We’ve heard about declines in ticket sales, possibly troubled relationships with billion dollar media partners, and plenty of grumbling from fans online. But there’s also clearly still a lot of interest in WWE’s product — including from many of those critics. Show crowds still seem too excited to complain, or to be written off completely to audio “sweeteners”. And as part of TKO, they’re generating more money than ever from what it calls “financial incentive package” (you and I would just call it “the
money they get from local governments and Saudi princes to run events in their city, state, or Kingdom”).
TKO’s Q1 2026 reports — out today (May 6), and available to the public here — gave us a look at how all those factors have been translated into financial documents for investors and regulators, and produce more indications that WWE is bringing in a ton of money for TKO. The brand generated $475.7 million in total revenue for the quarter, a 22% increase over Q1 2025:
- Live events and hospitality drove much of that growth, increasing 62% year-over-year to $123.5 million from $76.3 million. That was largely due to the Royal Rumble being held in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (Wrestlenomics has estimated that Saudi Arabia pays roughly $50-55 million for each show WWE runs there, which the addition of a Saudi show to Q1 this year seems to validate once again). This also helped offset a likely decline in domestic ticket revenue.
- Media rights, production, and content rose 12% to $281.7 million, the benefit of having the ESPN and Netflix revenue coming in this year as opposed to Jan.-March 2025.
- Consumer products brought in $44.3 million, $6.3 million more that Q1 2025… and with only a month of Danhausen merch!
- Revenue from partnerships and marketing surprisingly only rose $600,000… but there’s still plenty of room on the mats for more ads.
Combining WWE with UFC, IMG, and TKO Group Holding’s other… holdings gave the parent company revenue of $1.597 billion in the first three months of the year, 26% more than the previous Q1.
Results like that also got WWE president Nick Khan a new deal to go with the one he announced for Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque after WrestleMania 42 last month. Revealed in an SEC filing along with today’s financials, Khan’s new deal runs through 2030. For this year, his base salary remains at $2 million (Khan ended up taking home $24.3 million last year with $11 million more coming from stock awards, and another $10 million in bonuses). The base salary increase to $3 million from 2027-2030. Khan’s eligible for 150% of his base in bonuses this year, and 200% for the remainder of the contract. He also received a “signing equity award” of $11 million in restricted stock that vests over four years, and another $5 million as a “special performance incentive” that’s linked to his Zuffa Boxing efforts. He’ll be eligible for annual equity awards of up to $7.5 million this year, and $8.5 million the subsequent four years.
Even given all that, we won’t ask why any of the wrestlers who all that revenue generation replies upon were asked/told to take less money from TKO than what they had signed deals for. We know reducing labor cost is another way TKO can continue to increase revenue, and perpetually increasing revenues seem to be the only thing Wall Street and pretty much anyone with power in the world cares about any more. We’re not even sure how we got here, but unless/until a massive societal change occurs — it’s where we are.
And we will say… that sucks.
