WWE Crown Jewel Event In Saudi Still On Despite Iran War, TKO Exec Mark Shapiro Says, But Public Wants To “Get This Conflict Wrapped Up”

Mark Shapiro, president and COO of WWE parent TKO Group Holdings, says the wrestling circuit’s Crown Jewel event Saturday in Saudi Arabia is a firm go despite the ongoing war in nearby Iran.

The Red Sea Film Festival was canceled last month, along with other cultural and entertainment events, as bombings targeted Saudi sites in an escalation of the fighting. Crown Jewel was recently moved to an indoor arena from an outdoor stadium in a war-related adjustment.

Shapiro, speaking on TKO’s third-quarter earnings call, said the risk of the Crown Jewel event being canceled is “extremely minimal.”

Neither of the WWE’s previous two 2026 events staged in Saudi Arabia has been interrupted, Shapiro noted, with both proceeding “flawlessly.”

Crown Jewel “should be a big one for us,” the exec added, and the team putting on the show is “all systems go.”

Shapiro then alluded to a lengthy post on X on Wednesday by Vice President JD Vance, who bluntly said Republicans’ drubbing in the midterm elections was “because of the war.” While it has long been known that Vance preferred diplomacy to military intervention as the U.S. looked to disrupt Iran’s nuclear weapons program, he and other administration officials have not publicly broken with President Trump.

For his part, Trump has repeated his assertion in recent days that the war “will end when I say it ends,” declining to outline how an exit would work. At times over the past few weeks, Trump has also vowed to intensify U.S. military strikes against Iran.

“The vice president comes out today and says, ‘It’s very clear, voters have spoken, and they’ve obviously spoken with their votes, and we need to get this conflict in Iran wrapped up,'” Shapiro said. “Just a week ago, they’re talking about dropping more bombs, and now they’re talking about wrapping it up. Who knows what’s real or what’s true? We’re just proceeding forward with our partners as if these events will go off without a hitch.”

Shapiro’s remarks were noteworthy given TKO’s strong Trump connection of late. The president has attended events put on by the company’s UFC and WWE subsidiaries and also hosted an elaborate, live-streamed set of UFC fights on the front lawn of the White House last June.

The WWE and other media and entertainment entities faced scrutiny in 2018 and 2019 over their ties to Saudi Arabia after Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered inside the Saudi embassy in Turkey. In March 2019, current TKO CEO Ari Emanuel, then running Endeavor Group Holdings prior to the merger of the UFC and WWE to form TKO, returned a $400 million investment in his company by the Saudi Public Investment Fund.

The stakes could rise further next April if the Iran War continues. The WWE’s major annual tentpole, WrestleMania, is slated to be held in Saudi Arabia, the first time in its four-decade history it will ever take place outside North America.

Addressing concerns about potential risk to WrestleMania, Shapiro said, “It is at no more risk than it ever was, given that the world is an unpredictable place. We have already been paid half upfront and received the funds from our partners in Saudi. … So come rain or shine, we’re getting the other half payment. So we’re sitting in a good place.”

Shapiro added that the event could be moved, but would not be canceled. The company has been in touch with “a long list of cities,” primarily in the U.S., “lining up” to serve as potential back-up hosts. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Shapiro said. “But frankly, we’re not concerned.”