With Back-to-Back PBR, UFC, and WWE Events in KC, TKO Takeover' Proves To Be a Heavyweight Production

With Back-to-Back PBR, UFC, and WWE Events in KC, TKO Takeover' Proves To Be a Heavyweight Production Trio of events at T-Mobile Center hint at synergies in the future By Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, U.S.

Wednesday, April 30, 2025 - 5:15 pm

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TKO Group Holdings' growing sports-media empire flexed its live-production muscle last weekend with a three-part package featuring PBR (Professional Bull Riders), UFC, and WWE events at Kansas City's T-Mobile Center. With three events in six days, TKO Takeover marked TKO's most concerted effort yet to showcase the combined power of its sports portfolio and also suggested potential operational efficiencies for the sports-media conglomerate's live event productions.

The inaugural TKO Takeover launched in Kansas City's T-Mobile Center. (Photo: Bull Stock Media)

It's exciting to see our family start pulling together for these sorts of weekends, says Brian Fadem, VP, line production, WWE. It feels like we are dipping our toes in the water in Kansas City in anticipation of what will hopefully be a more routine event setup in different cities. Each of our teams is so collaborative, the crossover and expansion with UFC and PBR is only going to help all of our productions and events as a whole.

The festivities began with a special midweek PBR Teams showcase event on Thursday, April 24 and continued with UFC Fight Night on Saturday and WWE Raw on Monday. Although this isn't the first time WWE and UFC have held conjoined events - the Yum! Center in Louisville, KY, hosted SmackDown and UFC Fight Night on back-to-back nights last year - the addition of PBR added yet another layer to the operational complexity.

From a technical standpoint, says Tim O'Toole, SVP, event production, UFC, we each bring different strengths but also share common vendors and resources. The collaboration between teams - whether it's around broadcast workflows or the in-venue experience - continues to elevate the overall quality of our events.

PBR Kicks Off TKO Party in KC as Part of Insane Eight-Day, Multi-State Run PBR's tour - whose 23-event 2025 Unleash the Beast regular season wrapped in Tacoma, WA, this past weekend immediately following the TKO Takeover in KC - deploys seven production trucks.

Plenty of PBR/WWE/UFC cross-promotion was evident at TKO Takeover in KC. (Photo: Bull Stock Media)

To kick off TKO Takeover with a special midweek PBR Teams showcase, the tour sent three production trucks, two TV trucks, two rental steel units, and three rental trucks to T-Mobile Center for the April 24 opener of the unprecedented tripleheader. PBR's onsite crew of nearly 100 people transformed the venue (home of the Kansas City Outlaws of the PBR Teams league): a half mile of steel was used to construct PBR's back pens and fencing, 1.5 million lb. of dirt was brought in for the arena, and a 512,000-W sound system was rolled in to serve fans in the stands.

For the PBR, however, the KC event was just one piece of an ultra-busy week. After wrapping up an event in Nampa, ID, on April 18-19, PBR's team drove 23 hours and more than 1,400 miles to Kansas City for the rare Thursday event launching the inaugural TKO Takeover. From there, the production caravan covered another 2,000 miles in 30 hours to reach Tacoma, WA, in time for the two-day PBR Unleash the Beast regular-season finale (April 25-26) at a packed and electric Tacoma Dome.

This was the most demanding week of the season for our crew, who accomplished a truly herculean feat: successfully producing three major events across Idaho, Missouri, and Washington in just eight days, says Jim Palermo, director, remote productions, PBR. We are profoundly grateful for their unwavering dedication, exceptional work ethic, and pursuit of excellence.

PBR opened TKO Takeover on Thursday night. (Photo: Bull Stock Media)

UFC Adjusts on the Fly for Weigh-In and Shoulder Programming As part of the UFC leg of TKO Takeover, the UFC team hosted the Ceremonial Weigh-In and all shoulder programming offsite, while the PBR team completed its load-out at T-Mobile Center.

Just one week before the event, unforeseen issues forced the UFC production team to change its offsite location, introducing yet another layer of complexity: UFC now had to build its entire TV compound on the public streets surrounding the Midland Theatre. This involved coordination across multiple partners: NEP (mobile units and production facilities), Filmwerks (generators and power needs), and PSSI (transmission logistics and satellite uplinks).

Further complicating matters, UFC's team had to accomplish this without the usual site survey. Instead, the UFC ops team relied on extensive conference calls and tools like Google Earth to craft a workable strategy. The venue shift also affected staging, lighting, and PA requirements. Despite the challenges, UFC successfully produced two separate ESPN Desk shows and the Ceremonial Weigh-In - all within a tight set/shoot/strike window.

Fortunately, these situations are somewhat commonplace for us, notes Greg Louw, director, technical operations, UFC. Our team is built for this, and our technical deployment is designed for fast, efficient implementation. When tasked with challenging setups, we're poised for success.

Then, after Saturday night's Fight Night event went off without a hitch, UFC was tasked with loading out in just five hours as WWE's massive operation loaded in.

WWE Puts an Exclamation Point on the KC Festivities WWE's load-in began in the wee hours on Monday and was ready to go by 2 p.m. for rehearsal and that evening's show. Anyone who has ever been behind the scenes at a WWE event knows it is essentially a traveling circus. The caravan consists of nearly 20 production tru

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