WWE and UFC parent company TKO generated $2.8 billion in revenue in 2024, with UFC and WWE bringing in nearly equal shares. Profitability was hindered by the company recognizing $375 million in payments toward settling UFC’s antitrust lawsuits, resulting in a relatively thin net income for the year of $6.4 million, according to TKO’s filings.
The Sankey diagram here visually breaks down TKO’s financial picture, showing how revenue flows from WWE and UFC into various expense categories, and showing how much is left at various stages of profit. (Remember there is not one “profit” metric but many a different stages of accounting. Net income is the final measure of profit.)
The significance of servicing the company’s debt that was largely inherited from UFC is also evident from the chart. That cost the company $249 million for the year (“Interest expense”). For some comparison, in 2022, the last full year that WWE was a standalone company, WWE reported $21 million in interest expense. Bear in mind that WWE is only half of TKO but that’s still less than one tenth of the interest expense its parent paid last year.
That aside, both companies are growing their revenues and the annual revenue recorded for WWE, $1.398 billion, is a new high for the company, even adjusting for inflation. The previous inflation-adjusted record was set in 2022. UFC’s annual revenue in 2024, $1.406 billion, is higher than any recent year ($1.292 billion in 2023, $1.140 billion in 2022, $1.032 billion in 2021, $891 million in 2020), so it is possibly a new company record for UFC as well. (There’s less historical financial data available for UFC.)
Unlike certain key metrics like attendance and TV ratings, WWE’s financial records aren’t grouped in the years of its height of cultural relevance in the late 1990s or the 1980s, as media revenues have driven WWE to have all of its best financial years — adjusting for inflation or not — in recent years.
Unsurprisingly, media rights made up the majority of both WWE and UFC’s revenues in 2024.
Based on reported average annual values of the company’s major media deals, I’ve estimated UFC made about $550 million for the year from its two deals with ESPN.
Meanwhile, for WWE I’ve estimated NBCU paid the wrestling company around $519 million for a variety of deals for Raw and NXT for the first three quarters of the year, and for the final quarter of the year, Smackdown. And I’ve estimated WWE took in about $165 million from Fox for the last 9 months of Smackdown on the network.
Another point that continues to stand out when comparing WWE and UFC’s business is the disparity in sponsorship revenue. UFC sold $251 million in sponsorships last year, versus WWE’s $83 million. It’s a subject analysts often ask about and may come down to income demographics and perceptions about the WWE audience that still contrast even against the UFC audience.
Brandon Thurston has written about wrestling business since 2015. He operates and owns Wrestlenomics.