All right, great. Thank you, everyone, for taking the time to join us today. We'll get started with our next session. It's a pleasure to welcome back to the Communicopia and Technology Conference this year, Marc Shapiro, the President and COO of TKO Group Holdings. Marc, thank you for taking the time to be with us today.
It's been great to be with you.
Great. Maybe starting high level, Marc, and this Friday is the two-year anniversary of TKO, and the company's executed against many of the initiatives that I remember speaking with you about two years ago when you first combined WWE and UFC together, streamlining the operations, growing sponsorship, live events, and more recently, renegotiating many of your media rights deals on improved terms. Maybe just thinking about all that you've executed against and how the TKO story has progressed from here, we'd be curious to get your latest sense of what makes you most excited at this point, looking forward, and where we are in the arc of the growth strategy.
Yeah, look, I think one of the things that can really kill a company is hubris, especially in the management team, the leadership, the culture. We are highly sensitive to that, and antennas are up high. I say that because right now we have a lot going for us, right? We're really, knock on wood, hitting on all cylinders, delivering on the promise across the board from a business standpoint on every metric we laid out, as recently as you and I sitting here last year. I would tell you that the strategy is playing to form, really, starting with the media rights, which, you know, a year ago it was, what's going to happen here? UFC, is ESPN going to come back? Are you going to get that deal? WWE, obviously smaller from a PLE standpoint, but nonetheless a big deal and our premier events in the portfolio.
What we did really is go out and beat on both, significantly beat on both. We're thrilled with the new deal that we have on UFC, which is seven years and obviously $1.1 billion, which is at two times what we were getting in the ESPN deal. We were fortunate to have a lot of bidders in the deal, which obviously drove up the demand and drove up the price and allowed us to really capitalize and score on that. I'm sure we can talk more about Paramount+ at length later on. On the PLE front, that deal wasn't up till the end of April. Instead, we are launching September 20, next weekend, we're launching in Indianapolis with a brand new franchise, which we hope will be an annual recurring franchise in WrestlePalooza. That was at a 1.8 times.
If you really look at a lot of the rights and revenue streams we were able to either claw back or retain, it's really closer to a 1.9 the way we penciled it out. You know that's a winner for us. All in all, you're looking at long-term media deals, long-term, right?
Recurring stable revenue streams with escalators across the board, expansion of rights, 10 years on WWE Raw with Netflix, five years on SmackDown and the new ESPN PLEs, and then seven years on the UFC deal, which is 43 fights a year. We are in a real good place with our biggest revenue driver, and then you get past media, and of course we can talk about all these individually or any way you want to take it, whether it's ticketing and live events, or it's global partnerships, or it's really our financial forecast and profile from our strong margins, which I think there's a lot of room for expansion, free cash flow conversion, which is normalized at 60+%, our leverage, which even with the expansion upsides of our term loan will put us at 2x by the end of the year and keep the course going.
We should be at 1.5x leverage by the end of next year, our capital return program, which is going to be robust, and of course a boxing league, which by all parts and definition launches this Saturday as the undercard of the Canelo Crawford fight. We are hitting on all cylinders, but we're trying to remain humble. We know we have a lot of work to do. It's early innings, and we look at our profile now and our strategy and our roadmap as an execution story.
That's a great overview, and I definitely want to get into a lot of what you discussed there. Maybe starting first with the media rights, you mentioned the ESPN deal with the WWE PLEs, Paramount+'s CBS with the UFC. Marc, could you maybe talk a little bit more about these deals specifically and why ESPN and Paramount+ are the right partners for WWE and UFC respectively?
I can't say enough about ESPN. They were an extraordinary partner on the UFC. A lot of our growth, the fact that we're mainstream and we're so young and we're so diverse and we're so global, has a lot to do with the marketing machine that is the Walt Disney Company. Period, end of story. They are the definitive authority end stage when it comes to sports. Having said that, we knew they were not going to be there at the price we wanted for UFC. While we had conversations and across the timeline, there was a time where they might have come in for some of the number of events, which are the pay-per-views, or some of the fight nights or all of the fight nights. They were always in the mix, and they wanted to be in the mix.
