July 16, 2026
WHEN: Today, Thursday, July 16, 2026
WHERE: CNBC Sport x Boardroom Game Plan Summit
Following is the unofficial transcript of an interview with UFC President & CEO Dana White that took place today, Thursday, July 16, during the CNBC Sport x Boardroom Game Plan Summit at Fanatics Fest in New York City.
Mandatory credit: CNBC Sport x Boardroom Game Plan Summit
ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: Get into the octagon. Please welcome the one and only Dana White of UFC fame. We're going to get into all of it. Dana.
DANA WHITE: Good to see you. I'm good. How are you? Good to see you, man. How you doing, brother?
SORKIN: He might be hanging with the king. Give me a moment. There he is. You know, LeBron James takes precedent.
WHITE: I was talking to LeBron.
SORKIN: I know you were. I know you were.
WHITE: What's up, everybody? How are you?
SORKIN: Well, thank you for being here.
WHITE: Thanks for having me.
SORKIN: You know, we have got an amazing afternoon, and I think about what you have accomplished and created and what you're creating literally right now. But before we get into all of the modern stuff, I actually just want to go back just for the story of it. Go back. I want to go back to 2001, when this all began for you. Your friends bought it, they gave you a stake in it, they told you we want you to run it. What do you think you saw back then? What did you think it could even be, given where you are right now?
WHITE: Well, what when I first found out that the UFC was in trouble and was going out of business, my partner and I, Lorenzo Fertitta, at the time were talking about getting into the fight game anyway. And, obviously, that meant boxing then. But we had started training in jujitsu. And we fell in love with it. We fell in love with the sport, and, more importantly, we started to meet some of the athletes. And what I liked -- I came from boxing. So what I loved about the UFC that I thought was refreshing was these athletes -- boxing had the same old story. I came from the mean streets of such and such, and if it wasn't for boxing, I'd be dead or in jail. Yet I met Chuck Liddell, who looked an axe murderer, I mean, the mohawk, Chinese writing on his head, and this. But he graduated from Cal Poly with a degree in accounting, you know what I mean? Matt Hughes, who is this Midwestern farmer. I liked a lot of the storylines. I felt some of these guys had WWE-type characters, but they were real.
SORKIN: But it was real.
WHITE: They were real.
SORKIN: But it was real.
WHITE: Exactly. And the fighting was real.
SORKIN: So, but did you have any idea? If I told you in 2001 that you would be fighting, do a fight at the White House—
WHITE: No.
SORKIN: Basically 25 years later, you would have told me what?
WHITE: Yes. First of all, we couldn't even get sanctioned in most of the states. I mean, it took us a long time to get into New York. Yes, you -- I believed that the UFC could be big and not just here, but globally. But you don't ever understand things that until you get into it.
SORKIN: OK, so—
WHITE: But, realistically, when you think about fighting, I mean, fighting -- I will give you an example. World leaders, royal families, I mean, this the stuff that we're involved in and we deal with, when Khabib beat Conor McGregor, he didn't even make it to the locker room and Putin was on FaceTime. I mean, that's the type of stuff that happens when you're involved in the fight business.
SORKIN: So, what was the inflection point, though?
WHITE: What was the what?
SORKIN: What was the inflection point, the point at which -- the tipping point for you, where you think that the whole thing just took off?
WHITE: "Ultimate Fighter" season one. At the end of season one of the "Ultimate Fighter," we -- our Spike TV deal is -- the story of that is crazy. We bought our way onto TV for $10 million. Halfway through -- first of all, the ratings go this. We're the hottest show on the network. And usually when you have a show that, you're on buses, billboards. Your people are on talk shows. They wouldn't even answer my phone calls at Spike TV when we were hot. And the president of the network got fired halfway through the season. It was a complete shit show. And then we did the finale. And when Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar fought, people were stomping their feet and going crazy and chanting "One more round." And I just remember thinking, whether we sign with Spike or not, we're going somewhere. We're going to end up somewhere. That night right there then, I knew. We ended up going to the alley and doing a TV deal with them. We jotted down the deal points on a napkin, and that was our first TV deal.
