Saul Loeb/Pool AFP via AP
As the UFC fighters left their locker rooms Sunday night and headed out to the Octagon, they strutted through the Oval Office—a space once so revered that Ronald Reagan wouldn’t enter it unless he was wearing a suit jacket. A select group of spectators had been invited to the White House grounds, and the public was allowed to join a watch party on the National Mall. But anyone outside the DC region could only tune in to “the most historic sporting event of all time” via Paramount+, a paid streaming service owned by David Ellison, the son of one of Trump’s biggest donors.
Throughout his second term in office, Trump has conducted private business ventures, mixed his financial interests with government policy, and even invited business partners into the Oval Office. But Sunday night’s fight at the White House took things to a new level, the most open and blatant example—so far—of Trump and his allies mingling personal financial interests with the institution of the presidency.
The fight itself was a mega-event for the UFC, which was allowed to put a giant steel claw to illuminate the fighting cage on the White House lawn. UFC is owned by the publicly traded TKO Group, shares of which the president owns.
It was a commercial sell-out of the White House—a private, for-profit event. The majority of the seats on the White House lawn were allocated to members of the military, and the remainder to VIP guests of Trump, including David Ellison himself and Mark Zuckerberg. Members of the public could register to join the free watch party several hundred yards away at the Ellipse.
In addition to the taxpayer-owned venue and the use of the Oval Office for walk-ups, there was an unusually spectacular flyover from the Navy’s and Air Force’s flight acrobatic teams, and all the pomp and circumstance granted the president. And on the other side, beyond the benefits to the UFC and TKO, there were sponsorships and branding for businesses with close ties to Trump and his inner circle.
The Trump-family-owned World Liberty Financial—a crypto company that ostensibly aims to democratize banking, but so far has mainly managed to infuriate token holders and attract huge cash investments from the spy-chief-prince of the United Arab Emirates—wasn’t just a sponsor. UFC actually announced that it was using one of World Liberty’s core products, a stablecoin called USD1, to pay out bonuses to the fighters. USD1 is a cryptocurrency with a value pegged to the price of the US dollar, meaning the form of the payment was largely symbolic. But that symbolism is invaluable to Trump’s struggling crypto venture, which hopes to encourage the use of USD1 for buying and selling other crypto assets on a far grander scale.
As part of the deal, World Liberty “branding will be on display in the world-famous Octagon and will be featured within the broadcast, giving WLFI meaningful visibility in front of a potential worldwide audience across an estimated 1 billion broadcast and digital households in 210 countries and territories that receive UFC programming,” a press release declared.
And speaking of coins, the Trump Organization, fully owned by the president, sold special silver and gold commemorative coins for the event, etched with portraits of Trump and UFC chairman Dana White. One gold coin, which was marketed as weighing one ounce, was selling for $11,999; a regular ounce of gold—one lacking the visages of Trump and his friends—currently goes for around $4,350.
Then there was the mat of the Octagon, just feet from Trump’s front-row seat, which was emblazoned with the logo of Polymarket—the prediction market that is lobbying Trump to keep state and federal regulators off its back. Donald Trump Jr., you will perhaps not be shocked to learn, is a Polymarket adviser and investor.
Even setting aside the financial relationship between the president’s family and Polymarket, the relationship between prediction markets and government insiders is fraught. In April, federal prosecutors charged a US Army special forces soldier with trading on his insider knowledge of the mission to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, spawning a well-justified round of hand-wringing about how to keep Polymarket at a greater distance from DC policymakers than was evident at Sunday’s fight.
Riyadh Season, a large cultural festival hosted in Saudi Arabia’s capital, was another major fight sponsor, with its logo visible on the mat. The festival is part of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 effort—a multi-billion project to overhaul his kingdom’s international reputation. Trump has always been warm with the Saudis, but following Salman’s involvement with the murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, relations between the US and Saudi Arabia hit a nadir.
It wasn’t any individual part of Sunday night’s event that was shocking—there have always been athlete visits to the Oval Office and fancy flyovers. But what made the whole affair so appalling was also what made it so spectacular: layer upon layer of excess, hype, and the blurring of lines between what belongs to the American public and what belongs to Trump. If the president has his way, there will soon be no lines at all.
