? Maybe just help the audience think about what's allowing you guys to view that as a real growth opportunity? Yeah, look, we don't give out specifics, as you know, in terms of guidance on the site fees. But here's the way you want to look at it. It's very much an F1 strategy just on steroids. We have, if you want to look at it with the UFC and WWE, we have 24 marquee events a year. So on the UFC side, it's a monthly pay-per-view. On the WWE side, they were pay-per-views, but since the sale to Peacock, they're called premium live events, PLEs. Now, of those 24, four of them are in the Middle East and they're spoken for. So that leaves the other 20 to sell. Now, once you get, and right now, we sell roughly about a third of our inventory. Once you get past selling those 20, and they're big events. I mean, Elimination Chamber was a monster win for us this past weekend at WWE. Our numbers were up 40% versus two years earlier in Canada. You can't compare to Perth because it was in the morning, but so we're seeing uptake everywhere. Ticket sales, viewership, kind of you name it. What I would tell you is once you get past selling those 20 and the ratings and the ticket sales are creating real demand for these events, well, then you get into selling Raw every Monday night and SmackDown every Friday night and NXT every Tuesday night. Of course, you've got 30 UFC fight nights that are not the numbered events. So you've got a lot of volume. Over the next one to four years, there's a lot of opportunity. Now, are they all getting the big numbers of the PLEs or the pay-per-views? No. But nonetheless, we'll get fees for them. And I think there's no better example than the announcement we put out last week, which kind of proves the model of the acquisition of the Endeavor assets right out of the gate, which is at the end of February, I think February 26th it is. We're going to Kansas City. And on Thursday night, you're getting the PBR. And on Saturday night, you're getting the UFC. And on Monday night, you're getting Raw. It's a trifecta. We've already sold the presenting sponsor in VeChain, which is in the crypto space. And we will have really a festival all weekend. You have weigh-ins. You have athlete and superstar signings and appearances. You'll have a fan experience. We can come into these cities, make a lot of hay, a lot of entertainment, sports, impact, bring some real names to these cities. At the end of the day, that's worth a lot of economic contribution when you look across not just this country, but international. I'll tell you, live events as part of the KPIs really never been hotter. Experience economy really, really strong. More importantly, the geographies, the DMAs, the local municipalities, they see it and they want it. So, Mark, as you know, the number one focus in the market today is your UFC domestic rights renewal. You're in the last year of an ESPN deal that goes back to 2019. It's a pretty unique structure. ESPN Plus, ESPN, some ABC pay-per-view model. Can you just talk maybe big picture about first your goals in this renewal and how you think about maximizing reach and kind of building the UFC and maximizing revenue because there can be trade-offs in those things as you approach it? No, we should add you to our strategy team because that's exactly the way we look at it. You're balancing the two, and by the way, I've been doing this for 25 years, and when I was running programming at ESPN, it was a similar strategy. You want to get the NFL because it's going to bring in big ratings. It's going to bring in big advertisers. It's going to keep subs, meaning retain them. It's the antidote to churn, but it's also going to get sign-ups at the time for cable, but at the same time, you want to keep other sports or produce documentaries or films that maybe aren't going to bring the same kind of ratings or drive the same kind of sign-ups or necessarily be there for retention, but will embolden the brand, and when it comes to the UFC, that's what we balance every day. In fact, our margin, our adjusted EBITDA margin could be higher if we decided to do less international events, maybe even less domestic touring events of our UFC events and do them at the APEX in Las Vegas where we own the arena, and when you're watching on TV, you can't tell if you're in a stadium or an arena or you're at the small APEX, which we have in a small but mighty APEX, which we have in Las Vegas, but look, our job is to grow the brand. This is a nascent sport. It's mainstream now, but it's nascent. It's early days. It's turned into a major, but when you compare it to MLB, which has been around 100 years, and NFL, which has been around 100 years, we have a long way to go here. So we have to balance reach, engagement, brand strength with dollars, which of course, most folks in this room are more focused on. But we're playing a long game here. And that's how we kind of size up our negotiation and the different suitors that are out there. Because there are some folks, some platforms, some channels that would pay more but aren't necessarily the best fit for our brand. At the end of the day, we have to live for the next deal. So we have to grow this, grow our audience, monetize our audience, but make sure we are in the most competitive position so that when this deal is up, seven years from now, five years from now, 10 years from now, likely when myself or Ari