SORKIN: OK, so now you are the highest rated thing that's basically happening out there, I mean, almost after the NFL, when you think about sports these days.
WHITE: Right.
SORKIN: It's a pretty crazy situation. But what I was going to ask you about is, what is next, which is, you're now playing in the boxing arena, and you're now playing with Power Slap.
WHITE: Yes.
SORKIN: When you think about those businesses, and then you think about where you were in 2001, what does that look to you?
WHITE: Yes, I mean, if you look at both of those businesses, the most successful will be boxing. Short term, boxing, within the next, I mean, we're already putting, we have been in it for six months, and we're already signing the biggest stars and putting on big fights. Long term, Power Slap.
SORKIN: Power Slap.
WHITE: Power Slap, yes, incredible.
SORKIN: You think Power Slap becomes bigger than the UFC?
WHITE: Yes.
SORKIN: Really?
WHITE: It could be just as big, yes. It could be just as big as the UFC.
SORKIN: How did you get involved with Power Slap from the from the get-go on that?
WHITE: So...
SORKIN: Because it is crazily addictive to watch, but I will admit every time I watch, I'm like, I'm scared.
WHITE: Yes, and most people don't realize, I mean, when you look at the numbers, we have the most viewed YouTube short ever in sports on Power Slap, the most viewed ever in sports on TikTok, and the numbers are just astronomical on what we pull on this thing. And it's global. It's already a global business. It's already a successful business. And the two key things that you need is, you need to have a great live event, and it needs to be good on television. And the Power Slap live event is amazing. I always encourage everybody to go.
SORKIN: Where do you find these—
WHITE: Every time I talk about Power Slap, people laugh. And I'm like, you laugh.
SORKIN: Where do you find the people who are -- who want to slap and are willing to be slapped?
WHITE: Yes, so originally when -- all right, let's start to the first question you asked me. So, in 2017-'18, this stuff starts popping up on my social media, and everything that I do in the fight business is done by gut. And I -- and the fact that I would watch it and want to see who won, I said, this is interesting. So I took a deeper dive into it. And, at that time, the real stuff was coming out of Poland and Russia, and I looked up some stuff on it. It looked they were filming it on a flip phone, and these guys were literally slapping over a barrel. And I looked at the numbers, and the numbers on YouTube were the equivalent to like a Justin Bieber video at that time. And I was like, wow, this is crazy. I said, I bet if I did this the right way, this could be big. So I called the Fertitta brothers. We had already sold it. We weren't in business on the UFC anymore. And I said, hey, you guys want to do this again? I this slapping stuff. I said, I need a million dollars from you and your brother, and I will put a million dollars up. And they said, they went, we're in. And that was basically how it started.
SORKIN: And then finding these, finding the guys, finding the, do you consider them athletes?
WHITE: Oh, yes. So the talent—
SORKIN: The talent.
WHITE: What we ended up doing is, in the wrestling business, like, everybody wants to be in the WWE. So there are tens to hundreds of thousands of people who wrestle all over the world every weekend. They will jump off a stepladder onto a table full of tacks for $50 a night. These are the guys that I'm going after. They're great on camera. They're tough guys. And, yes, that's sort of been my source of talent for the last year.
SORKIN: Were you, how do you train for this? I mean, besides trying to get some good neck muscles going?
WHITE: So what people don't realize is that, when you come to the UFC headquarters, it's massive. And the UFC Performance Institute is incredible. So these guys train there just like all of our other athletes do, the UFC fighters and the boxers. And I don't know exactly what is involved. Everybody is -- when we first bought the UFC, our athletes would train in boxing, kickboxing, Muay Thai, wrestling, jujitsu, and then they'd have to do their strength and conditioning training. That eventually evolved into mixed martial arts training. And the Power Slap athletes will involve, will evolve too—
SORKIN: What about—
WHITE: As far as training goes.
SORKIN: So, obviously, huge number of sponsors in the UFC world.
WHITE: We have more—
SORKIN: I'm curious about sponsorship in Power Slap.
