Silver Lake, WME, TKO
Almost a year after being announced, Silver Lake closed its $25 billion acquisition of Endeavor (EDR), now WME Group. Credit to Ari Emanuel (now WME Executive Chairman) and Mark Shapiro (now WME CEO), for remaking Endeavor/WME and increasing the company’s value by 2.5x since its 2021 IPO.
To that end, I still like TKO Group (TKO). I liked the company at the time of its IPO (pre TKO as UFC). The WWE acquisition was a great deal for TKO as WWE was primed for Revenue lift with its new license deals, and even more so EBITDA lift, as WWE never paid attention to OpEx the way the UFC did.
The sport of boxing will be the next revenue driver for the UFC/TKO as it works to consolidate that sport in conjunction with Saudi Arabia’s Turki Al-Sheikh. The UFC’s Dana White will lead that effort. WWE CEO Nick Khan will help. Shapiro and Emanuel will both work to make boxing a success as well. White, Emanuel, Shapiro and Khan are all operators.
Silver Lake and Emanuel have done business with Saudi Arabia for years and I expect for that relationship to continue to pay dividends for TKO and WME (private).