{"id":788794,"date":"2026-05-11T13:19:26","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T13:19:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/788794\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T13:19:26","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T13:19:26","slug":"the-cage-match-is-on-for-tickets-to-trumps-ufc-fight-at-the-white-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/788794\/","title":{"rendered":"The cage match is on for tickets to Trump\u2019s UFC fight at the White House"},"content":{"rendered":"

As something of a professional Republican, April Melton has attended her fair share of ho-hum events in the nation\u2019s capital. But there\u2019s one coming up that the chair of the Black Hawk County, Iowa, GOP is dying to see up close: an Ultimate Fighting Championship extravaganza on the South Lawn of the White House next month.<\/p>\n

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\u201cHow do we get tickets? Can you get me tickets?\u201d Melton said, her eyes lighting up. She was waiting for Vice President JD Vance to arrive at a midterm campaign rally in Des Moines on Tuesday. \u201cI want to go!\u201d<\/p>\n

So does nearly everyone else in the heavily overlapping worlds of President Donald Trump\u2019s Make America Great Again movement and mixed martial arts fandom.<\/p>\n

In trademark fashion, the president created insatiable demand for an event \u2014 held in conjunction with his 80th birthday on June 14 and a monthslong celebration of the nation\u2019s 250th anniversary \u2014 with a limited supply of tickets. Trump is handpicking most of the 4,000-plus spectators lucky enough, cunning enough or rich enough to score a seat on the South Lawn.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to make a lot of enemies because it\u2019s impossible to get everyone tickets,\u201d the president said Friday in a telephone interview with NBC News.<\/p>\n

Technically, all of the tickets are free, and the UFC is footing the bill for the event. But sponsorship packages that include ringside seats have been selling for $1 million or more, according to a Republican lobbyist directly familiar with the process. One report<\/a> put the figure at $1.5 million.<\/p>\n

The White House directed inquiries about sponsorships to the UFC, which reiterated that it is not selling tickets to the event but did not comment on where the sponsorship money was going. <\/p>\n

On an earnings call<\/a> in May, Mark Shapiro, president and chief operating officer of UFC\u2019s parent company, TKO Holdings, said that the company expects to lose as much as $30 million on the matches and other festivities in Washington. <\/p>\n

The cost hasn\u2019t dampened enthusiasm for the fights in the top ranks of the UFC league, and demand for the elite passes to the South Lawn is through the roof.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s crazy. It\u2019s insane,\u201d Dana White, the president and CEO of the UFC league, told NBC News outside last month\u2019s black-tie White House Correspondents\u2019 Association dinner.<\/p>\n

\u201cI only took a handful of tickets; I gave the rest of them to President Trump,\u201d White said. \u201cI keep telling people I don\u2019t have tickets.\u201d<\/p>\n

That handful represents 200 seats<\/a>, White said on a recent podcast<\/a>. Another 200 are controlled by TKO Holdings, which is run by Democratic superagent Ari Emanuel.<\/p>\n

The president is splitting up his lion\u2019s share of the tickets among members of the military, VIPs \u2014 a set expected to include friends of the president, members of Congress and even foreign dignitaries \u2014 and administration staff, White House communications director Steven Cheung said in an interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cI get calls, texts or emails every day \u2014 a few times every day,\u201d Cheung said of the requests for tickets that he and other White House officials are fielding on a regular basis. Cheung, a former UFC spokesman whose West Wing office is decorated with a replica championship belt and other memorabilia, said he is keeping a list of supplicants.<\/p>\n

The UFC is still in the process of preparing an open-air stadium, complete with an octagonal fighting ring, for installation on the South Lawn. Trump has shown renderings of the arena to Oval Office visitors while the UFC works to assemble a set boasting a massive centerpiece, a 90-foot-tall archlike structure, in rural Lititz, Pennsylvania. The pieces of the arena are being broken down and shipped to Washington, where it will take teams nearly a month to reassemble it outside the White House.<\/p>\n

The league is also planning for as many as 85,000 people to watch on massive screens from the Ellipse, a patch of turf just south of the White House, and Paramount+ will livestream for subscribers across the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As something of a professional Republican, April Melton has attended her fair share of ho-hum events in the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":788795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[51,50,52],"class_list":{"0":"post-788794","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116556147631682846","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=788794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/788795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}