President Donald Trump’s plan to host cage fights on the White House lawn is expected to cost $60 million for UFC’s parent company, with them only recouping half that, for the controversial event — and that doesn’t even account for any blows struck by nature.
“The three big problems, as far as I am seeing right now, are rain, lightning and a ton of bugs,” Trump ally and UFC CEO Dana White recently told The Hollywood Reporter.
At a Rose Garden dinner last month, White said, the guests were swarmed by “clusters” of black flies, an experience he described as “brutal.” And with bright lights shining from giant, star-spangled metal arches over the octagon-shaped cage during Sunday night’s matches, “you’re going to have gnats, moths, maybe bats,” White said.
“I don’t know what the hell’s going to show up, but you know these are all the things that you have to think of leading up to this thing,” he added.
This is just one of the logistical costs for UFC to pull off Sunday’s fight night. White and Trump have long been close and the event marks the president’s 80th birthday. It’s also a spectacle that has people questioning the cost, purpose and construction of the ring at the White House. That hasn’t slowed UFC’s multi-million-dollar plan to honor Trump – though some have tried.
There’s a lawsuit filed by two Virginia residents seeking to block the event, which their lawyer, Public Integrity Project founder Brendan Ballou, described as a “corrupt use of our most sacred national monuments for private gain,” according to The Associated Press.
In a statement to The Independent, the White House called the court filing an “obstructionist, baseless, and dilatory” attempt to “prevent President Trump from hosting what will undoubtedly go down as one of the most historic sporting events in our Nation’s history during our semiquincentennial celebration.”
“This iconic event is no different than the various other White House-hosted events on the South Lawn and properly permitted events on the Ellipse and National Mall throughout the year,” the statement added.
The challenges appear to be par for the course when it comes to Trump’s plans to remake the nation’s capital, where the UFC’s “Freedom 250” event — scheduled on the president’s 80th birthday — will take place a stone’s throw from the demolished East Wing of the White House.
Trump wants to use the site for a massive, gilded ballroom to be funded with $400 million from donors, with the good government group Public Citizen reporting last week that 14 of those donors won a total of $50 billion in government contracts over the past six months.
A federal judge ordered a stop to above-ground work on April 16 in a ruling that is being appealed by the Trump administration, which argued last week that the project could only be blocked by Congress — where the president’s Republican Party controls both chambers.
Trump also wants to build a $100 million, 250-foot-tall triumphal arch on Washington’s Columbia Island traffic circle near Arlington National Cemetery, paid for with donations and at least $15 million in taxpayer funds.
A group of Vietnam War veterans has sued to block that project, which was the subject of a heated hearing held by the National Capital Planning Commission after it received what USA Today said were about 1,700 written public comments — virtually all opposed to Trump’s plan.
“It is nothing more than an ego arch to the current occupant of the White House. It’s a slap in the face to every veteran who is laid at rest, not only in Arlington but every national cemetery around the world,” Vietnam veteran Paul Anthony Romano III said during last Thursday’s hearing, according to the Daily Caller.
In February, the president and chief operating officer of UFC owner TKO Group Holdings told Wall Street analysts that the company would spend more than $60 million to stage the White House fights and expected to lose about $30 million, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“We will not be making money on America’s 250th anniversary,” Mark Shapiro said. “This in 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+, massive audience sampling for the UFC overall and Super Bowl-like earned media across the globe,” he added.
Last year, Paramount Skydance Corp. — which is run by David Ellison, son of billionaire Oracle founder and Trump supporter Larry Ellison — struck a $7.7 billion deal with the UFC, which generated an average of nearly 5 million views when it debuted on the streaming service Paramount+ in January, ESPN reported at the time.
That viewership set a record for an exclusive live event streamed by the service since its March 2021 launch.
Shares in TKO reached a 52-week high of $226.94 in early March but the stock was selling for about $206 a share on Wednesday.
The UFC event is set to take place against the backdrop of Paramount Skydance’s proposed $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros., which requires approval by the Justice Department and regulators including the Federal Trade Commission.
On Friday, Reuters reported that California, New York and other states were preparing to file a lawsuit within weeks to block the proposed merger on antitrust grounds.
White told The Hollywood Reporter that Trump, a personal friend since the early days of the UFC, suggested the idea for the White House fights during the UFC 309 event at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on November 16, 2024, days after voters reelected him.
“He leaned over to me and says, ‘We should do a fight at the White House,’” White said. “I said, ‘Yes, we should.’ I didn’t know what he meant…I was thinking maybe there’s some room that he’s thinking about where we’d have it. He’s like, ‘No, we’re gonna do it outside on the South Lawn.’”
UFC chief content officer Craig Borsari told The Hollywood Reporter that he thought White was kidding when he first told him about staging an event at the White House.
But White said that while Trump is “funny,” he’s not a “joke around guy.”
“Literally, when he says something, consider it done,” White said.
