As reported at the Goldman Sachs Conference, the TKO COO Mark Shapiro was asked about balancing talent expense and marketing support behind marketing the talent.
Shapiro had the following to say when answering the question in regards to both WWE and UFC talent.
“Let’s talk about the pay for the superstars and our fighters first. What I would tell you is post our new deals with ESPN on WWE and with Paramount+, CBS, Peacock, Sky with UFC, and even a little bit post Raw with Netflix, we did resize our fighter and superstar pay composition. That is baked into our numbers. So there will be no further adverse impact with regard to how that plays out or divvies out. We’re confident with where we sit. We have 600 fighters as an example in our stable at the UFC. We do, to your point, really rely on development. Keep in mind that when you look at the WWE, 75% of the superstars come from NXT. So they’re starting in our development league and going all the way up. So pipeline is very important to our strategy.
On the UFC front, we’ve really capitalized on the investments of our performance centers in Mexico City and Vegas, and particularly China. We’re really getting real traction. So that’s a big part of our strategy. It will continue to be a big part of our strategy, and we will continue to be aggressive in other monetization opportunities for both our superstars and our UFC fighters with regard to advertiser deals, marketing partnerships, bonuses through the fight card in terms of finishes and fight of the night. What you see is you see the best of the best signing up and lining up to be a part of the UFC and to be a part of WWE. So that’s something we always watch out for and we want to make sure that we’re really spreading the opportunities, but the strategy’s working. Our margins will continue to expand.”
It’s interesting to note that the resizing of contracts first made news earlier this year when it was rumored that some talent were asked to take up to a 50% pay cut as their contracts were being modified.
Kofi Kingston (currently 1/3 of the AEW Trios Champion) confirmed on the Ari Helwani Show (Full Interview with AEW’s New Level) that he and Austin Creed (Xavier Woods) were asked to take a cut of MORE than 50 percent before they decided to take a chance on themselves and leave WWE.
