Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to TKO's third quarter 2026 earnings call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I will now hand the conference over to Seth Zaslow, Head of Investor Relations. Seth, please go ahead.
Good afternoon, and welcome to TKO's third quarter 2026 earnings release. A short while ago, we issued a press release, which you can view on our investor relations website. A recording of this call will also be available via our website for at least 30 days. Joining me on today's call are Mark Shapiro, TKO's President and Chief Operating Officer, and Andrew Schleimer, TKO's Chief Financial Officer. After prepared remarks from Mark and Andrew, we will open the call for questions. As a reminder, we will be making forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ. Our remarks will also include non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these measures to GAAP measures can be found in our press release as well as on our IR website. With that, I will now turn the call over to Mark.
Thanks, Seth. The third quarter is more validation of the live experience secular tailwinds powering TKO. Our company sits squarely at the intersection of premium sports, live events, and experiential hospitality across multiple businesses at scale and worldwide. As AI makes live content and shared experiences even more valuable, our tailwinds become more fierce. The media landscape is also shifting in our favor. The Paramount combination with Warner Bros. Discovery is an industry-defining moment, and TKO stands to benefit. Paramount+ is our primary partner across UFC and Zuffa Boxing, and the addition of TNT Sports and HBO, once called the heart and soul of boxing, under the Skydance umbrella sets the table for more reach, increased engagement, and significantly more scale. As investors, you should be bullish about what this means for TKO. Our business is durable, and our fundamentals are firm.
The vast majority of our existing revenues are locked in for the next five to seven years. Macro trends are in our favor. Every facet of sports consumption is pointing north, and there is no ceiling. Turning specifically to our third quarter performance, at UFC, every single event held outside the Meta APEX sold out. Not most of them, all of them. UFC 329 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas was the highest-grossing event in UFC history, with a $26 million gate, headlined by the long-awaited return of Conor McGregor to the Octagon. We drove nearly 16 million viewers to Paramount+, peaking at 8.3 million concurrent streams, a record-breaking audience on the platform. Conor McGregor is rehabbing now and insists he will be back in 2027.
UFC 330 set the record for the highest-grossing event ever held at Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia, while UFC 331 set the same record at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. 10 sellouts and seven arena records spanning five countries in just a single quarter. All told, UFC live events revenue is up north of 80% this quarter over the prior year. On the marketing front, UFC's global partnerships grew significantly in the quarter, with new deals and activations in categories spanning technology and AI, gaming, crypto, financial services, alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, television and film releases, and automotive. UFC is white hot, and advertisers want to get in front of our audience, specifically our hard-to-reach demos. Recall that 46% of the UFC audience is in the demo of 18 to 34.
Now that we are in the market selling traditional commercial ad inventory for UFC under our Skydance deal and for WWE with ESPN, we are capitalizing on our audience makeup and are increasingly optimistic about the medium and long-term financial contribution, both on a standalone basis and as part of fully integrated partnership packages. As I said in September, we plan to provide more color and revisit our TKO-wide global partnerships forecast at Investor Day, which will be held in Q1, date forthcoming. Zeroing in on our financial incentive packages, or FIPs for short, the demand from public and private partners who value our events as cultural and economic catalysts is real, and it is growing. Internationally, our debut in Serbia, backed by an FIP, became the highest-grossing event in Belgrade Arena history.
Noche UFC in Glendale, part of our new multi-year, multi-event, and multi-property FIP partnership with Arizona Sports & Events Alliance and Legends Global became the highest-grossing domestic fight night in UFC history. Later this month, UFC returns to Doha in partnership with Visit Qatar, and the pipeline into 2027 FIP growth is expanding. Pivoting to WWE, Ari and I are having flashbacks to 2019, when it was three years into our acquisition of UFC, and we're seeing almost a mirror image of that momentum. In terms of audience, Raw on Netflix had another exceptional quarter, spending 12 of 13 weeks on the top 10 list of most viewed shows on the platform globally. On September 14th alone, Raw charted in the top 10 in 24 countries, the widest reach since the show debuted in January 2025.
In October, all WWE programming launched on Netflix in Japan, a market that has consistently demonstrated demand for our content and live events. This will serve to embolden our strategic initiatives across all of Asia. To further put this into perspective, domestically, our Sunday Night's Main Event on September 6th sold out State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Georgia, WWE's highest-grossing non-PLE event across more than 20 visits to the city over the last 10 years. We are just scratching the surface of what WWE can generate as we leverage our market intelligence, data, and analytics to improve both ticket yields and ticket volumes, just as we did in the early years with UFC, which set the stage for a compounding growth that we are still realizing today. The same theme applies to global partnerships.
