Sorry, I screwed up the paywall thing and blocked free subscribers from accessing the episode — which includes a free one-month subscription offer for free subscribers so…oops! Resending. What is the common link the UFC, Paramount, Manchester City, the Los Angeles Lakers, and the Los Angeles Dodgers all share?
They share ties to the same multi-billionaire world leaders who are pushing puny lower-class billionaires to the side for sports ownership.
This phenomenon has been building for a decade, and you can trace some of its roots to a 2009 meeting between Ari Emanuel and Khaldoon Al Mubarak of the UAE’s sovereign wealth fund, Mubadala. Connie Bruck’s 2021 New Yorker article titled Ari Emanuel Takes on the World was an eerie foreshadowing of things to come in global sport.
Ari Emanuel is bundling billionaires for global sport the same way he bundled millionaires for Hollywood Democrats: Egon Durban. Khaldoon Al Mubarak. David Ellison.
That is the focus of this week’s Mad Squabbles podcast for The MMA Draw.
There has been a month-long blizzard of media headlines regarding the Paramount/Warner Brothers Discovery merger and antitrust opposition to it. When you get down to it, what really matters to UFC fans? That’s our focus on this week’s podcast.
The role of the UFC in Paramount’s global expansion is far greater than you truly appreciate. Most importantly, the TKO empire has consolidated the world’s most elite billionaires in their own Super Billionaire League of ownership and control.
The Mark Walter story with the Lakers (and perhaps the Dodgers soon) highlights how quickly things are moving under the feet of billionaire sports owners. It’s why Scott Barrett’s Long Term Bull Thesis on TKO was one of the most important articles we’ve published at The MMA Draw.
You’ll find out exactly why on this week’s edition of The Mad Squabbles Show with Nate Wilcox & Zach Arnold.
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