are long gone, we're set up for success with the next group, the next level. I'll definitely get beat up if I don't at least ask you this question. I'm going to ask it anyway. The press has reported you guys are looking for over $1 billion of annual average value. Don't look surprised from your new deal. I'm just wondering if there's a message you'd like to provide to the market around where their expectations should be around AAV in terms or any comment you'd want to provide on that front. No, look, all I would say on this, and this isn't so folks can get hot under the collar or get cold or take it as he's encouraged, he's optimistic, but he's not bullish. You don't have to read between the lines here. It's simple. Of course, we're going to maximize value. Of course, we think we're undervalued, not because we did a bad deal, because seven years is a long time and the decks shuffle. But I think that name your analyst, including yourself, there's a lot out there that we went from 1.5 to 1.6 to 1.7 to 1.8 to 1.9. All of a sudden, it's like 2.2 with no basis. And I'm not saying we're not going to get two times, whatever it might be. But that's generally just word of mouth. That's not coming from the company. I think people are just looking at various other leagues and thinking, well, UFC is hot and growing and diverse and young and half our audience is 18 to 34 and we're full year round, right? We have no off season. We're taking place every single weekend. And we're growing globally. We're in 170 countries with huge opportunities still for growth. Europe, LATAM, APAC, MENA, all huge areas of opportunistic growth. And they're just thinking the sky's unlimited here. These guys can go to outer space. But they're also balancing that with reading about MLB and reading about F1. And so look, I would just tell you there's no early-inning information. We cherish our relationship with ESPN and Disney. By the way, they have a lot to do with our success and our growth. And we're in our window. We're trying to figure out a way with them to renew. We may or may not come out of the window. We'll see what happens. Does it make sense to continue to have a pay-per-view model? Does it still work in your mind? Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, certainly life has changed on the pay-per-view front in the old days of obviously the cable consortium and DirecTV being such a place for pay-per-view. Look, it works for us. But we are super flexible. Linear, broadcast, streaming, pay-per-view, not pay-per-view. Remember, we own Fight Pass, which is our own proprietary platform. It's for the super combat sports fan. A lot of MMA and wrestling and jiu-jitsu and karate. And it's a strong platform unto itself. And we charge a monthly and an annual fee. We like having it to ourselves. We like the proprietary nature of it. But like you saw with the WWE Network years ago with Vince McMahon, if it makes sense to fold it in as part of a deal, we're open to that too. So it's early stages. We want to be a good partner. We want to listen to everyone. We want to be prudent. We want to be patient. But we definitely want to explore so that we can bring our audience, our athletes, our fans, and our shareholders a maximized deal. Makes sense. Sponsorship has been a really nice story for the company overall. I did want to ask you about TKO and sort of the Monster Energy announcement that we just heard about. Are there still categories out there for the UFC in particular that you haven't monetized yet? Yeah, it's interesting. We're in the area of financial services. Is there somebody here I can talk to about that? In the area of auto, even some more QSR. We're doing well there as of late, but certainly more that we can do there. Insurance. We really have holes or voids to fill on both WWE and UFC. But you'll see some announcements really in the next two weeks on some deals. We're just literally crossing T's and dotting I's that I think will really raise some eyebrows. I mean, we're having great success. The fact that we have an integrated team out there selling the two of these and now adding PBR is incredible. Because I'll tell you, the WWE audience is more analogous to the PBR audience than it is the UFC audience. So it really puts us in a position where, especially with UFC and WWE, where we have premium and volume. And I will just tell you historically, especially with my history at ESPN, that's a unicorn. That's usually an oxymoron, premium and volume. That's historically been reserved for NBA. It's been reserved for college football. But beyond that, you don't usually have the two combining. And that's really what UFC is, another reason why we feel so strongly about the renewal and the number and level of suitors. But we play it the same way with the advertisers. Big events, premium events. Yet at the same time, if you're looking to just get CPMs and get eyeballs and run of shelf, we can do that for you too. Keep in mind, we did last year, if you take out our one Sphere event at the UFC, we did about $314 million in global partnerships or sponsorships as you refer to them. And we put out guidance for $375 million this year. So we're growing at 20% plus. And that kind of fits right into our site fee, attendance, ticket sales, pricing power, live event bucket. Yep. All right, let's talk about WWE. I want to ask you about John Cena turning heel, but we don't