The categories are expanding at a rapid pace, just as they did when UFC began to heat up: tech, crypto, gaming, QSR, television and film releases, CPG, and automotive. WWE's global partnerships delivered a strong third quarter, up approximately 30% over last year, despite a significantly lighter event calendar with only one Premium Live Event versus four in the prior year quarter. SummerSlam became the third-highest-grossing PLE by partnership revenue in company history, behind only WrestleMania 41 and WrestleMania 42, proof of WWE's growing cultural and commercial relevance. We are on track to close the full year up more than 20%, as I said at the Goldman Conference in September. That implies approximately 50% growth in Q4 alone. UFC and WWE are seeing growth from every corner, and this in spite of macroeconomic pressure and geopolitical risk.
We're playing the long game, prioritizing creative, finding new revenue streams, and serving as marketing engines for the world's biggest brands. As just one example, WWE's partnership with The Walt Disney Company is expanding once again. This past Monday, in front of a sold-out audience for Raw at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, John Cena announced the first-ever John Cena Classic, which will feature the biggest names on WWE's main roster from Raw and SmackDown up against the brightest future superstars from NXT. The event will take place at ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Walt Disney World Resort Orlando on December 14th. WWE, Disney, and Fanatics will simultaneously stage WWE World, further festivalizing the fan experience and helping promote a major Disney holiday tentpole, Avengers: Doomsday. Let's talk about why our confidence extends to the rest of our portfolio.
At On Location, the 2026 FIFA World Cup meaningfully exceeded our plan. When all was said and done, the FIFA World Cup hospitality program delivered $2.4 billion in total hospitality sales, with the final match alone generating nearly $500 million. More than 640,000 packages were sold across 16 host cities. The World Cup put On Location's capabilities on the biggest stage in the world and confirmed what we've been saying: premium experiences are in demand way beyond the one percenters who historically chase these experiences. Our success at both the Milano Cortina Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup has charged our CRM database and positions us to continue to meaningfully capitalize on our internal forecast for both Super Bowl LXI in Los Angeles and the LA28 Olympic Games. In fact, we are tracking ahead of plan on LA28.
Speaking of the Olympic Games, I should mention that while we are currently evaluating a partnership with the IOC on the French Alps, Brisbane, and the Salt Lake City, Utah games, we continue to demonstrate financial discipline and will only proceed if the return profile meets our internal thresholds, similar to our FIFA World Cup strategy. Let's talk about IMG for a minute. What we never want lost on our investors is the role IMG plays in our sports and entertainment ecosystem. The strategic importance of IMG across industry relationships, our advisory business, production for hire work, and distribution capabilities is industry-leading across the globe. Keep in mind, especially for those newer to the story, our business at its core is live events and experiences, and our fans are at the epicenter of everything we do.
As we grow revenue streams across the board, having a business like IMG, an industry leader since 1960, in all the spaces we play is invaluable. It provides unique influence and leverage. Throughout Q3, IMG played a central role in driving our global partnerships and our FIP growth at UFC and WWE. This, in addition to driving global partnership growth for our unmatched portfolio of external partners, such as the R&A and Wimbledon. Our worldwide reach, with 35 offices globally and boots on the ground selling into 150 countries, simply has no peer. The more we train and improve communication, collaboration, and integration internally across TKO, the better the results. Ari and I spend an extraordinary amount of time fostering this culture.
Some of the developments I am most excited about in this past quarter at IMG include its appointment by the WTA as production partner in a multi-year agreement spanning more than 50 tour events per season, including the WTA Finals, which will be held this year at Indian Wells for the first time ever. Topping that, last month, Netflix named IMG as the production partner for its coverage of the FIFA Women's World Cup Brazil in 2027. IMG will deliver every match with more than 100 hours of studio programming available in Spanish, English, and French. The house is full. How do we build a bigger house? That is where Zuffa Boxing comes in. TKO's track record, deep relationships, and global reach, all of which we have talked about, are underpinning the sport's return.
The enterprise value growth is in Zuffa Boxing, which has quickly emerged as one of the premier boxing organizations in the world. We are building our roster of elite talent, now over 100 fighters under contract, and we are touring our cards. In the third quarter alone, we staged fights in New York City, Dublin, and London, where we will return this Saturday for our 12th Zuffa Boxing event of the year. We have media deals with Skydance for the globe, sans the U.K. and Ireland, where we partner with Sky Sports. On a parallel track, we also have a work-for-hire business in boxing. Think promoter, sponsorship sales, and media rights. This business hits our P&L. The centerpiece of the quarter was the Garcia-Benn super fight at T-Mobile Arena on September 12th, which drew a sold-out crowd of nearly 19,000 fans and an $8 million plus gate.