Bob Iger and Jimmy Pitaro are huge fans of the UFC, and they have a great personal relationship with us and with Dana White. We never ruled them out, but we pretty much knew they weren't going to be able to get to a 2X, and that's what we were setting our sights on. We pivoted them as soon as we knew that was going to be the case into the PLEs to get the big increase on the WWE. The minute we did that, it really meant the UFC was going to be a small package worthy to stay. We set our sights on talking with everybody else from Warner Brothers Discovery, to a lesser extent Apple, Amazon in a big way, YouTube in a big way, Netflix in a big way, DAZN in a big way. There were a lot of players at the table.
I'm not saying all of them would have been at the number that we ultimately received and signed or that they would have all taken the entire package because there's a lot of volume when it comes to 43 fights. You have the Contender Series and Ultimate Fighter and our library. Only a few vehicles can take that kind of a load. Ultimately, we pivoted this to CBS and Paramount+, and we're really excited about the opportunity there, the growth plan, David Ellison's vision, technology at the forefront of everything they do, knowing that Oracle, big time in the news today, is kind of behind that vis-à-vis the Ellisons. They are visionaries, really. They are at the forefront of technology and content merging. We have a lot of history with David. We represent Skydance on the WME side of the equation.
Everything he's touched against all odds from a content narrative business standpoint has very much been in the footsteps of his father. Success breeds success. We are big believers in where P-Sky is going to go, especially CBS still. CBS has so much sports tradition, so much sports history, so much sports lineage. Even now, their properties from the Masters to the Final Four, UEFA, the NFL, you know, they're not going to slow down. Frankly, everything David says is sports is first for them. That is a good place to be. You just want to make sure your neighbors are strong. We are happy we have those neighbors. We like to see the fact that they're investing in South Park as an example, that they're buying new series and they're getting behind new movies and sports is going to be the priority.
All in all, it's just a really good place to be. The fact that we will have CBS broadcast windows, which will allow us to grow our audience, grow our reach, grow our brand, and monetize our brand is enormous for us. They will, of course, use CBS as a barker channel to not just retain subscribers of Paramount+, but really grow the Paramount+ subscriber base, which is huge for us. They wanted something that was year-round. They wanted an antidote to churn, and they wanted something that was global because they're chasing global subs. We fit the bill.
Along the story of media rights, there's a few other media rights properties out there at the moment up for renegotiation or will be coming up for renegotiation: UFC International, PBR, Boxing, which you mentioned earlier. Maybe just talk a little bit more about the status of those rights negotiations, the right type of partner that you're looking for, some of those, and how you see that process playing out.
Yeah, look, on the international rights, that's a big part of the story. Had we done a deal with Netflix and Ted and Bella, they would have taken global rights when it comes to media distribution. It would have been very similar to our Raw and PLEs deal. Obviously, they have the PLEs internationally. In the U.S. here, of course, it was Peacock, and now it'll be ESPN. It would have been all of it. One of the foundational strategies and justification for spending what we spent in stock, really, to get IMG into the TKO equation was because they are the global leader in sports media rights distribution by far, first, second, and third place. They're sweeping all the medals. They have 160, now almost 160 properties that they distribute across 160 countries and territories. They have great leverage, great scale, experts in their space, strategically, AI, digital, social.
They've been doing it for quite a long time with boots on the ground in all these different countries. The idea of keeping them in the fold to continue really monetizing, selling media rights on the UFC globally was in our best interest. Frankly, we thought they would do better than Netflix. Our goal was to retain the international rights. We did just that with P-Sky and overall CBS, Paramount+, IMG will be selling those. We have roughly about 150 properties, excuse me, 150 territories where we sell rights into on the UFC. Those come up in a staggered way, about a third every single year. IMG will be out there selling it. Where they have an opportunity to package it, they will package it. We think there's tremendous upside that we wouldn't have had. These are the kinds of examples when you talk about the step-up we got.
