TKO Group Holdings just picked up another vote of confidence from Wall Street, and the timing lines up with a fresh push in Washington that could reshape the sport of boxing for years to come.
According to sources, Bernstein raised its price target on TKO to $240 from $235 in a note published Wednesday, September 16, 2026, previewing what 2027 might look like for the company behind UFC and WWE.
Analyst Ian Moore, who rates the stock Outperform, didn’t shy away from acknowledging how divisive the name has become among investors.
“the most controversial name in our coverage,” Moore wrote of TKO.
That controversy boils down to a fairly simple question: can TKO’s mix of partnership deals, live-event turnout, and built-in media-rights increases push growth well past expectations, or does the company settle into a more modest pace of roughly 6% EBITDA growth?
Moore leans toward the more optimistic scenario. He expects UFC and WWE to post incremental margins between 80% and 90%, propelled by scheduled increases in media-rights payments and continued strength in sponsorship deals.
Live events, on the other hand, might not contribute as much heat this cycle. IMG, TKO’s sports marketing arm, is staring down a comparison headwind north of $100 million as it moves past the boosted revenue tied to the Milan Olympics and the FIFA World Cup.
Even accounting for that drag, Moore’s own math points to about 9% EBITDA growth in 2027, well above what he expects the company to formally guide toward, which he pegs at 7% to 8%, or roughly $2.45 billion. That gap between his forecast and management’s likely guidance is part of what makes the stock, in his words, worth watching closely heading into next year.
Sponsorship remains one of Moore’s favorite threads in the TKO story. He thinks there’s a realistic path for the company to lift its 2030 sponsorship target into the $1.3 billion to $1.4 billion range, up from where it currently sits.
“2027 will be a pivotal year for TKO’s operating leverage story,” Moore wrote.
Notably, Bernstein’s $240 target isn’t just a bet on the core UFC and WWE businesses. It bakes in an extra $10 per share tied specifically to Zuffa Boxing, the boxing promotion venture under the TKO umbrella.
With roughly 189.3 million TKO shares outstanding as of early August, that $10-per-share figure translates to somewhere around $1.9 billion in standalone equity value assigned to the boxing project. That marks a shift in how analysts are treating Zuffa Boxing. Rather than folding it into the broader UFC and WWE narrative as a nice-to-have, Bernstein is now carving it out as its own line item with real dollars attached, even though the venture is still in its early stages.
All told, the $240 target implies TKO trades at about 21 times its projected 2027 EBITDA, and Moore’s EBITDA estimate for that year runs about $145 million above where the broader analyst consensus currently sits. Bernstein was careful to frame the whole preview as “way-too-early,” a reminder that a lot can shift before 2027 actually arrives.
The boxing angle carries extra weight this week given what’s happening in Congress. Sources state that the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation has cleared a boxing reform bill and sent it to the full Senate for consideration. The measure, known as S. 5188, or the Muhammad Ali American Boxing Revitalization Act of 2026, moved forward as amended by the Cruz-Rosen substitute language along with several Cantwell amendments.
Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz, who introduced the bill alongside Senator Rosen, described its goal as building a new framework for what he calls Unified Boxing Organizations, an alternative structure loosely modeled on how leagues like UFC operate.
“The Muhammad Ali American Boxing Revitalization Act, which I introduced alongside Senator Rosen, would establish a new option for league-style ‘Unified Boxing Organizations.’ Unlike other major professional sports, boxing lacks a central regulatory authority, which has led to its decline. The bill enjoys broad support from organizations and boxers, including Nico Ali Walsh, Muhammad Ali’s grandson,” Cruz said.
Cruz has framed the legislation as an answer to a long-standing gap in how boxing is governed compared with other major sports, arguing that the sport needs a central authority similar to what other leagues already have in place. He also revealed that support for the bill has grown to include figures from within boxing itself, among them Nico Ali Walsh, who reportedly shifted his position on the legislation at the last minute.
Nothing about how Congress might ultimately handle regulation, administration, or commercial oversight of boxing has been settled, and the bill still needs to clear the full Senate before any of that framework takes shape. But the timing is hard to ignore.
As lawmakers debate a structural overhaul that could open the door to league-style boxing organizations, TKO’s own boxing venture is getting priced in by analysts as something more than a side project.