Coming up in December, the long-awaited Tyson Fury-Anthony Joshua fight takes place in Cardiff, Wales. IMG sold the media rights to Netflix globally, and we will be selling the sponsorship inventory. Dana White is co-promoting the event. I would like to close with a few items for the balance of the year. First, on the Middle East, while we continue to monitor the situation closely, as of today, we fully anticipate our remaining events will proceed as planned. WWE Crown Jewel returns to Riyadh this weekend, and UFC Fight Nights come to Doha on November 21st and Riyadh in early December. Second, on capital allocation. We intend to use new debt and cash on hand to complete share repurchases under our previously authorized $3 billion repurchase program. We will be in the market aggressively buying back stock.
As we close out the year, we remain laser-focused on what we've called our year of execution. Today's decision to raise full-year guidance once again is the most direct expression of our conviction across the entire TKO portfolio. Andrew will now take you through the financials.
Good afternoon. As Mark highlighted, our fundamentals are sound, and we continued to execute across our businesses in the third quarter. Based on our performance to date and our visibility through year-end, we have raised our full-year outlook for the second consecutive quarter. We generated consolidated revenue of $1.36 billion. Adjusted EBITDA was $556 million, yielding a 41% margin. Revenue increased 21%, Adjusted EBITDA increased 54%, and Adjusted EBITDA margin increased approximately 870 basis points as compared to the prior year. In the quarter, UFC generated revenue of $519 million, up 60%. Adjusted EBITDA was $285 million, an increase of 72%. UFC's Adjusted EBITDA margin was 55%, up from 51% in the prior year. As we previewed on our last call, UFC's event mix had a favorable impact on Q3 results.
UFC held 12 total events in the period, three numbered events and nine Fight Nights, compared to 10 total events in the prior period, comprised of two numbered events and eight Fight Nights. Media rights revenue increased 66%, driven by a step-up in fees related to the Skydance deal, which began in January, as well as the two additional events. Live events revenue increased 83% due to continued strong demand, including a record gate for UFC 329 and the two additional events. Financial incentive packages also contributed to the increase, with meaningful FIPs from UFC 330 in Philadelphia, as well as our Fight Night events in Abu Dhabi, Serbia, Arizona, and Oklahoma City. Partnerships revenue increased 29%, driven by the addition of new partners and higher renewals from existing partners across multiple categories, as well as the favorable event calendar.
Consumer products licensing revenue increased 51%, demonstrating the ever-increasing appeal of the UFC brand, with higher royalties across numerous licensees. EA Sports UFC 6 has been a catalyst, achieving record financial and engagement metrics for the franchise. Adjusted EBITDA reflects the increase in revenue, partially offset by an increase in expenses. Expenses primarily reflected an increase in athlete, production, and other event-related costs, most notably the impact of an additional numbered event and Fight Night event, as well as UFC 329, which had a higher cost profile compared to other numbered events. Margins increased approximately 400 basis points year-over-year in the quarter, and we continue to expect meaningful enhancement in the UFC margin profile in the fourth quarter and for the full year. WWE generated revenue of $399 million in the quarter, down 1%. Adjusted EBITDA was $217 million, up 5%.
Adjusted EBITDA margin was 54%, up from 52% in the prior year. As previewed on our last call, WWE's event mix had a notable impact on Q3 results. WWE held one main roster premium live event compared to four in the prior year period, which included the launch on ESPN with Wrestlepalooza. Despite the unfavorable event mix, partnerships revenue increased 28%. As expected, we saw significant acceleration in growth compared to the first half of 2026, with performance driven by SummerSlam, as well as new partnerships and renewals across multiple categories. Media rights revenue increased 3%, primarily reflecting higher fees across WWE programming, most notably the ESPN agreement, partially offset by lower revenue recognition related to the three fewer PLEs in the quarter. Live events revenue decreased 30%, primarily due to fewer PLEs in the period, as well as a decrease in ticket sales for SummerSlam.
Consumer products licensing revenue increased 13%, driven by higher royalties for video games and trading cards compared to the prior year. We continue to deliver growth in this area at both WWE and UFC by executing multi-property deals for these iconic brands. Adjusted EBITDA reflected the decrease in revenue more than offset by a decrease in expenses. Expenses decreased primarily due to lower production, talent, and other event-related costs, reflecting the lower PLE count. As with UFC, we expect WWE margins will increase meaningfully in Q4 and for the full year. Shifting now to our IMG segment. We generated revenue of $391 million, an increase of 16%. Adjusted EBITDA was $116 million, an increase of 89%. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 30%, up from 18%. Results included the favorable impact of the FIFA World Cup and On Location. As Mark highlighted, this event was a massive success.