These are the extras, getting ad inventory, right? Not having to spend so much on ancillary programming and production as we were committed to in some of our historic deals, retaining international rights. These are all upside opportunities for the UFC going forward. Just to finish out your question on boxing, we hope to have an announcement in the next two to three weeks on what we're doing with boxing. We will have the undercard of the Canelo Crawford fight Saturday night on Netflix. We'll be Zuffa Boxing. There's six of the eight fights. One is we've got a salary fighter coming in. It's not part of Zuffa, but it's a six-round fight we'll be doing. Of course, Canelo Crawford are not Zuffa. The rest of the card is all Zuffa. It's the first time getting out there with our brand, with Dana White's roster of talent and fighters.
We look to do about really two to four fights per year with the Saudis on a super fight scale. Of course, I'll just remind you, we don't pay to bring the fighters in. We don't take any risk on that. We are the Saudis' partner in this. We promote the event, we market the event, we stage the event, we produce the event, we do the media rights deal, and we help out on the global partnerships. For all of that, we're paid a fee, which will, of course, be incremental to our plan.
Maybe since you mentioned boxing, thinking about the longer-term plan for boxing. You mentioned two to four fights ramping up over the next year, potentially layering in media rights on the back of that. As you see execution both over the next 12 months in boxing and then further ambitions looking out over the next couple of years, how big could boxing get in the U.S. and then the opportunity internationally?
Look, I think you just have to go all the way back to Jack Dempsey in the Golden Age. I mean, boxing's been around for 100 years. Not many sports can say that. It's fully entrenched. It's got extraordinary historical equity. No sportsman ever grows tired of mano a mano, fist to cuffs, and a gladiator one-on-one. It just makes a lot of sense. You have to have the right personalities, obviously. Muhammad Ali and his charisma took that to a whole nother level. The opportunity is there if you have a closed system, which we will have, if you have a guy like Dana White at the forefront of it, and if you have a stable of 200 fighters, which we expect to have. Now, I'll remind you, we're talking about two different things here.
Zuffa Boxing, which will be our league, will be about 12 to 16 fights per year. We are in the market right now selling media rights to those 12 to 16 fights. We will monetize that across the board, again, in partnership with the Saudis. Separate and apart from that will be these super fights like Canelo Crawford that we have this weekend where we're working for a fee to be essentially their promoter and their producer and their media rights seller of the business. We're going to take a bite of both parts of the apple. We're going to try to put this on super acceleration and really gas boxing because the most popular question that I get on the road from investors is, OK, before we can even breathe or smell the roses on the media rights deals, is, OK, you've got the media rights deal, great.
You're going to break $400 million on global partnerships, which is ahead of our internal forecast. Nothing hotter these days in live events and experiences, not just sports, music as well. I'm trying to be objective there. We're seeing no slowdown in that respect. We're going to sell out Allegiant Stadium Saturday night for Canelo Crawford. It's a stadium for a boxing match. I mean, this doesn't happen. Folks just want to get out. They've got time. They're off on Fridays, quote unquote. It's communal. Everybody suffers from FOMO, especially the younger folks in the demos that we really serve and cater to. We're in the sweet spot with a lot of opportunity to increase our margin by increasing our ticket yield, especially at WWE. We feel really good about that.
What I would tell you is, when you look at global partnerships and ticket sales and media rights, hey, where are you guys going to go from there? We're an execution story to exactly your point. That's what we are right now. It's early innings. We're still trying to squeeze out more synergies on bringing UFC and WWE together under one roof. We're still trying to squeeze out synergies in bringing IMG, On Location, and PBR into the fold. Remember, we forecast $30 million on a year-long run rate. Then we upped that to $40 million. Andrew and I were talking this morning. There might be a little more than that. That'll play out over the course of 2026. Andrew Schleimer is my CFO. That's still upon us here. We're looking at margins. I mean, second quarter is incredible.
