TKO President Mark Shapiro Discussed Safety And Business Of WWE Crown Jewel At Town Hall
On Wednesday, TKO held a town hall with TKO President Mark Shapiro addressing employees.
A big topic of conversation was WWE Crown Jewel, which is set to take place in Riyadh on Saturday, November 7. There are safety concerns in Riyadh after the airport was attacked earlier this month, which left 13 dead. The US Embassy has issued multiple warnings to citizens not to travel to Saudi Arabia.
Speaking at the Town Hall (via POST Wrestling), Shapiro noted that shareholders were keeping an eye on the situation as TKO looks to hit its target goal for 2026.
“We have a lot of investors and analysts out there across the Wall Street community that are nervous that we’ll be able to pull off the year without any of our events being canceled. We’ve had investors dubious that we could close out this year without any hiccups, meaning events being canceled. You saw F1 and many events canceled given the global nature of our business. Well, so far, we’ve been lucky enough to not have any interruption. [I] [c]an’t guarantee that [we won’t have to cancel any events], but there’s not much we can do about that,” he said.
He stated that if the event had to be canceled, “it will certainly have an impact on our year in a very negative way.”
Though he noted the financial ramifications of the event, whether it goes forward or is canceled, he did address the safety concerns.
“I don’t want to talk out of both sides of my mouth here. We want to have the year we all envision we’ve all worked hard for. But if there is danger or further escalation of any of these conflicts that are going on, we will not hesitate to cancel those events, damned be our budget. So it’s certainly a balancing act. But the people part of it does come first in that. I know we’ve got a lot of big events coming up in the Middle East. We’re never putting anybody in harm’s way,” he said.
UFC has a Fight Night event set for December 5 in Riyadh. Zuffa Boxing has an event on November 14 in Riyadh. Canelo Alvarez, whom TKO isn’t involved with, is scheduled to fight Saturday night at the same venue as Crown Jewel.