In the third quarter, we recorded approximately $45 million of Adjusted EBITDA related to the World Cup. For the full year, we recorded approximately $90 million of Adjusted EBITDA for this event, meaningfully exceeding our estimate of approximately $75 million. At the IMG business, the integration of IMG's partnerships and marketing sales team into TKO's global partnerships organization was on full display. Revenue increased over the prior year due primarily to new marketing and distribution deals for tennis and soccer, most notably the US Open, Golf Cup, and FIFA World Cup. These increases were partially offset by the absence of revenue from the biennial Ryder Cup event. Adjusted EBITDA primarily reflect the increase in revenue, as expenses were essentially flat compared to the prior year.
Expenses primarily reflected the impact of the FIFA World Cup and On Location, and biennial events at the IMG business, such as the inclusion of the Golf Cup and Solheim Cup, offset by the absence of the Ryder Cup. Corporate and other generated revenue of $61 million, a decrease of $2 million. Adjusted EBITDA was -$63 million, an improvement of $12 million compared to the prior year. The decrease in revenue was primarily driven by a decline in boxing-related revenue due to a one-time benefit recognized in 2025 from the initial tranche of our equity vesting in Zuffa Boxing. The decrease was partially offset by an increase in PBR revenue. Adjusted EBITDA reflected lower expenses, primarily personnel and other operating costs, partially offset by the decrease in revenue. Now moving on to our capital structure. In the third quarter, we generated $450 million in free cash flow.
Our free cash flow conversion of Adjusted EBITDA was 81%. We ended the quarter with $4.647 billion in debt and $631 million in cash and cash equivalents, in addition to $959 million of restricted cash. At quarter end, net leverage was two times based on net debt of $4.016 billion and LTM Adjusted EBITDA of $2.037 billion. As you've heard me say before, maintaining a robust and sustained capital return program remains a top priority. Year to date, we've returned in excess of $1.6 billion of capital to equity holders through our dividend and share repurchases. On September 30th, we made a cash dividend payment from TKO OpCo of approximately $150 million, or $0.79 per share. We intend to continue funding our dividend with cash flow from operations or cash on hand.
Regarding share repurchases, as Mark noted, given the strength of our balance sheet and what we continue to believe is a dislocation in our stock price relative to its intrinsic value, we expect to be aggressively buying back our stock. In October 2024, we announced a $2 billion repurchase authorization that we intended to complete within three to four years. In May of this year, we upsized the authorization to $3 billion. We've now completed buybacks under our original $2 billion authorization, well in advance of the original timeline, and we intend to use cash on hand along with new debt to complete buybacks under the remaining authorization. Regarding our outlook, as announced in our press release, we are raising our full year 2026 guidance for revenue and Adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter in a row.
We are now targeting revenue of $5.79 billion-$5.83 billion, and Adjusted EBITDA of $2.295 billion-$2.315 billion. This reflects an increase of $10 million and $15 million respectively at the midpoint of the ranges as compared to the prior guidance issued in August. The increase is based on strong operating performance across all of our businesses for the first nine months of the year and our anticipated performance for the remainder of the year. Regarding our event calendar and cadence, as Mark noted, we continue to closely monitor developments in the Middle East. Our full year outlook assumes the slate of events scheduled in the region, including a WWE PLE and two UFC Fight Nights, move forward as planned. If we're unable to stage these events, our current outlook would be impacted.
As we've said consistently, our financial performance is subject to quarterly fluctuations inherent in our operations, most notably related to the timing of our live events and the mix of locations, venues, and cards. Therefore, we manage the business with a focus on full year performance and believe results are best evaluated on that basis. With that, I want to highlight a few notable items looking forward to the fourth quarter. At UFC, the current calendar for the fourth quarter is expected to include 10 live events, including four numbered events. This is comparable to the prior year period. With respect to FIPs, the mix of live events in the quarter will favorably impact results. UFC 333 in Abu Dhabi and the upcoming Fight Night in Qatar both carry meaningful financial incentive packages, as did similar events we hosted in those markets in Q4 of last year.
The fight night scheduled to take place in Saudi Arabia in early December also carries a significant FIP. With respect to media rights revenue, results will continue to reflect the step-up from the Skydance deal. At WWE, the timing of live events in the quarter is expected to favorably impact results. The Q4 schedule has four Premium Live Events compared to two in the prior year. Live events revenue will reflect the increase in the number of events, including meaningful FIPs for Crown Jewel in Riyadh and Wrestlepalooza in Perth. With respect to WWE partnership revenue, we expect full year revenue growth in excess of 20%. As Mark articulated, this implies approximately 50% year-over-year growth in the fourth quarter. With respect to media rights revenue, results will reflect the favorable increase in total nights of main roster PLE programming.
