The Most Valuable Combat Sports Promotions 2024

For decades, boxing was the dominant combat sport as fighters like Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, and Evander Holyfield became household names.

To make the $11.3 billion value of UFC even more eyepopping, consider that Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta purchased UFC for just $2 million in 2001. Then in 2016, Endeavor bought the company for $4 billion, marking a 72% annual return each year the Fertittas held ownership.

In terms of pay, however, boxers are still making the bigger bucks, with Canelo Alvarez and Anthony Joshua both landing on Forbes’ Highest Paid Athletes List. No MMA fighters appeared on the 2023 list, although that may change going forward after a settlement in March that will require UFC to pay $335 million to former fighters who alleged the promotion restricted their ability to maximize earnings.

For MMA fighters looking to maximize their earnings outside UFC, its competitors have also made some significant moves recently. One of the fastest growing companies in combat sports is Singapore-based ONE Championship, which has raised more than $500 million in capital from funding rounds since 2014. ONE has focused on growing globally and has media deals that allow its product to reach more than 190 countries. Additionally, ONE has been seeking to grow its live events portfolio as well, having had a successful launch in the United States last year at a sold-out Denver event, then launching its first Qatar promotion earlier this year. The Qataris have also played a key role in One’s growth as a major player in its latest funding round.

Professional Fighters League (PFL) owner Donn Davis didn’t want to be the only MMA promotion left behind so last November he acquired rival Bellator after receiving a $100 million investment from the new arm of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), known as SRJ (and pronounced Surge). The acquisition of Bellator gave PFL a larger stable of fighters, in addition to the signings of social media star and celebrity boxer Jake Paul, and former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou.

While PFL is in direct competition with UFC, its structure is designed much like the four major North American sports leagues, with a regular season, playoffs, and eventual crowning of a champion at season’s end, and so far it is resonating with fans. In just its fifth year, PFL’s ratings increased 45% year-over-year on ESPN and ESPN+, with an average of 509,000 viewers per regular season event, roughly half of the average UFC event viewership.

Perhaps the biggest indicator that boxing, MMA and wrestling are achieving parity is how many fighters are blurring the lines. Among the most anticipated fights of the past decade was in 2017, when MMA star Conor McGregor laced up boxing gloves to square off against retired champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. More recently, heavyweight champion Tyson Fury defeated former former UFC champ Francis Ngannou last October in a controversial boxing match that many fans thought Ngannou had actually won. Five months later, in March, Anthony Joshua defended boxing’s honor by knocking out Ngannou in the second round.

The crossover is not limited to boxers and MMA fighters. Professional wrestling has a long history of bringing in fighters from other arenas, going all the way back to Muhammad Ali’s appearance at the first Wrestlemania in 1985. Former UFC champion Ronda Rousey had a five-year stint in WWE, which included four separate title runs during her time with the company. And professional wrestlers have also made the jump the other way—most notably Brock Lesnar’s multiple stints with UFC. Lesnar started his WWE career in 2002, before moving to UFC in 2008, where he almost immediately won the heavyweight championship.

Combat sports have also come a long way in the eye of the public—which once regarded MMA as human cockfighting. Today, ESPN broadcasts fight nights for UFC, PFL, and Top Rank Boxing. Additionally, top streaming sites such as Amazon Prime and Netflix have signed deals to carry Premier Boxing Championship and WWE’s Monday Night Raw, respectively. Fans, meanwhile, continue to fight it out in social media as to which brand is best.

Here are the most valuable combat sports promotion for 2024.

In recent years, MMA has caught up to the sweet science with Alex Pereira, Dustin Poirier, and Conor McGregor joining Canelo Alvarez, Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua as fighters who can headline cards that sell out arenas and get a million pay-per-view buys. Even professional wrestling—long derided as sports entertainment because it is scripted—has grown more formidable over the past decade. The 2019 addition of All Elite Wrestling (AEW) provided World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) with its first true rival since WWE purchased World Championship Wrestling in 2001.

With all three categories becoming more mainstream, MMA, boxing, and wrestling promotions are all fighting for much of the same audience and have been making a dash for cash to fuel growth. With the fight game getting bigger and the top promotions drawing real capital, the combat sports industry has become a winner’s game, as competitive outside the ring (or Octagon) as it is once the bell rings.

The most high-profile moment in the combat sports battle royale has been the merger and subsequent IPO of UFC and WWE—first and second on this inaugural list—under the name TKO Holdings in September 2023. To understand how big each of the companies were separately, consider this: UFC holds some 40 events annually, reaching more than 900 million households on television across 170-plus countries, while WWE stages more than 200 live events annually, with televised events reaching at least one billion people on a weekly basis in more than 180 countries. The two brands each had media rights revenue of over $800 million, more than triple the total revenue of all the other promotions on the list.