WHITE: Power Slap has more sponsors than the UFC had in 10 years.
SORKIN: Really?
WHITE: Yes. It's a machine.
SORKIN: Did you think that initially? Because I would have thought that some people might be like, I don't want to be near this.
WHITE: No, I did not. No, I did not.
SORKIN: You did not?
WHITE: I did not. I thought sponsorship was going to be tough.
SORKIN: And who are the big sponsors?
WHITE: I'd say our two biggest sponsors are Anheuser-Busch and Monster.
SORKIN: And let me ask you, just because there's some parents in the room, there might be some kids in the room. Power Slap, I put it at maybe a different category than the UFC. And so I'm curious, when you think about kids and role modeling and all that kind of stuff, do you ever think I'm worried that kids are going to start power slapping during recess?
WHITE: It's a possibility, yes. Power Slaps skews a lot younger than UFC, yes.
SORKIN: But is that -- like, is that ever a concern for you?
WHITE: Well, it skews young. And African-Americans love it.
SORKIN: Interesting. Interesting. Boxing. When you think about boxing, you think that that becomes -- I mean, you you're basically trying to rewrite the rules or really sort of redo the whole boxing universe. What's wrong with boxing as it is now?
WHITE: Boxing's been broken for a long time, and I have been talking about it for 25 years and always said I might take a shot and I might eventually get into it before I'm done with my career. And we have been in it six months now, and it makes sense why it's broken. All these other promoters that I'm competing with, they're really bad at what they do.
SORKIN: Because why?
WHITE: They're horrible. I mean, they're very -- it's a lot more unsophisticated than I expected. Now, I haven't had like a -- where you get in and you battle with somebody every day, you have a competitor and you -- and so I was kind of looking forward to that. I was like, all right, I'm going to jump in. You got all these promoters that have been doing it for 20, 30, 50 years. It's been incredibly disappointing.
SORKIN: Is the—
WHITE: I -- the only way I guess I -- it's like beating up babies. It's like if you went into a room and just started beating up babies, that's what it's like in the—
SORKIN: What do you mean by that, beating up babies?
WHITE: I wouldn't even call it competition, because I don't even look at these guys as competition at all.
SORKIN: You mean how easy it is for you to take the business?
WHITE: Yes. They're horrible.
SORKIN: And is it because of the economics of the business that are somehow different?
WHITE: What's the question?
SORKIN: What -- is it about the economics of the business that you're changing?
WHITE: Well, I mean, the boxing business has always been economically incredible.
SORKIN: Right.
WHITE: Tell me -- tell me in the history of the world a business that has made trillions of dollars in revenue, yet, at the end of the day, there's nothing there. Nothing exists. Every time they put on a fight, it's like a going out of business sale. Let's grab as much money as we can from everybody and then we will run away from you and come back and do it again.
SORKIN: Right?
WHITE: Huh?
SORKIN: It's historically all gone to the promoters and all to the fighters and to some of the networks.
WHITE: They're terrible. They're terrible at what they do, and they're all in big trouble, and they know it.
SORKIN: By the way, what are, what's the economics for the fighters these days in the UFC, in Power Slap?
WHITE: I mean, it just gets better and better. First of all, the guys that -- the guys that I wrapped up in the Power Slap were slapping for free when I bought the companies. Now, they all get paid very well. And then, I mean, as far as UFC fighters, the pay has gone up literally like this since 2001, since we bought the business.
SORKIN: Right. I mentioned the White House at the beginning. Tell me about that experience of doing that, the decision to do it. I think you're both proud of it, but I have also heard you say you will never do it again.