At the IMG segment, we expect healthy revenue growth and positive Adjusted EBITDA. The performance is expected to be driven by On Location, with revenue growth primarily coming from hospitality sales for the Eternal City Tip-Off event in Rome and an increase in international NFL games. Olympic activity is anticipated to have a net favorable impact on Adjusted EBITDA as costs ramped in Q4 last year in preparation for the Milano Cortina Olympic Games. The absence of these expenses will more than offset continued spend in Q4 of this year to support our ongoing sales efforts for LA28. In terms of free cash flow, while we have not given formal guidance, we continue to target a free cash flow conversion rate in excess of 60%, normalizing for the impact of net payments related to the World Cup and UFC's rights deal with Skydance.
With all that, and given all we've delivered in 2026 and our growth strategy for the years ahead, we remain extraordinarily bullish on TKO's long-term outlook. I'll now turn the call back to Seth.
Thanks, Andrew. Operator, we're ready to open the call for questions.
We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Your first question comes from the line of Stephen Laszczyk with Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hey, great. Thanks for taking the questions. Mark, maybe to start, and just given all the focus on the Middle East over the last couple of weeks, would just be curious to get your thoughts. I appreciate the intent to host the remaining events this year, but to get your thoughts on how we should be thinking about the risk if the conflict does intensify from here. Just to be curious if you could speak more about the contingencies in place and really just how investors should be thinking ultimately about the revenue or EBITDA that could be at risk if these events couldn't be hosted as planned.
Thanks, Stephen. Look, I would tell you that the risk is extremely minimal. I think we've endured the tough climb thus far this year, right? We've had no events interrupted. We've staged all of our events in the Middle East flawlessly. We have three events left this year, one being November 7th with the Crown Jewel, which should be a big one for us. We are all systems go. I would just say further, vice president comes out today and says, "It's very clear voters have spoken, and they've obviously spoken with their votes, and we need to get this conflict in Iran wrapped up." So just a week ago, they're talking about dropping more bombs, and now they're talking about wrapping it up. Who knows what's real or what's true? But we're just proceeding forward with our partners as if these events will go off without a hitch.
I would just add, for those of you that are concerned about if this extends further, does this put WrestleMania, which is in Saudi next year, at risk? I would just tell you, it's in no more risk than it ever was, given that the world is an unpredictable place. But we have already been paid half upfront and received the funds from our partners in Saudi. If and when our event ever had to be moved, because it would never be canceled, be moved, we will certainly and definitely see payment on the other half. So come rain or shine, we're getting the other half payment. So we're sitting in a good place. As far as contingency goes, it's a long list of cities, primarily in the U.S., that we would move a WrestleMania to.
Of course, you wouldn't get the FIPs, Stephen, because it would be last minute, but nonetheless, we'd get the sellout. We have cities lining up, kind of raising their hands, standing, willing, ready, and waiting, and we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. But frankly, we're not concerned.
Great. Thanks for that. Then, Mark, a month or two ago, you made the remark that the market might be underestimating the amount of growth that's possible for the business in 2027. Was just curious if there was any more color you could maybe offer on the drivers behind some of that growth that you had in mind, and if it is possible to achieve, say, like high single digit or low double digit EBITDA growth next year. What are some of the building blocks you think investors might be underappreciating at the moment, in order to get to those levels of growth?
Yeah, look, I think that some of the story is definitely being taken for granted just because we've been a consistent beat-and-raise story. It's not easy to do that. We've got a best-in-class management team that's laser-focused and an exceptional track record of monetizing the brand and fully leveraging the business. We're not about to give 2027 guidance at this point. You know most of the revenue drivers. We are going to spell out in great detail how we believe we will capitalize on all of our growth drivers at Investor Day, and I think Andrew can fill you in on kind of some of our plan for that Investor Day as it stands now. It will be in the first quarter, likely in March, but as I mentioned in my prepared comments, we haven't locked in on a date just yet. Andrew?
Thanks. Yeah, a couple of things, Stephen. The bottom line here is we're just laser-focused on building upon the operational momentum we saw through the first nine months of this year, and the bullish nature or thoughts we have in our business as evidenced by a second consecutive quarter of increased full-year guide. Mark alluded to the fact that we're not going to be providing formal guidance for 2027 until our Q4 call in February, but rest assured, we're deep into planning and budgeting for next year, with a focus on driving revenue and Adjusted EBITDA through margin expansion and free cash flow conversion across our entire portfolio, despite the obvious absence of the quadrennial events at On Location and the incremental spend we anticipate as we ramp up further for LA28.
That being said, as it relates to Investor Day, preparations have begun. At that day, we look to look past 2027 and articulate our plans for the long-term growth trajectory across each of our revenue streams. As it relates to partnerships, Mark alluded to the fact that we may revisit that number. At Investor Day, we will talk about how we are leveraging technology and innovative go-to-market strategies to continue to fuel category expansion, monetizing commercial inventory, and deliver additional value for our partners. As it relates to live events, a double click on data analytics, ticket yields, volumes, and progress that we are making on our financial incentive pipeline and expansion into new markets, because I can assure you that we are making real meaningful progress there. As it relates to consumer products licensing, an often overlooked but a continual strong story there.