have enough time for that. That was huge. What a great event! I assume Netflix had that in the contract. Yeah. But I'll tell you this though. When you're front page on the ESPN app, you're above the fold with that video of The Rock and Cena and Cody. You're now making more of a cultural impact than you had historically, especially when it's a competitor that carries the event. So I was excited to see that. I mean, Paul Levesque, Paul and his creative team are second to none. And you'll be amazed at the surprises that are about to come your way at WrestleMania in Las Vegas. Yeah. It feels like this is going to help. I wanted to ask, you and I have talked about the PLEs for a while. And you've always been very bullish on the opportunity there. I'm just wondering if you could compare the PLE opportunity to what we just talked about with the UFC and what you make of Comcast spinning out USA Network as part of their spinoff. And does that impact, you think, their interest and the opportunity for you guys? No, I think we will get into discussions fairly soon in the next quarter with regard to the PLEs. That deal, just for everyone's edification, comes up early to mid-2026. But our conversations on a renewal will start relatively soon. And in speaking with all the powers that be at Comcast in their overture, they are keen to renew. And we're excited to have those conversations. And by the way, Peacock's been a crazy good partner. We have been a huge driver of that platform, both in terms of acquisition and retention. And they're making it a priority. I mean, it's clear with all the original programming they're doing and they're moving and NFL playoff games and just their own words and narrative, that's a big part of their growth plan. And so we're keen to renew with them. But at the same time, it might make sense to move elsewhere if the plan, not just the dollars, makes the best sense for the growth of our brand and the property. Yeah. How do you think about the pros and cons of maybe moving those to Netflix, obviously, if it made sense for you guys? Because when we look at it and knowing Netflix and they'll be here, I think tomorrow, they love global rights, right? That's their business. They have these PLEs everywhere but the U.S. So I have to think they'd want them. But do you think about having one partner globally as maybe not that attractive or less equal? Or how do you think about it? I think you hit it on the head. I think that just like the UFC deal, there's a lot of permutations here. And I think splitting the package with UFC is certainly an option. And it may help you on the reach and engagement. But we've really enjoyed being with one home as long as they can hit the price. And ESPN and Disney have been sensational. And they're, like Netflix, extraordinary marketers. When you look at really 12 events, that's what we're talking about here. It could be anywhere from 12 to 14. And don't forget, we have some NXT PLEs too that sometimes get overlooked. But there's six of those. So when you look at that overall package, it's relatively small. So it makes the most sense to keep it at one place. But again, it all depends on supply and demand. And we'll wait to see how that plays out. Look, I'm not programming Netflix. Bela is. But it makes a lot of sense for them to own it all. I'm not selling or pitching that. That's already out on the street. I think it's one of the reasons that's driving the estimates on what we're going to get in the renewal. But there's a lot of folks that are also following the same strategy as Netflix, which is directly from Ted and Bela. We are looking for big events. We are looking not for regular season, but for big events. And boxing has been a great success story for them. And I think we'll continue to be. Well, that's what these PLEs are. One a month, big events, some bigger than others. Obviously, WrestleMania is. Not all things are created equal with the other 11. But nonetheless, as evidenced this weekend by Elimination Chamber, as evidenced in Indianapolis with Royal Rumble, we can make noise when we want to make noise. And our fans are loyal. That's the most incredible thing about the viewership on Netflix. You can watch those events at any time. It's streaming. It's not linear. You can pause, record, get back to it later. And then see it all on social and bite-size and highlights. None of that matters. They are coming back. They may take a couple of days, but they are coming back. And within seven days, they are watching some or all of those episodes full throttle. And that's very encouraging. I'd have to say the biggest surprise to me in 2024 was just the live event revenue growth that you guys put up. It's 30% across the company, 30% at WWE with fewer events. Have you already optimized that? Or are there still opportunities to grow that business meaningfully from here? Much more to go. Look, WWE has just gotten into the business of dynamic pricing and having dynamic pricing tools. And keep in mind, some of that growth, at least certainly on the margin, is we're generally in the vicinity of going from 300 WWE total events down to 200 because we're doing less non-televised events. There was a time and place where Vince McMahon, to his credit, was growing the property, growing the brand. And he'd be going to different cities that would just bring the show to town and create a lot of noise and