WHITE: Yes. No, it was the greatest experience of my life, not just in business, but of my life. I mean, anybody that was there that night live, I have heard tons of great things about watching it on TV, which I haven't seen it on TV yet. But being there live was the greatest experience of my life. And what's crazy is, I don't know if any of you watched it or saw the documentary on it, but here's what -- now, we're going to get hit with a storm that night. This is guaranteed. It's -- and it's not like we're getting the information from the Channel 7 weather guy. The military meteorologist is the guy that's telling us things. So it was like 6:30 or 7:00, we're going to get hit with this storm, and the storm's going to be bad. So we're battening down the hatches and we're getting ready. Things are going to get broken and damaged by the wind. The whole place is going to get soaked. Even the octagon is going to is going to get soaked. And the flyover isn't going to happen. We're going to have to dump most of the pro -- the history of America stuff that we did. And now I'm of the mind-set we just -- when the rain stops and the -- we got to go and just get the fights over. So this is no bullshit. This happened, right? If you wrote this script, you would call bullshit on this thing. But this is -- so the storm is coming and it's getting ready to hit us. And as soon as the storm gets to the White House, it splits in half and goes around the White House and the Ellipse. So my head of production says, you're not going to believe this. The storm just split and broke and is going around us. The planes turned around for the flyover and were heading back to the base because it was all -- it wasn't going to happen. He says, you have two minutes to corral the president and get him into the Oval Office, and we got to get everybody to the arena and we can start this right now. We have two minutes. And there's this -- there's this image of me where I'm like, they're doing the, they're singing the national anthem, and it's just like none of this was supposed to happen. We were supposed to get wiped out by the storm, and it literally broke them in half and went around.
SORKIN: Pretty remarkable.
WHITE: From the minute that happened throughout the rest of the night, it couldn't have gone -- we have an American fighting a guy from Spain, and the American is a 6-1 underdog. And he wins at the White -- I mean, just everything that happened that night is absolute—
SORKIN: OK. So—
WHITE: If it was a movie script, you would think it was the biggest crock of shit ever.
SORKIN: So why do you say you would never do it again?
WHITE: Because it cost us $60 million. It was a one of one. It was a one of one.
SORKIN: How did you get the president to do it? Did you pitch him? Did he pitch you? How did it even come about originally?
WHITE: How did this come about?
SORKIN: How did it come about initially?
WHITE: Well, we were sitting there watching a fight. I think we were at MSG or Miami. I don't remember. But he leans over and me and goes: "You know what? We should do a fight at the White House." I said: "Yes. Yes, we should." And that was it. That was how it all started.
SORKIN: Is the politics of all this difficult for you? I mean—
WHITE: Yes, I mean, but, listen, you can't escape that. And even leading up to it, everybody was saying it was political and it was a MAGA party, and it was -- he was throwing himself a birthday party and all this stuff. That was never the intention when he asked me. It was supposed to be for the 250th birthday of America, and that's what it was. And I said, I don't care if you're as far left as you can go, as far right as you can go, or right down the middle. If you're an American, this show's for you.
SORKIN: Do you think -- do you think, though, of the UFC or Power Slap as political long term? I mean, do you think of it as a Republican thing, a Democratic thing? You think it's -- do you think -- I mean, if you were to look at your audience, is it more one than the other? I'm assuming it is, but I could be wrong.
WHITE: Those are all things that you can't -- listen, I don't care who the president of the United States is. If the president of the United States called me and said, hey, what do you think about coming to the White House or doing—
SORKIN: Right.
WHITE: I'm an American. I don't get caught up in all that bullshit. The stuff that happened -- like, whenever a guy gets in that you don't like, that guy's not my president. Got some bad news for you. You're an American. Whoever the president is, that's your president. And I respect the, I respect it, and, you know...
SORKIN: What are you going to do in '28 when Ari, I bet you Ari could call you and say, look, Rahm, my bro, my brother is going to run.
WHITE: I read that article too. I read that article too.
SORKIN: What do you think?
WHITE: I don't know. Look, guys, I can't say this enough. I am not a political person. I had been friends with Donald Trump for 25 years. He's always been a very, very good person to me and a good friend. I'm not trying to run around and get into politics.
SORKIN: Right.
WHITE: It's just not my thing.
SORKIN: Let me ask you two other things that I have been thinking a lot about, and we talked about it on television I think about a month ago. Prediction markets and just the idea of betting on all these matches, and what you think that's doing to the business. Is that a good thing? Is it a bad thing?