How have licensing deals across our brands continue to build on the strength of the rest of our revenue verticals? One topic that we know the market is eager for us to give a little bit more insight into is UFC's international media rights. Recent momentum in this vertical only bolsters our confidence in this opportunity, and we fully anticipate providing a long-term view on international media rights for UFC. Then finally, of course, our plan to scale Zuffa Boxing and capital allocation, which we, through our press release and prepared remarks, doubled down on today. Look, we are excited. There is more to come in due course, but now we are focused on finishing the year.
Thank you, Stephen.
Your next question comes from the line of Brandon Ross with LightShed Partners. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. If there was anything at all in the release that raised an eyebrow this quarter, I think it was the lower SummerSlam revenue this year versus last. That came after the WrestleMania tickets sales were a little lower this year also, and there's been some stuff written about 30% off seats for Money in the Bank and Survivor. Is there a trend here that you're somehow hitting a ceiling on live events at WWE, or is this just specific venues or markets for this year?
I'm glad you asked. I actually can't believe how much these wrestling trades are read, so hats off to those that are providing such extensive coverage. Look, there's nothing here. These are ghosts. I'll remind you, WrestleMania was down in Vegas as planned. That's how we internally forecast it. First of all, Vegas is down overall, and it doesn't help that we're changing the names of lakes from Lake Ontario to Lake America, whatever else it is. We're doing everything we can to piss off our friendly neighbors in Canada. Of course, Canada has been a large contingent that is down in terms of attendance and visitation in Vegas. But we planned for it to be down, not just because of that, but because we went to Vegas the year before, and we hadn't been to Vegas with WrestleMania for years to come.
The euphoria of that, you just weren't going to get a repeat. Nonetheless, it was a strong event, an extremely profitable event, a well-attended event. I'd do it again six ways to Sunday, and there was nowhere else we were going to have it where it was going to be more successful. But again, we planned for it to be down, and it actually beat our estimates. Same with SummerSlam. You're not going to do in Minneapolis, Minnesota in two days what you did in New York, New Jersey. It's just a different DMA. But as we've always said, and we remain consistent, we don't make all of our decisions on just maximizing profitability.
It's about what's best for our fan, it's about what's best for our brand, it's about what's best for our audience, it's about what's best for viewership, and it's about what's best for our media partners. Going back to the Midwest was important to us, and Minneapolis is a strong market and performed extremely well in a stadium. So we're proud of that. I would just say, I don't usually like to give you notes, Brandon, from the current quarter. These calls are about obviously reporting on last quarter.
But just to keep this timely and I think put it in perspective, look, in terms of the strength of the WWE fan base, the engagement, the audience numbers, we tell you all the time, and I had comments in prepared remarks, that week in and week out, globally, we are in the top 10 on Netflix in 20 to 30 markets per week, usually closer to 30. So viewership and engagement very strong there. SmackDown doing really well for Versant. NXT delivering for The CW. Our PLEs, especially with ESPN now having that YouTube TV deal done, doing really well even on afternoon days. Remember, Crown Jewel will be up against college football in a weekend afternoon number, yet ESPN is still optimistic, encouraged, and bullish by what they are seeing from advanced numbers.
Then I would say further on just this past week, we had Raw in Brooklyn at Barclays. On that same Monday night, you had a massive matchup between the Seattle Seahawks, the Super Bowl champions, and the Chicago Bears, who are on fire and a great team. I am not from Chicago, or I should say full disclosure, I guess. Anyway, you had that, and you had a game at Madison Square Garden with the Knicks and the Nets. Still, despite that, we had our highest gate ever at the Barclays Center. October has been more of the same. on October 9, we had our highest grossing WWE event ever in Lafayette, Louisiana. On October 10, we had our highest grossing non-WrestleMania event ever in New Orleans. On October 12 in Bossier City, Louisiana, we had the highest grossing WWE event ever in market.
On October 15, Winnipeg, we had the highest grossing WWE event ever in the market. On the 16th in Honolulu, our highest grossing WWE event ever in the market. Ontario, California, much of the same on October 23. Raw in Fresno, California on October 26. Then we rounded it out on October 30, the day before Halloween, in Charleston, West Virginia, where we had the highest grossing WWE event ever in the market. So engagement is strong, viewership is strong, and business is good at WWE.
Okay. Then very quickly, the Skydance deal is now closed. What unique things become possible with access to that whole portfolio?