buzz and build fandom. And we're past some of that. So we have the ability to cut some of those off, improve our margin, give our superstars a rest. I mean, this is tough stuff. I know everybody talks about the scripted nature of it. But these are athletes and then some in the ring. And giving them a little breather and getting back to a more manageable number. We're already on every Monday, every Tuesday, every Friday, plus the PLEs. So there's plenty to go around. But that's driving some of it. So I'll make it up. If you had an event in, I'll make it up, Des Moines, Iowa, because I went to the University of Iowa, which is not far from there. And now all of a sudden, you don't have it anymore. Well, you know what? Maybe you're going to drive to Chicago to see the event. And that is really the scarcity that is creating demand. And the demand is giving us more pricing power. Any reason why WWE sponsorship revenues over the long term can't keep up with what you've been able to do at UFC? Is there anything structural when you look at the two businesses? There's nothing structural. It's that it's just very analogous to our UFC days, right? When we bought the UFC, I don't know how many years ago. 2016. Better part of a decade almost. They were doing $30 million-$40 million of sponsorship. That's it. It wasn't mainstream. It wasn't A-class brands. And struggling to kind of stay at that number. Well, we really professionalized the team. We brought in some heavy hitters. We got really laser-focused strategically on social and putting that digital content and media into the sponsorship bucket, if you will, retail point of purchase activation, expanding the rights advertisers could get. And lo and behold, that has grown to where it is today and pushing $375 million this year when you include digital and WWE. And by the way, that number will get higher come May when we show the profile of the portfolio, the financial plan of the new era of TKO with our new properties and the PBR in there. So look, the sky's the limit here. I mean, there's real opportunity. We will not be happy until we fill the unsold categories. We've run out of creative ways to use every ounce of inventory you can imagine, and we are playing in a space where the NFL and the NBA are playing. Got it. In the minutes we have left, Mark, I want to talk about capital allocation and sort of your corporate structure. So you mentioned earlier the dividend has been effectively started, I guess, paid out in a couple of weeks. Talk about your framework for returning capital to shareholders and how you think about the leverage appetite for the company. Yeah. Look, I mentioned our net debt's $1.8 billion, and we're comfortable going to $3 billion. We have no plans to do that at the moment, but I'd say that that's where our comfort level sits. Capital return is a priority for the company because it's a priority for our shareholders, and we want to be diversified. We're not here to hoard cash. We know we make a lot of cash. We've asked the investment community to give us time and patience to generate the cash flow that we've spent a lot of time talking about. They've done that, and I think we've proven ourselves to be good stewards of capital. I know Endeavor suffered from that because we were highly acquisitive, and we were moving in a lot of directions, and acquisitions by the month. The puzzle became hard to understand. The model got to be a little convoluted. are definitely [something missing?], we learned our lesson there. We're just more focused here. We want to keep it as a sports pure-play. As I said, we'll be selective. We'll be disciplined. We will be opportunistic. We don't need to pull the trigger if there's nothing to pull the trigger on. That leaves us ample room, opportunity, and cash to give it back to our shareholders. We're committed to that. Our board is committed to that. In fact, I see a board member in the stands right here. That's a great ending to our conversation, Mark. Anything you'd like to wrap up with? Any predictions for the year you want to leave for us? Any expectations for WrestleMania? John Cena? WrestleMania, I can't give away any plot lines. I wouldn't make it off the stage. Somebody from Paul's team would be here to knock me out, but it's going to be very exciting. I mean, Vegas is going to be incredible. The whole weekend is just going to be a spectacle. In the same way, or the same vein, the Sphere was a spectacle for the UFC in 306. I mean, it's going to be a great story for us, and always a good time to be negotiating new deals, but look, we've got our work cut out for it. We take nothing for granted. Folks like to talk about the stock and the run-up that we've had. We're early innings here, right? We're very focused on margin accretion. We're very focused on our capital return program. We're very focused on delivering on this UFC renewal. We're very focused on scoring on the WWE PLE renewal. And we are going to bring savings out of the integration efforts still with UFC, WWE, and now with the acquisition of the Endeavor assets. So we've got a great management team, very passionate, very hardworking, unbelievable commitments. And that's the model we run. It's pay for performance. If you're not delivering, someone else will. That's a great way to end, Mark. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thanks, everybody. it. Thanks, everybody.