An earnings call held this week by TKO Group Holdings, parent company of the UFC, included sobering news.
The UFC lost $30 million staging its event at the White House. But first came an assertion.
Mark Shapiro, TKO Group’s president, said UFC Freedom 250, held on the White House South Lawn June 14
, "generated more than $1 billion in earned media value, the kind of exposure only a handful of events in the world can command."When the $30 million in losses came up again during the call, Shapiro cited "record-setting numbers" from earned media. Ari Emmanuel, the CEO of TKO Group, mentioned earned media when calling UFC Freedom 250 "a rousing success" despite the financial loss.
The UFC is about takedowns, knockouts and chokes. But this week it also
was about a financial metric used to reframe the costliest event in UFC history. Here's what to know about earned media and its role in TKO's characterization of the historic White House event's results.
"Earned media is public exposure through word of mouth, customer reviews, social media mentions, or media coverage resulting from your content or services' quality and relevancy," according to an article published by Harvard Business School.
There is no standard formula to calculate the value of earned media, but $1 billion is an eye-popping number.
"It looks good to your investors," said Michelle Lawless, vice president at Media Minefield, a public relations and social media agency in Minnetonka, Minnesota. "But I think the true measure and the way that we talk about it is what sort of impact is there to the business and the business's goals."
UFC Freedom 250 a 'once-in-a-lifetime stage'
As far back as February, Shapiro, TKO's president, said the company was preparing to lose $30 million on the White House event and that costs could exceed $60 million.
"I wanna be clear about something," Shapiro told The Hollywood Reporter. "We will not profit from the White House event independently. We will not be making money on America’s 250th anniversary. This is an investment for the long term. This is about earned media …
"We see this once-in-a-lifetime stage as a strategic investment to drive subscriber acquisition at Paramount+ (UFC’s streaming rights partner), massive audience sampling for the UFC overall, and Super Bowl-like earned media across the globe."
'Can the numbers get really inflated? Yes.'
Like most investments, though, returns for the UFC won't be immediate.
Kimberly Whitler, a professor of Business Administration at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, said she calculates the earned media value for Super Bowl ads every year.
"Here is how it generally works," Whitler explained by email. "A media monitoring company compiles every mention: articles, broadcast segments, social posts, clips. Each placement gets a reach/impression estimate (e.g., circulation, viewership, followers, estimated views).
"That reach is converted to a dollar figure by applying an equivalent ad rate; i.e., what it would cost to buy that same space as paid media. Sometimes a multiplier is applied on top, on the theory that earned coverage is more credible/trusted than an ad, so it's 'worth more' per impression. Then you sum it up."
Referring to the use of multipliers, Lawless of Media Minefield said, “Can the numbers get really inflated? Yes."
The UFC worked with Critical Mention, a UFC press release indicates. Critical Mention sells subscriptions to its licensed software that helps measure earned media value.
The cost of earned media
Earned media value often is referred to as free publicity because it’s not paid advertising. But an article published by Harvard Business School debunks the notion it’s free.
“For example, while your customers create earned media, content like influencer partnerships can be costly,’’ according to the article published by Harvard Business School.
UFC has an in-house marketing team and contracts with public relations agencies. PR firms can build earned media campaigns – for a fee.
'The business impacts'
Given that its numbers don't reflect an actual exchange of money, the UFC’s $1 billion earned media figure did not appear in TKO Group’s second-quarter earnings report.
“The earned media value is a third-party estimate of the dollar value of the media exposure for the event,’’ a UFC spokesman said in a statement provided to USA TODAY Sports. “In simple terms, it’s an illustrative metric of the significant publicity generated around UFC Freedom 250.’’
According to Whitler, the professor from Virginia, and Lawless, the PR executive from Minnesota, the financial benefit of earned media can be assessed. But Whitler wrote, "without the proprietary corporate data, it is difficult to know whether this 'worked.'"
For example, UFC CEO Dana White said merchandise sales for UFC Freedom 250 doubled the previous record for a single event. But he did not provide dollar figures. During the earnings call, TKO Group executives did disclose some specifics:
- The Paramount+ livestream drew 34 million viewers, part of a record-setting night for the subscription streaming service.
- Twenty-five new marketing partners were added to UFC’s roster, many signing multi-year or multi-event deals.
- The event strengthened UFC’s relationships with existing partners, including RAM and Crypto.com, and created a point of entry for new categories and partners, including Exodus, Andruel, Supersure, and Starlink.
"So that's where you'd say, 'Hey, show me the sponsorship deals. Show me the merchandise sales. Show me the ticket sales that followed, and let's look at that for the next six to 12 months and see where we are," Lawless said.
The earned media value scoreboard
WeArisma, billed as a "global influencer and social intelligence platform, published estimates of earned media value generated in 2025 by the three biggest U.S. sports leagues. The results:
- NBA: $4.98 billion
- NFL: $4.34 billion
- MLB: $2.01 billion
While the NBA, NFL and MLB generated those values over a 52-week period, according to WeArsima, the UFC generated its $1.1 billion figure over a single week: June 8-14, culminating with the fights livestreamed by Paramount+.
What experts say about UFC Freedom 250 earned media value
Jason Hershman is the founder of Point, a finance services company for industries including sports. In February, he addressed earned media value in an opinion piece about the true value of Super Bowl ads.
"Marketing will come back with impressions, social mentions and my personal favorite, 'earned media value,' which is Wall Street’s least favorite made-up metric," he wrote. "None of that counts."
What counts? "Revenue that wouldn’t have existed without the campaign, minus the cost to fulfill it,'' he wrote.
Whitler, the Virginia professor, said the quality of earned media matters, adding that $1 billion "of ineffective messaging doesn’t help a brand. (But) $100 million of effective messaging helps."
And Lawless, the PR executive, said, "This is where I go back to the publicity value doesn’t always align with the business benefit."
Will UFC Freedom 250's one-time boost in earned media result in a long-term boost to the company's bottom line? That question will only be answered in future earnings calls.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: UFC's White House event ended $30M in the red. Why leaders call it a success