WWE equalized the UFC at 59% EBITDA margins, driven largely by global partnerships, ticketing, live ticketing, and of course, site fees. Really, when you look at next year, you're talking about a consolidated EBITDA margin of 35% to 40%. Good place to be. Free cash flow conversion normalized at 60+%. Of course, our leverage is, as I've already talked about. We're going to be a cash gusher. We really are. We take a lot of pride in that because we are laser-focused on cash flow, laser-focused on sustainable long-term EPS growth. That all equates to the bottom line where it benefits shareholders as long as we are pushing those returns, that capital return to our shareholders. That's going to happen. We doubled our dividend last week. We're embarking upon a buyback program that we promised our shareholders we would do by the end of third quarter.
Last time I checked, that's coming up in just a couple of weeks.
I do want to get to the capital returns and capital allocation more broadly. Maybe picking up on something that you touched on, on partnership and sponsors and the broader opportunity with bringing more brands into the ecosystem. It's been a great growth story over the last year or two for UFC and WWE in particular. The new deals you mentioned have some ad inventory available. I think it's two minutes an hour. Could you talk a little bit more about where we are in the growth story and sponsorship, maybe how this new inventory unlocks opportunities for you and where you see?
Look, we forecast, I believe it's 2030 global partnerships. Now remember, when we bought the UFC, I mean, this is talking back in the Endeavor days, which I barely remember, we were at $30 million, $30 to $40 million is what UFC was doing. UFC is now knocking on the door of $300 million in global partnerships. Of course, WWE is coming up the rear, adding to that. We should surpass $400 million. Our goal was $375 million, but we should surpass $400 million. Same thing too. Contractual, stable, escalators, recurring, a good place to be in. More and more brands, especially as these two properties become more mainstream, want to be involved with us. You take the UFC deal that you're talking about. We've got all in broadcast integration. All broadcast integration we control. All in arena we control.
Of course, our IP in terms of supermarket aisles and consumer products we control. On top of that, we'll have the two minutes an hour. I would tell you, for both the WWE on ESPN and this deal, we'll probably use one of the two minutes to do institutional. We'll use it as a marketing vehicle, at least in the early going, because we're still building our ad team. Paramount and CBS, who will be our partner in some of this, are still building their ad tech solution, which we hope will be best in class. We'll be out there, to your point, selling a 360 holistic package to an advertiser. I want to come in on broadcast integration. I want to come in on being in the in arena and touching that 20,000 to 30,000 fan base that shows up for these fights on the UFC.
Now I actually can run media spots as part of the broadcast. That's a great incremental lift up for us. That is why it does come back to execution story. Keep in mind, we launch on ESPN in a week, as I mentioned. We have to come right back in January and launch with a new property like PBR. That's a big row to hoe here. Let's not forget Netflix. They're still doing, obviously, Raw. We did a great number of Friday nights. We're, you know, week in and week out, upwards of 30 different countries. We're in the top 10 list each week with Raw. The PLEs, the premium live events, are also returning beyond their pro forma. That's a good story. We don't want to take that for granted. We need them to keep marketing us.
You can quickly get lost in the Squid Games of the K-pops of the world. You have to keep Netflix focused on that. We're partners. It's in their best interests. We have work to do there. My message to the team is we're not here to talk about acquisitions right now. Of course, we'll be opportunistic, but we're here to talk about executing. We're here to talk about strong launches. We're here to talk about more marketing. Let's expand our margins. Let's bring in that free cash flow and let's get it back to shareholders. If stuff comes up along the way, terrific. In the meantime, we're launching boxing, and that's like an acquisition all by itself.
