Who Owns the UFC?

The UFC is owned by TKO Group Holdings, a company listed on the New York Stock Exchange that also owns WWE. TKO is itself controlled by Endeavor, which holds around 61% of its voting power — and Endeavor was taken private by Silver Lake in March 2025. So a listed company controls the UFC, and a private equity firm controls that. Dana White runs it and does not own it. Ownership verified 6 September 2026.

Who owns Ufc?

Ultimate Fighting Championship is a business, not a members’ association or a league of independent clubs. It has an owner in the ordinary sense — unlike the NFL, whose 32 clubs own the league between them, as this site’s NFL profile sets out.

That owner is TKO Group Holdings, Inc., formed in 2023 to combine the UFC with World Wrestling Entertainment. TKO is publicly traded, so anyone can buy shares in the company that owns the UFC.

Dana White is the UFC’s president and its public face. He holds no controlling stake and never has — he was an executive under the previous owners and remains one now.

Ownership and control structure

The structure separates listing from control, in the pattern seen repeatedly on this site:

1. UFC — the promotion
2. TKO Group Holdings, Inc. — listed in New York, owns UFC and WWE
3. Endeavor — holds roughly 61% of TKO’s voting power
4. Silver Lake — the technology-focused private equity firm that took Endeavor private in March 2025

TKO’s public shareholders own a substantial share of the economics and cannot outvote Endeavor. Buying TKO stock buys exposure to the UFC’s profits, not a say in how it is run — the same distinction as the non-voting shares at Porsche and the beneficiary certificates at Spotify.

Key investors or controlling entities

Silver Lake sits at the top. It had been Endeavor’s largest shareholder for years before leading the take-private, which valued TKO at a reported $25bn at the time.

The Fertitta brothers, Frank and Lorenzo, who bought the UFC in 2001 and built it, sold out in 2016 and no longer hold it. Ari Emanuel, who led the acquisition through Endeavor and ran the group for years, stepped back as chief executive as part of the Silver Lake deal.

No fighter holds equity. That is a live issue in the sport: UFC athletes are contracted independent performers with no ownership stake and no union, which is one reason the company’s share of revenue has been litigated — the promotion settled antitrust claims brought by former fighters over its contracting practices.

How the organisation is structured

TKO owns both the UFC and WWE outright, plus IMG, On Location and Professional Bull Riders, which it acquired from Endeavor in a $3.25bn transaction completing in February 2025 — a sale between two entities under the same control, which is why it needed independent scrutiny.

Beneath that, the UFC operates as a single promotion: it contracts the fighters, owns the events, owns the film and video library, and licenses broadcast rights. Unlike boxing, where promoters, sanctioning bodies and broadcasters are separate, the UFC is all of those at once.

The organisation has no UK register presence relevant to ownership. Its British-registered companies exist to stage events here.

Ownership history

• 1993 — founded by Art Davie and the Gracie family with Semaphore Entertainment Group.
• 2001 — bought for a reported $2m by Zuffa, the Fertitta brothers’ company, with Dana White installed to run it.
• 2016 — sold to a group led by WME-IMG, later Endeavor, at a reported $4bn — at the time the largest transaction in sports.
• 2023 — merged with WWE to form TKO Group Holdings, Endeavor taking 51%.
• March 2025 — Silver Lake completes the take-private of Endeavor, TKO remaining listed.

The through-line is that the UFC has been bought and sold four times in thirty years while the same person has run it throughout — the clearest illustration in sport of the gap between control of a business and management of it.

Sources and verification

TKO Group Holdings is listed in New York and files with the Securities and Exchange Commission: its annual report and the Schedule 13D filings by Endeavor are the authoritative record of who holds what, and they are free to read.

Endeavor is now private and discloses far less than it did as a listed company, so the detail behind Silver Lake’s ownership is not public in the same way. The reported $2m, $4bn and $25bn figures are press and announcement values, not filings. No UK register establishes any of it. Companies House does not verify most filed information.