Promoter In Chief: “The entire world, even people who normally don’t watch the UFC, are curious to see what this is going to look like and how it’s going to play out,” says White (with President Trump at UFC 314). “This is a huge brand play.”
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The UFC’s CEO says there’s “nothing transactional” about his longstanding friendship with Donald Trump, but it’s the only reason an MMA spectacle will be held on the South Lawn on the president’s birthday.
Jimmy Carter hosted an ice skating exhibition at the White House, and George W. Bush once staged a friendly game of T-ball at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but the prospect of mixed martial arts fights on the South Lawn would have never arisen if anyone other than Donald Trump were president and anyone other than Dana White ran the UFC. When Trump, a longtime fan of the fight promotion and steadfast friend to its chief executive, first suggested the idea to White at a UFC event last April, the pugnacious promoter said he would do it without hesitation.
“He knows the day he asked me to do this event that I was going to show up and deliver,” White tells Forbes. “I love that type of stuff. Tell me it can’t be done, tell me it’s a huge challenge, tell me it’s going to cost us a bunch of money. Tell me this, that. That’s the stuff that I run right into.”
White’s tenure with the UFC has been defined by audacious risk-taking, propelling the company over the last 25 years from a bloody sideshow into a $1.5 billion (revenue) sports powerhouse. But Freedom 250 on June 14 (not coincidentally President Trump’s birthday) is, even by his standards, “difficult on a whole other level.” In addition to the 4,300-seat outdoor venue that has now been erected on the South Lawn—and its 87-foot canopy, which towers above the White House itself—the weekend will include a press conference at the Lincoln Memorial and a two-day fan fest for as many as 85,000 people at the Ellipse. (The president likes the temporary structure so much he compared it to the Eiffel Tower, saying this week, “Maybe we’ll never, ever take it down.”) Because the UFC controls its own TV productions, it will pick up the tab for not only the infrastructure but also the broadcasts, with nine production trucks’ worth of equipment and crew.
In total, White says the events will cost around $60 million, tripling the estimated $20 million the UFC spent in 2024 to host the first-ever sporting event at the Sphere in Las Vegas, and dwarfing the $2 million to $3 million average budget of the company’s monthly showcase events. White has estimated the company could lose as much as $30 million on Freedom 250, depending on how certain costs are amortized, but contends that no price was too high to entertain the nation for its semiquincentennial, elevate MMA further into the mainstream and make it, at least for one night, the sport that represents America.
“The entire world, even people who normally don’t watch the UFC, are curious to see what this is going to look like and how it’s going to play out,” White says. “This is a huge brand play.”
It is also, at least in part, a favor for a friend. White likes to frame his relationship with the president as strictly personal, not political, a stance that allows him to pledge constant loyalty while also deflecting away those who try to pin him down on any of Trump’s thornier policy decisions or personal shortcomings. He also frequently claims that there is “nothing transactional” about their friendship, true in the strictest sense that the two have never had a formal business agreement but ignoring the crony capitalism both regularly employ as a business strategy.
From the very beginning, their relationship has been mutually beneficial. In 2001, after Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta purchased the UFC and installed White as acting president, Trump offered to host the relaunched fight promotion’s first two pay-per-view events at his Taj Mahal hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey, lending his business credibility to the sport that was then known as “human cockfighting.”
Years later, Trump asked White to speak at the 2016 Republican National Convention, and the two grew closer as White backed Trump’s political ascension. In addition to speeches at the last three RNCs and Trump’s 2024 victory celebration, White did a ring walk with and sat beside Trump at UFC events in the wake of the January 6 insurrection in 2021 and federal indictments in 2023, and set him up with podcasters like Joe Rogan, a longtime UFC announcer, who would eventually endorse Trump’s 2024 candidacy (which, in White’s telling, swung the election results).
This White House fight represents their most official business connection yet, but White insists Freedom 250 is not a partisan event, saying that the event was originally scheduled for July 4 and that June 14 was selected because it is Flag Day. When pressed, he acknowledges that many may now closely associate the UFC with MAGA but describes his unconditional fealty to the president as something closer to patriotic duty.
When asked if most see the UFC as politically aligned with Trump, White doesn’t pull his punch. “Probably,” he says, “but you’re never going to change those guys’ [minds] anyway. If you have the opportunity to have a fight at the White House, Obama, Trump, Bush, Reagan, no matter who’s in there, why would you not do it?”
Interestingly, Rogan has been critical of the event on his podcast. He has called Freedom 250 a “security nightmare” and mentioned heat, rain and bugs as potential problems with fighting outdoors, not to mention the fact that it is “weird to have a fight at the White House in the middle of a fucking war.” In short, he says the event is “kind of a gimmick.”
Despite the fact that Rogan is technically White’s employee, White says he has made no attempts to muzzle or steer Rogan’s comments, even if he of course disagrees.
“There’s absolutely nothing gimmicky about this event. Every fight on the card means something. It’s, like, the most historical sporting event in American history, and he’s calling it a gimmick,” White says. “But Joe is a grown-ass man and can have his opinions on anything.”
Craig Borsari, the UFC’s chief content officer, had a different reaction when White first told him about the prospect of a White House fight. “I legitimately thought he was kidding,” Borsari says. Two days later, White told him the White House was calling to ask about logistics.
In planning the event, Borsari had to contend with a 22-foot slope on the lawn, historical trees that could not be disturbed, and no existing electrical power. His initial plan included 2,500 seated spectators, but when they presented the schematics to the president in the Oval Office, Trump said he wanted a higher capacity, so a 4,300-seat configuration was drawn up. White added another instruction: no visible lights, microphones or structures in the camera angles. He wanted to see the White House in the background, and nothing else.
They partnered with Belgium-based event production company Stageco to design and construct the “Claw,” an open-air dome that will hold the lighting grid and provide some cover from sun or rain. The massive structure was transported from Europe to a parking lot in Lidditz, Pennsylvania, where it was assembled, tested and deconstructed once again. Then, following strict protocols, the parts were driven by pre-screened drivers to an off-site location in Washington, D.C., for approval before being offloaded on the South Lawn under Secret Service oversight. In total, the production will require 40 generators and some 5,000 workers. “Trust me, it could have gone well past $60 million,” Borsari says of the budget.
If He Builds It: President Trump compared the UFC “Claw” to the Eiffel Tower this week and suggested that “maybe we’ll never, ever take it down.”
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“Once Dana sets his mind to something,” he continues. “Particularly when he tells the president of the United States that we’re going to pull this off, no, there was never a moment where I said, ‘Well, we need to think about not doing this’—that was never a thought.”
For the UFC, these high-stakes gambles have become commonplace, and in many ways have built the company into what it is today. The decision in the mid-2000s to pay $10 million in production costs for The Ultimate Fighter—the only way SpikeTV would agree to air it—saved the company from financial ruin during White’s first few years in charge. Setting up a quarantined “Fight Island” in Abu Dhabi in 2020, when all other professional sports stopped during the pandemic, grew the business by more than 70%, according to White. And the extravagant production at the Sphere flexed the UFC’s cultural relevance just before the company began negotiating its next media rights deal, which was eventually scooped up by Paramount in 2025 for a staggering $7.7 billion across seven years.
Naturally, White is setting his sights even higher this time. Although upstart MMA promotions nip at his heels—including Jake Paul’s Most Valuable Promotions, which produced the Ronda Rousey-Gina Carano fight on Netflix last month—he has bigger targets in his crosshairs.
“I don’t look at any of the other fight promoters as my competition anymore,” White says. “The NFL is my competition. The NBA, Major League Baseball and the NHL, we’re all fighting over the same turf now.”