On live events, you guys have spent the better part of the last two years optimizing some of the capacity around UFC and WWE, optimizing some of the pricing. You mentioned the fight this weekend. Ticket prices are very impressive in terms of what they're going for. I think it shows the demand at the upper end of the spectrum. Maybe you could just give us a lay of the land of where you see the consumer at today, where you see demand for live events today, and then looking ahead, room for further optimization on maybe up-tiering venues, up-tiering pricing. Where's the bigger growth opportunity for TKO Group Holdings at the moment?
On Location is internally on plan for this year. I would tell you sales for Milan are going really well. Sales for FIFA World Cup are going really well. LA is obviously too early. Sales for the Super Bowl, we're only one week in, and our advanced sales on the Super Bowl are very strong. I went to the Monday night game in Chicago at Soldier Field. Bad outcome on the Bears, but stadium is filled to the brim. Everybody's looking for that plus up, that personalized experience, that customized experience, that red carpet behind the rope experience. That's where fans are. It's not enough to just go to the game and sit in your seat and have a hot dog and a beer. They're all looking for meet and greets. They're all looking for advanced entrants.
They're all looking to touch the trophy or meet the game winner or the MVP at the end of the game. That is what On Location does. It is the premier, preeminent, premium hospitality provider for sports around the globe. That's the business of what we do. Whether it's the Olympics, the World Cup, or the Super Bowl, it's just really firing. I can't tell you it'd be like this forever. I do believe the four-day in-office work week is here to stay. Having said that, it makes it a three-day weekend, and people have more time, or they're moving errands to Friday, and they have more time for Saturday and Sunday to see a concert with their friends or go to a sporting event. There's nothing like being there. That experience is premium, and it's invaluable, and you can't replicate it.
As long as rivalries stay strong and these sports remain strong and competition remains strong, we're going to be in a good place. Look at Major League Baseball. Major League Baseball has been around a long time, obviously. They've had their challenges, their ups and downs. They have a big collective bargaining agreement in front of them that hopefully doesn't stall their growth and the momentum they have. Their attendance is up across the board. NBA games, strong college football. It's just gone to a whole nother level now with the expansion of the CFP. It's not just folks at home or in the bars watching. They want to be there in person. Back to your point on the boxing, it drives demand, and that helps us on the ticket yield. Now, WWE is not where the UFC is yet, as you know, on ticket yield.
We have our work to do there. We've seen a meaningful increase, as evidenced by the 59% margin we did second quarter with regard to EBITDA margin, which was equal to the UFC. That's ticket yield and site fees playing a big part in driving that. We know we have more room to go. Why do we know that? UFC is breaking records everywhere they go. The last numbered fight in Chicago was the highest grossing event in the history of the United Center, dating back through the Michael Jordan days. I mean, the highest grossing event. They're already at the table trying to get another fight for next year. We're just a couple of weeks post. WWE, which granted their PLEs are mostly in stadiums, so it's not apples to apples.
Of course, they have a lot more volume with WWE Raw and SmackDown and NXT happening on a weekly basis, 52 weeks a year. Having said that, we know we have a lot of room there because Vince McMahon was primarily pricing tickets for families and wasn't totally focused on maxing the opportunity there. Now that we've seen what we can do with UFC, we're replicating that in terms of ticket yield and holding back and advanced sales when it comes to On Location on the WWE side. It's really working out well.
On site fees, this has been a story that's been building for the better part of the last few years. Over the last year, you've signed deals with Las Vegas, New Jersey, Baku, Qatar. Maybe you could just update us on where we are in terms of execution against the site fee opportunity. I think you have 24 more key fights that you've looked to put site fees around. Just be curious where you are in terms of your goal of reaching 24. How's the pipeline looking today?
Yeah, good question, Stephen. I mean, look, we're now at really about 25 premier fights because you've got 13 on the UFC side, 13 numbered events. Granted, one of them is in Abu Dhabi, and it airs after noon here in the U.S. You've got, of course, the PLEs. Hopefully, WrestlePalooza is a winner, and we can bring that back annually because that could just be a marketing bonanza for us if we do that right. Triple H is spending night and day creatively around making that what we think it can be, which is another WrestleMania or another SummerSlam. Those two stand out above the rest. Royal Rumble's right beneath that. We think WrestlePalooza can get into that quadrant. What I would say on this front is that we need to sell all those out. We haven't done that yet.
