Mark Shapiro Talks WWE Crown Jewel At TKO Town Hall, Talks ‘Balancing Act’ Of Safety & Business

TKO President and COO Mark Shapiro addressed WWE Crown Jewel taking place in Saudi Arabia during a TKO employee town hall. POST Wrestling obtained audio of the town hall that took place over Zoom on Wednesday, and during the discussion Shapiro discussed the TKO events taking place in Saudi Arabia amid concerns about escalating tensions due to the Iran war.

Shapiro spoke on the call about the financial concerns as a publicly-traded company while also saying that if there is danger or further escalation, they “will not hesitate to cancell.” You can see the highlights below:

On Shareholders Watching the Situation:

“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… [if the event is canceled] it will certainly have an impact on our year in a very negative way.”

On the Safety Concerns:

“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.”