Great question. Look, I covered some of this in prepared remarks, but we are in conversations as we speak with Skydance about the best way to maximize audience across the Skydance platforms. We have a great partnership with the entire team there. I used to work with David Berson, who is the head of Skydance Sports, from our days at ESPN. He is super creative. We will be maximizing HBO, TNT, Paramount+, CBS, all in the name of expanding eyeballs, expanding viewership, growing audience, and increasing engagement. We are fully aligned strategically with Skydance, and frankly, they have made a huge investment in the UFC, and we want to see that we help them maximize their returns.
Thanks very much.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Sean Diffley with Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Great. Thanks very much, team. Two, if I may. Nice to see the acceleration in the WWE partnership line as you had telegraphed. I was hoping you could unpack for us some of the drivers in terms of new partners versus price ups, and any verticals where you feel like you're still under-penetrated. On UFC, I was hoping you could touch on the recent reset in fighter pay. How should we think about balancing athletes getting better compensated versus your ability to drive further margin expansion? Andrew, I think you said you still expect meaningful margin enhancement in 4Q and beyond, but just flesh that out a little further. Thank you.
Great. Look, in terms of talent pay, I think in Q2, we came out and we talked about level-setting investment in talent and that being flowing through our financial statements for the balance of the year, and that's what you've seen. I think we've taken, given the step-up in the Paramount deal, increases across the board, whether they be through bonuses that we articulated earlier on in the year or an investment in top-to-bottom talent, new roster talent, and those that are coming up through our Contender Series development programming. I don't think there's a [re-thrub]. I don't think that you're going to be in a position or we're going to be in a position as we look forward to the balance of the year or 2027, where incremental athlete compensation is going to be required, which would impact our margins.
As it relates to WWE partnership revenue, look, as Mark articulated, and I think in both of our prepared remarks, Q3 was indicative of us re-accelerating. If you thought there was a deceleration story in Q1 and Q2, with Q3 benefiting even despite three fewer PLEs to the extent of 30% growth. We anticipate Q4 to be up 50% over the prior year Q4, somewhat benefiting from two additional main roster PLEs versus Q4 in 2025. Look, there's a lot to unpack in there. There are categories that we articulated, but the growth came from significant investment in SummerSlam in the quarter, new inventory that we're selling, inclusive of some of the media that we have on ESPN, that we retain commercial inventory in that deal, and then new products and technologies as developed in-house.
Look, we're fairly bullish top to bottom on partnerships, and any indication of a slowdown, I think we've demonstrated that not to be the case.
Look, I will just tell you, Sean, if you are betting on events and experiences, right, in this AI era, continuing to grow and expand and be in demand, then you are betting on TKO. I had a great meeting this morning with one of our partners, Michael Rubin, who runs Fanatics, and he is talking about the great success they are having with sponsors in Fanatics Fest, which is big brands trying to reach people in multi-sensory environments, hard-to-reach demos, masses engaging with advertisers. We do that all day, as Andrew pointed out. We do it in arena, we do it through social, we do it through our media partners, and we do it from a brand perspective, even in the grocery aisle. So, we are feeling really good about our progress and our trajectory as it relates to global partnerships revenue.
Not just the target we put out there, but the potential upside that exists that we will discuss at Investor Day in March.
Thanks very much.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of David Karnovsky with JP Morgan. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hey, thanks. Mark, WWE's partnership with Saudi Arabia started in 2018. I think it was initially announced for 10 years. Just curious how you're thinking about the relationship, your events in the region, just maybe as the original term comes to an end. Then just staying on this topic, maybe this is more for Andrew. For WrestleMania in 2027, I don't know if you could frame the event at all in terms of kind of the potential FIP Mark mentioned relative to your normal fee in that country, how to think about attendance, right, either locally or from tourism, and then just like what the kind of sponsorship impact is, just given it's a non-U.S. location. Thank you.
Look, I'll tell you that our partners in Saudi have been stupendous. Turki Alalshikh, Dr. Rakan, I mean, we are in conversations with them almost on a daily basis. They're staging boxing events, they're staging WWE events, they're staging UFC events, they're staging for Dana White and his investment in Power Slap, they're staging Power Slap events. I mean, they fill these stadiums, they market our brand. We've got an unbelievable WWE Superstore. I actually couldn't be more thrilled with the partnership in its current form and what I know is still to come. From an FIP perspective, very active right now. We are in conversations with multiple cities across Europe. We're in conversations with multiple cities across Central Asia. Really optimistic at some of the numbers I'm seeing there, albeit not done yet.
Andrew, myself, Dean Garfield, who runs government relations for our company, best in the business, and Lawrence Epstein at the UFC, we have just returned from a trip to Africa where we are discussing staging our first-ever UFC event. So, more to come on that. Then Ari and I are headed out to Abu Dhabi in the next couple of weeks because we are in the midst of a discussion on an extension of our deal with the team in that region. This, of course, coming on the heels of our highest-grossing event ever in Abu Dhabi in UFC 333 just a couple weeks ago. So, really in a good place, I think. I'm also pretty bullish about some conversations that Nick Khan is having about bringing WWE to Tokyo next year. So, more to come.
