• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, 5 hours ago

Live WWE and UFC events from TKO Group Holdings continued to benefit its on-event site marketers activations from growing TV and streaming platforms coverage.

The recent launch last month of a “UFC 324”on Paramount+ posted 5 million Nielsen-measured users. It was the biggest live UFC event since March 2021.

Key for marketers is screen-centric integrations -- big mat signage in the fighting rings and other places when TKO can make deals.

TKO, which was formed after the talent agency Endeavor merged with WWE, signed major overall broad-based marketing sponsorship deals with Ram Trucks, Polymarket,and Door Dash, in late 2025. TKO already owned UFC.

Monster Energy and Crypto.com have placement on UFC canvas, for example. WWE sponsors like Slim Jim and Prime Hydration have logos on the wrestling fight ring mats. Collectively TKO produces some 500 live events.

TKO’s 2025 guidance expects to get $460 million to $500 million in sponsor partnership deals. The company has a goal of getting to $1 billion in 2030.

Effectiveness of these deals comes with key media rights deals -- estimated by industry analysts to be around $3.1 billion annually from collective deals with Paramount+ (an UFC as well as Netflix (“Monday Night Raw”) and USA Network (“WWE Smackdown”).

It is also expected to get $1.7 billion from live events and hospitality rights).

Netflix says total WWE viewing in 2025 totalled 525 million hours of WWE content in 2025. Just looking at its popular weekly show “Monday Night Raw” alone accounted for 340 million views across 52 episodes, averaging roughly 3 million views per week.

While some analysts see big growth coming for UFC, others sees some underwhelming results from WWE.

“WWE's sponsorship revenue is materially under-earning relative to other sports leagues,” says Curry Baker, media/live entertainment analyst for Guggenheim Securities.

“The UFC, with far fewer events and impressions than WWE, has historically done over three times the sponsorship revenue. The gap is starting to close this year, and we expect TKO to achieve $464 million of combined sponsorship revenue in 2025.”

The fight is on to pin down more marketing sponsorships. But can its TV/streaming partners up their game as well?