We're having a lot of conversations, everywhere from Atlanta to Charlotte, to London and Paris. No shortage of countries similar to F1 that want to see us bring our show to town. We're going to maximize those opportunities, both in kind, but most important to me is cash. Cash kills. That's where we are. We're making, we're in the early innings, but I don't even have my sights set on finishing those out. Once we do that, we still have 30 fight nights to sell for UFC. They can be smaller, but if we've got a St. Louis up against a Des Moines, Iowa, if you want us back there and you've sold out and broken records in both your arenas, you have to pay for us to come back, or else we'll take it to another town. That goes for NXT and Raw and SmackDown on the WWE side.
While we can't help you model that today on what that could be, all I can tell you is conversations are going great. They're very robust. I've named some cities that we're in conversation. Detroit is another one. Even in the Middle East, where we're breaking out of just the Middle East, we're in conversations right now with the Saudis in Abu Dhabi on bringing a UFC fight night to Saudi Arabia. We've done one before, but we're embarking upon bringing a second one there. That should be financially a very good story for everybody involved. As you remember, Abu Dhabi does have the exclusive rights in the Middle East. Anywhere we go, like putting an event in Doha, which we have a deal to do, it gets split between the two.
Maybe switching gears for a minute.
Once we get boxing going too, we're going to put them into the site fee package. You've also got PBR to put into the site fee package. We've got a lot we can bring to town. I'm not saying all in one weekend necessarily, but it could be something where we're going to bring three or four over the course of a year, and you pay one fee to get spread out.
It could be as many as 30 site fee opportunities out there.
Yeah, more than that once you get into the Raws and the SmackDowns and all that. We've got a team that does, we hired Dean Garfield from Netflix, who historically has done this with Netflix expansion plans and the offices they've opened up around the world. He's a real pro. He's a real expert. He's got a fantastic Rolodex. He has an entire team that works across the board with Nick Khan at WWE and Lawrence Epstein at UFC. We are knocking on doors everywhere to really sell these out. We are not in a hurry. We are not going to rush these deals so that it won't max them out. Because once you set that level of where you're going to be, and it ends up being too low, getting a 100% increase of basically nothing is 100% of nothing.
I want to pivot to margins. You mentioned earlier that the revenue growth that you're expected to achieve over the next couple of years, I think most investors think of you as a high operating leverage business in the sense that a lot of revenue growth drops down to the bottom line. We'd just be curious to get your take as you look forward into next year, balancing reinvestment in the OpEx of the business, whether that's fighter pay, whether that's more ancillary programming around the UFC and WWE to build engagement, to build fan momentum. How should investors really be thinking about the level of reinvestment?
I think it would be a normalized course, frankly. We're running a pretty lean cost structure, and in that cost structure is fighter pay. We're going to continue to do right by our fighters and our superstars, and the cream of the crop will be paid the premium dollars. When we do deals like this, we don't hoard that money. We invest in the product. Our last deal with ESPN saw us give bonuses for Fight of the Night, give bonuses for the knockdown or submission of the night, saw us give fees for any of the global partnerships deals we did, and consumer licensing, consumer product licensing deals we've done. We're going to share as much as makes sense with the stars of both leagues, and we will be very competitive. We are very competitive.
We pay more than any other competitor we have in the combat sports space, and we know why we're here. It's a team effort. It's our brand. It's the work that Dana White does on the WWE side. It's the creative force that Triple H is. It's the strategy that Nick Khan drives, and it's ultimately the hard work put in by our crews. Remember, we're doing a lot of fights per week. Monday Night Raw, you've got an NXT on Tuesday night, you've got a Friday night SmackDown, you've got a UFC fight, and sometimes you have a PLE or a numbered event. There's a lot of events to put down. There's no breaks at this company. It's 52 weeks a year. We have to pay for performance in terms of our people, and the same goes for our fighters and superstars.
