TKO Held Town Hall Meeting Addressing Events In Middle East Situation Update – Mark Shapiro Discussed Safety & Business Of WWE Crown Jewel 2026 Event

As noted before, TKO Group held a town hall meeting this past Wednesday for all of their employees via Zoom that included a discussion on the situation involving WWE’s upcoming Crown Jewel 2026 event this November and the ongoing volatile situation in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East.

Post Wrestling and Wrestlenomics’ Brandon Thurston reported that he obtained an audio recording of the town hall meeting from his sources. This was specifically in regards to TKO President and COO Mark Shapiro’s speech about WWE’s upcoming Crown Jewel event and his comments about the safety of everyone was “paramount” for TKO and WWE.

Thurston reported that this town hall Zoom meeting ran a little over one hour in length but only several minutes were dedicated to whether upcoming events in the Middle East would go on as scheduled.

Shapiro stated that shareholders were keeping an eye on the situation as TKO looks to hit its fiscal target goal for 2026.

“We have a lot of investors and analysts out there across the Wall Street community that are nervous that we’ll be able to pull off the year without any of our events being canceled. We’ve had investors dubious that we could close out this year without any hiccups, meaning events being canceled. You saw F1 and many events canceled given the global nature of our business. Well, so far, we’ve been lucky enough to not have any interruption. [I] [c]an’t guarantee that [we won’t have to cancel any events], but there’s not much we can do about that.”

Shapiro also stated that if WWE’s event had to be canceled, then “it will certainly have an impact on our year in a very negative way.”

Shapiro also gave comments addressing the safety concerns regarding WWE’s event and how TKO will not hesitate to cancel their upcoming events in the region if there is any danger or further escalation of any of the ongoing conflicts in the region.

“I don’t want to talk out of both sides of my mouth here. We want to have the year we all envision we’ve all worked hard for. But if there is danger or further escalation of any of these conflicts that are going on, we will not hesitate to cancel those events, damned be our budget. So it’s certainly a balancing act. But the people part of it does come first in that. I know we’ve got a lot of big events coming up in the Middle East. We’re never putting anybody in harm’s way.”