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Ryan: Yep, there's definitely strong growth in, in that industry. Something that, that is coming up a lot is just competition in MMA, in the MMA space, and just curious to get your take if the PFL's recent acquisition of Bellator, if that changes the dynamics at all.
Shapiro: Yeah, look, I have great respect. I'm not being politically correct. I think, any entrepreneur that goes out there and launches a a sports property that gets a chunk of audience, good for them. Can they turn it into a profitable business long term, sustainable with big lifts? That's obviously the challenge. It's amazing what Dana White has done over the last 25 plus years. He took a struggling brand, a struggling property, a struggling sport. It wasn't, legal anywhere. For that matter, and and turn it into a mainstream major sports property that's hard to do, but I'm excited because I think a rising tide lifts all boats. So PFL and Bellator coming together, it's good for the sport. It's good for MMA. It's good for, ultimately kind of the media rights equation. I like the idea of having more MMA on ESPN. That helps us. Often they serve as a lead in and they're good competition. But, make no doubt about it, they are the B Squad.
Ryan: Maybe on the international side, how have some of the, your recent renewals performed, and maybe your outlook there, and I guess any opportunities around bundling rights across the WWE and UFC?
Shapiro: That's really when folks ask about the bundling rights opportunity, Ryan, I would say I'll put aside my, aforementioned comments on w. Network and U. F. C. Because I do think there's an opportunity there. There's a kindling for the most part, our leverage and our strategy around media rights and bundling these together will play out internationally. Not so much domestically. These are hefty prices domestically, and it's a lot for any one buyer to take down. Two entire properties or even subsets of those properties. Internationally, different story, right? Different cycles every year, a different region or a different country is coming up for renewal and we have a lot of opportunity to pair these two properties together and take them to market. Keep in mind, in most of these countries where there are also dueling competitors, both streaming and linear, folks trying to keep the linear. Platform going while the iceberg is melting a little bit at the same time where the streaming opportunity is growing, in an insatiable speeds. So, it really plays into our favor, the timing right now where we're coming up year to year for the UFC side, Poland, India, Bulgaria, and on the WWE side, We've got Canada coming up, which we've just renewed on the UFC, so we feel really good about that and then, each year we'll, there, there are other territories or major territories on the horizon, and India will be coming up for WWE as well in the next few years.
Ryan: Great. Maybe if we could shift over to the live events portion of the business. Just curious to get your view on the state of consumer spending here from your viewpoint and what do you forward bookings look like for some of your bigger events?
Shapiro: Look, inflation is still a problem in this country, but from an experienced economy perspective it's just, we're just flat out not seeing it, we, for the UFC last quarter, we had six sellouts and set a whole mess of records from from on our pay per view events at the gate especially here in New York. We now have, one, two, three, and four, we have The highest grossing events that have ever taken place in Madison Square Garden. There's something to be said for that. That's a certainly a sign and a trend in the right direction. Beyond that, just Saturday night, we had an event in Austin and it was a Fight Night, not a pay per view, and it's the, highest grossing sports event ever at the Moody Center. And keep in mind the Moody Center has only been there for a few years, but it's the highest grossing fight night we've ever had domestically. So that's a that's a harbinger of kind of what we're seeing. We're seeing premium prices on the ticket, per caps. We're seeing our premium packages sell out from a non location perspective. These are folks that aren't just looking to buy a ticket to the fight, they're looking to buy a ticket to the weigh in, or meet Dana White, or meet the fighters, or take a picture with the fighters, any kind of exponential add-on they can get. We're seeing sold out shows and the yield just continues to go North. Now that speaks a lot to the popularity of UFC fights because that's again, not a pay per view card in Austin, that's just a regular fight night. That is the brand, that's just a measurement of the 600 plus fighters we have at UFC. The best in the world fight in the UFC and you can see them, each and every week, whether it's a pay per view or it's a fight night you can get a piece of them. With the Dana White Contender Series, it's really picking up steam on ESPN and the rating is going up there. We think the pipeline is very strong and what you'll see from a live event standpoint, we'll continue for a while.
Ryan: Just curious to get your take on, whether you see bigger opportunity around increasing the number of volume events, maybe having more fight night events, audiences, or is it around pricing and driving more of them?
Shapiro: It's a little, all that, look, WWE. Just as an example, though, let's remember they have over 300 events a year with 170 televised. So there's probably, while all those other fights, there's a reason to have them, those cards, those, or excuse me, those Superstar events. On WWE, while there's a reason to have them because it's good for the brand, we're building audience, we're putting them on in C and D Counties, so we're really stretching the brand and we're amassing a greater array of eyeballs from all demos, so it's good for our long term growth. From a margin perspective, they are dilutive. So there's probably an opportunity as we go through our efficiencies and our synergy opportunities to cut back on some of those non televised events, which of course will push our margin up. So we're going through that exercise now on the UFC side. I would, or let's say WWE, let's stay there for one more second. I'll just tell you when you talk about the experience economy there, we just put WrestleMania 40 on sale right in Philadelphia and 24 hours later we're sold out.
[Note from Mike: Wrestlemania 40 has NOT sold out as of this writing.]
The highest per cap we've seen in our Survivor Series, which took place in November in Chicago across the board, I got the report card the next morning. It was like, I wish all business ran this way. Merch was up. Ticket per cap is up. Ratings were up. Sponsorship was up. Local sponsorship was up. Our premium experiences were up insanely up to it. It's it's a good place to be if you're in the WWE game.
Then back On the UFC side, we continue to see the same opportunities and an opportunity to add more fights beyond the Dana White Contender Series, to your point, beyond the pay per view, beyond the 42, not just waiting for when we go to market. There's an opportunity in our ESPN deal right now to add more cards and work cards, and we're exploring that right now.
Ryan: Any rough framework on how many more?
Shapiro: We've done some pay per views where we've done, one extra year. We'll have a year of 13 or maybe even 14. There's probably an opportunity to do that on a regular run basis, adding another one or two, but I think there's certainly more, and I know ESPN would love that, and we'd love it from an event perspective, and remember, we sell the international, not just the rights, the international pay per view, so there's an opportunity to get a lift there as well. It's all part of the puzzle that we're putting together for the new TKO.
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