TKO Group Holdings is hard at work trying to grow its mature properties and establish its new ones, according to board member Nick Khan. But while he tracks key performance indicators, Khan is not on social media fretting about criticism directed toward WWE or Zuffa Boxing, he said at Wednesday’s CAA World Congress of Sports.
Khan, the former longtime CAA agent who now serves as president of WWE, spoke ahead of this weekend’s WrestleMania 42 at Allegiant Stadium, where he expects to approach gate records set last year but may fall just short of eclipsing them. “We think it’s going to get close to that record, but fingers crossed,” he said.
Khan spoke about growing up in the Las Vegas area in the 1970s and ’80s, where he watched the city’s main sports of UNLV basketball and boxing. He served as an usher during WrestleMania 9 at Caesars Palace. Asked what motivated him to get into law school and the sports industry, he replied simply: “I just didn’t want to be broke anymore.”
Khan started working at CAA in 2012 and represented talent there until he moved to WWE in 2020, when the company was still majority owned by the McMahon family. WWE later became part of the publicly traded TKO when it was formed in 2023.
The “hyper focus” for TKO at the moment is growing its existing businesses, Khan said, noting how the company is starting to find benefits from being able to scale across several properties in the combat and overall sports and entertainment space.
“The revenue and profitability of the company, the cost synergies, the revenue synergies between WWE and UFC in particular and now Zuffa Boxing are phenomenal, so if you want to do a sponsorship deal with one, maybe you have to do a sponsorship deal with all,” he said. “And we found that that leverage in the marketplace has worked quite well as it applies to venues, television deals or content deals and everything else.”
Asked by moderator Abe Madkour about whether TKO is interested in acquiring any more properties at this time, Khan said: “We’re going to stick with what we have for now and try to grow it out in the right way.”
While the U.S. remains a core focus for WWE, internationally derived revenue is becoming a growing slice of WWE’s coffers, Khan said, noting that WrestleMania will be held next year outside of North America for the first time when it travels to Saudi Arabia. Asked if he worries about the pushback WWE could get with decisions like that, Khan appeared unfazed.
“I have never read X or Twitter as it relates to our business and I’ve certainly never read it regarding me,” he said. “That is a vocal minority.”
Khan said he is copied on every complaint that comes into WWE’s personalized fan service, but the three guiding indicators for him all start with the letter ‘R”: Ratings, revenue and relevancy, a line he has used before.
“Some of the complaints are, ‘I didn’t like the match — you guys are pieces of shit.’ And I go, ‘OK, I got it.’ Some are, ‘Hey, we had an obstructed view.’ OK — we’ll have you come to our next show. People are allowed to complain, but we don’t adjust our business based on complaints. We adjust based on ratings, revenue, relevancy.”
