TKO President Mark Shapiro says canceling WWE Crown Jewel would hurt the company’s year, but that TKO will not hesitate to call off events if there is danger.
Shapiro addressed TKO employees at a town hall meeting on October 28, according to POST Wrestling. Crown Jewel is set for November 7 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and was moved to a new venue this week.
“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 can’t guarantee that, but there’s not much we can do about that,” Shapiro said.
“If it were to be canceled, it will certainly have an impact on our year in a very negative way.”
“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.”
TKO also has a Zuffa Boxing event set for Riyadh on November 14 and a UFC Fight Night there on December 5.