You shouldn't expect anything out of the ordinary. It's to run rate for us. We're focused on it. Yes, you'll get some of those Conor McGregors, if you will, that really move the needle, or Jon Jones that get paid a little more, but they deliver more in return. It's a scale, and it's a formula, and we're very transparent about it with our fighters and our superstars.
Maybe pivoting back to some of the other assets within the Endeavor complex, you mentioned On Location, you know, World Cup and Olympics selling out well for the next year. Talk a little bit more about the longer-term growth for On Location and picking up new pieces of IP, new events to layer onto the platform. As part of this too, the conversation I do have with investors around this is thinking through the risk profile of some of these contracts. They typically tend to be more fixed deals, which transfers the risk to On Location. How do you get comfortable with that?
Yeah, where I get comfortable is not doing those deals. You know, doing a minimum guarantee is not something we're in the business of doing going forward. I mean, will there be one-offs where it makes sense? The demand is so, you know, insane that the risk profile is lower, so therefore we have more tolerance? Yes. By and large, we want splits. We're the leader in the industry. Most importantly, it's not about just the portfolio. We do it better than anyone. There is no peer as it relates to the quality, the delivery of quality, and the high premium experience that On Location brings to the table. You don't do work with the Masters in Augusta unless you're the best of the best, period. They are very careful about who they surround themselves with in terms of partners. We don't take that for granted.
We keep investing in the product, the people, and really the brand partners that we have. There are some properties to pick up here and there, but we have our hands full. We're UFC, WWE, obviously the NFL. We're doing bowls with college football. We're doing the MLB All-Star Game. We have Indy 500. We have the Daytona 500 and more opportunities with NASCAR. We're doing a lot in the golf space. We work on a few music festivals, Coachella and Stagecoach, and we're really the top of the top. There might be an opportunity to look at some more music festivals. I don't want to get out of our core, which is sports. That's what TKO Group Holdings is. Music brings big audiences. These days, every rock star wants to be an athlete, and every athlete wants to be a rock star.
If we can jump into a little bit of music where there's no big upfront payment, we're going to look at those opportunities. Right now, again, execution story. Let's make sure Milan is everything we envisioned it to be. Let's make sure World Cup in North America and Mexico turns out to be what, frankly, the President thinks it's going to be. Right behind it is LA, which has a chance to make the same kind of impact in time in this era as Peter Ueberroth did with the LA Olympics in 1984.
Marc, I can't let you go without digging deeper into capital allocation. You mentioned earlier the free cash flow generation profile of the business, leverage modest, not too much capital intensity or needs at the moment. How do you think about capital allocation within that, capital returns versus M&A?
It's the priority. It's the priority. Because M&A, we're just not out there hunting. We'll be opportunistic, we'll listen, and we'll follow up on any phone call that might come our way. If there's something out there we think we can pick off or bolt on, fantastic. Capital return comes first. I mean, that's frankly what our shareholders want. When you're going to be producing the amount of cash that we expect to bring in year in and year out, given that we just need to fund our operations, have enough for working capital, the answer is going to be the dividend, which we answered, and more of a share buyback. That's really the opportunity here. The float is already limited, just given the amount of shares that Endeavor Group Holdings controls. I think that's the bang for the buck.
We will be opportunistic with a plan there in short order.
You mentioned the commitment by end of 3Q to start the share buyback.
Yeah, I mean, we'll put something out in due time. I think that most people saw that we upsized the term loan by $1 billion. Meanwhile, they know that there's a share buyback on the horizon. You do your own homework and make your own prognostications. We're moving on what we said and promised we were going to do in time by the deadline at the end of the third quarter.
That's great, Marc Shapiro. We have to leave it there, but thank you for taking the time to attend the conference this week.
Thank you, Stephen.