WHITE: That people are doing what, betting?
SORKIN: Betting, just the amount of betting.
WHITE: Yes, listen, betting isn't going anywhere. I mean, betting, gambling just keeps getting bigger and bigger...
SORKIN: And I assume Power Slap has got to be—
WHITE: And younger and younger.
SORKIN: I assume Power Slap, huge betting.
WHITE: Yes.
SORKIN: Right?
WHITE: Yes. And now you have these prediction markets like Polymarket and, gambling's not going anywhere. It's only getting bigger.
SORKIN: So how -- but the question is, how do you keep it -- how do you keep it real? Because I think people worry that the more -- the more betting there is, the more opportunities there is for crazy things to go on.
WHITE: There's a company called U.S. Integrity. And they watch all the lines. These guys are really good at seeing weird betting patterns, and they literally reach out to you and say, hey, there's some goofy stuff going on with this fight.
SORKIN: Right.
WHITE: And then we jump all over it. It happens. And wherever the -- wherever there's going to be an opportunity for somebody to make money, there's going to be an opportunity for somebody to cheat and whatever.
SORKIN: Right.
WHITE: But there's pretty good systems in place to keep it in check.
SORKIN: And the other thing I was thinking about was, you just joined the board, well, it's just about a year now, I think, of Facebook, Meta with Mark Zuckerberg. And I'm so curious the difference between the way you run your company and you think the way, because you have now been inside it, what it's like in a big tech company.
WHITE: Yes. So, when I got the offer to join the Meta board, I'd never been on a board before. I don't like meetings that last longer than 15 minutes. So it's never been my ambition to be on a board. But when you get that call, I thought about it for a while, and then I said yes. And it is the best decision that I ever made. Mark Zuckerberg is an animal. He's an absolute animal. And I tell everyone -- I just had -- I just had dinner the other night with Joe Mazzulla, the head coach of the Celtics. And I was telling him -- because we're wired the same on a lot of different things. And I said, man, I would love, before I'm off this board, for you to be able to come in and just sit in this room, not only the men, but the women that are on this board.
SORKIN: Right.
WHITE: They're all killers. They're all brilliant. And we will we will be in these board meetings for eight or nine hours, and literally I am sitting there like this the whole time. It's incredible.
SORKIN: What have you learned?
WHITE: I mean, I have learned a lot more about social media, which I'm into, which is why I accepted the seat on the board.
SORKIN: Right.
WHITE: And to be a part of and have a hand in the future of social media is fun for me.
SORKIN: You going to get Mark into the octagon, by the way?
WHITE: Yes, I mean, when you see a guy like -- when you talk about people who are super successful, and there's just -- you don't take your foot off the gas, not even a little bit. And when you see it at the level of like a Zuckerberg level, it is fun, it's exciting, and every board meeting is different in its own way. And the problems that they face, again, a global business, more people use his product than anything else.
SORKIN: Right.
WHITE: Like, 3.5 billion people -- there's eight billion people in the world; 3.5 billion people communicate through his platforms every single day.
SORKIN: And you can't you -- I assume you would like to get him in the octagon with Musk? Remember that?
WHITE: Yes.
SORKIN: Would you—
WHITE: That was all real.
SORKIN: That was all real?
WHITE: And that was actually, a couple, two of the funnest times I have ever had in my career was when we went on the world tour with Mayweather-McGregor. It was incredible. Every stop was different, it was fun, it was funny. And then negotiating the Elon Musk-Zuckerberg fight, I was literally in my backyard after work for like three hours every night talking to both these guys negotiating that fight. And it was fun while it lasted.
SORKIN: I know you don't like to do meetings for more than 15 minutes. We have run over time. Thank you.
WHITE: Oh, shit, that was quick, yes.
SORKIN: Appreciate it.
WHITE: All right. Thanks.
SORKIN: Dana White, everybody.
SORKIN: Hey, thank you.
WHITE: All right, man.
SORKIN: Thank you.
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Erin Kitzie
CNBC
