TKO Group Holdings, the parent company of the UFC, is launching a new boxing promotion with ambitious plans for its future structure, including a regular schedule of events alongside separate blockbuster matchups.
The first major event planned is a high-profile “superfight” featuring Canelo Alvarez taking on Terence Crawford, scheduled for September 12 in Las Vegas.
UFC CEO Dana White has been announced as a promoter for this new league, with WWE President Nick Khan also involved. The venture is financially supported by Saudi Arabia and Turki Alalshikh, the chairman of the General Entertainment Authority in the country. While some initial details have emerged, the league has significant plans for its full schedule, starting with the September card.
During a quarterly financial call with investors, TKO President and Chief Operating Officer Mark Shapiro outlined the expected volume of events: “We’re expecting with the boxing organization that we’re putting on an average of call it 12 fights a year, 12 cards a year for each of the next five years. Still putting that plan together and obviously working hand in hand with our friends from Saudi.”
In addition to the average of 12 cards per year, the new Saudi-backed boxing league is also plotting several “superfight” events, similar in scale to the planned Canelo vs. Crawford bout in September.
Shapiro further elaborated, “Irrespective of those, we will look to do anywhere from one to four sort of superfights per year, we’ll see how that plays out. But obviously we would term the Canelo/Crawford September matchup as one of those. And then on that undercard, we would have a number of those undercard fights that would likely air on the television partner/media partner we would have for our newly formed boxing organizations.”
As of now, the new TKO boxing league has not yet announced a broadcast partner, but these details are expected to be finalized prior to the official launch in September.
Shapiro was quick to reiterate that although TKO is overseeing operations, the company assumes no financial liability for the boxing promotion, as all funding is being provided by Saudi Arabia.
He also clarified that the planned 12 individual fight cards each year will be managed separately from the “superfight” events, which could potentially involve some of the sport`s biggest names.
“Those are two separate businesses,” Shapiro revealed. “The Saudis are funding what would be these superfight cards. We’ll work with them on media rights deals and take a commission. We’ll work with them obviously on global partnerships. We’ll work with them on ticketing. We’ll handle the production. We’ll look to potentially promote all of them with Dana White and Nick Khan driving much of that but then separately, we’ll have our boxing organization, our [promotion] with them where we’re going out and doing as I mentioned 12 cards a year on average and getting a separate media rights fee, selling global partnerships to those cards and of course promoting and producing those cards on whatever media platform we choose to tie with.”
While the promotion has thus far been referred to informally as “TKO Boxing,” Shapiro confirmed that this will not be the official name used upon its launch later this year. He did not disclose the intended name but stated that its announcement is forthcoming.
“I should mention it’s not going to be called TKO boxing,” Shapiro stated. “That seems like the soup of the day. We’ll be unveiling our name for our business fairly soon here. But it will not be TKO boxing.”