No deal is done, but the runway is open and we have clearance.
Unpacking a few more specifics on WrestleMania XXVII. While we cannot give or will not give specific event economics, I will tell you there are no KPIs in the agreement on visitation. Our partners in Saudi at the GEA do retain the box office. That does not inure to our benefit, unlike some of the other models that we are seeing now that the FIP effort has been developed more as we go to market. We get paid. As Mark alluded to, we received half our fee already. But despite where folks come from or what that sellout looks like in terms of demos, we are getting paid. That is number one. Number two, on the partnership side, this is an event actually that was legislated in our deal with ESPN and will actually be U.S. Prime for a WrestleMania PLE.
In terms of the media value, we are very excited that we will be able to sell through to our existing partners that will get exposure as if this were a regular way PLE. May start just a bit earlier than some of the other PLEs, but no issue on the partnership side. We will be working closely with our partners on selling some local partnerships, which we would share some revenue with them. Otherwise, nothing to be concerned about there.
I think we benefit. There is a full slate of numbered matchups this weekend in college football, a big ranking weekend. Having all of that, those games around us in the afternoon and then into prime time is a good story for us. The only other thing, DK, I would mention is our ability to add more events, and we get asked about that. There are no limitations, and obviously our partners would like to see us bring in more inventory. But I cannot say enough about this The Walt Disney Company, Walt Disney World Orlando Resort event we are having on December 14th. This is such a win-win, and it just speaks to the strength of our partnership, right? It is creating a new event. It is John Cena. It has our great superstars, but then also gives great exposure and stage to our NXT upcoming superstars.
We'll have two sellout events. Ticket sales obviously flows through to us, and then these great merchandise partnerships, including with Fanatics, tied around the Avengers. I mean, the belts that Nick Khan and his team have developed, just extraordinary. These are going to sell like hotcakes. So we're really thrilled with that, and we think we're going to push heads in beds, which is what's important to The Walt Disney Company. And if it proves out, no reason we can't do more of these. Shanghai, Paris, Anaheim, you name it. A lot of great opportunity and a lot of great willing and creative partners like The Walt Disney Company. One more?
Operator, let's take one more question, please.
Your final question comes from the line of Peter Supino with Wolfe Research. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Good evening. A question on boxing, please. As you think about your Zuffa business plan, breaking it down into the near to medium term, what are a few things that are the most important building blocks to accomplish just to advance the business plan? Maybe the question is for 2027. And then, what are the things you worry about the most? How might this not work out? Thank you.
Look, Peter, boxing, our initiatives are ahead of schedule. You have heard us say that before. We are gaining meaningful traction on the live event side as we have started in the quarter moving events more frequently out of the Apex in Vegas to other cities, namely New York and London, et cetera. So, taking this product on the road and introducing our version of boxing to new customers through live events is important to us, and you will see more of that as we go into 2027. Obviously, our two strong media rights relationships with both Skydance and Sky will continue to be areas that we will work with them to invest in to enhance the in-home experience of our product.
Most importantly, our continuing to build our roster and getting behind personalities and human interest and leveraging social platforms similar to how we have done to build storylines for UFC and WWE, such that we will be able to get some of those organic moments that will be unique to our ecosystem. The focus is going to be on talent and creating new talent and household names. So, that is where we are spending a vast majority of our time. If it is one out of the multiple things that we are talking about, that is most important right now.
Look, Peter, the challenge is with any sport, whether you are already mainstream like UFC and WWE, or you are new kid on the block. You have got to build stars. You have got to build storylines. You have got to give people reasons to watch and buy tickets. You have got to build rivalries. That takes time. It is a fragmented marketplace, not just sports, but for the entertainment eyeball.
Not to mention the fact that most consumers want to just get out and not necessarily sit in front of their TV set. So, that is the challenge you have. I think we are making great strides in terms of signing up the fighters, in terms of signing up marketing partners, in terms of having the right media distribution platforms as our partners, in terms of having Dana White and Nick Khan leading this. You are not going to get a better team doing that.
We are sitting in a good position. I think it will always be hard for investors to, at least in the early going, to model it because we do not break it out, because we do not have majority. But one day we will, and I think people will be pleasantly surprised. It is a lot more expensive to go out there and try to find and bite off and buy some other league to add to your portfolio. We are doing it efficiently, we are doing it with expertise, and we are doing it organically, without having to write a massive check upfront.
That's exciting. Thank you, guys.
Thank you.
All right. Well, thank you, everyone, for joining us on today's call and for your interest in TKO. Operator, you can conclude the call.
This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.