WWE Crown Jewel: TKO Looking to Keep Trump & Saudi Arabia Happy?
· BCPosted in: Sports, TV, TV, WWE | Tagged: saudi arabia, trump, wwe
WWE Crown Jewel 2026: TKO Looking to Keep Trump & Saudi Arabia Happy?
Currently, WWE Crown Jewel is still set for November 7th in Riyadh - despite serious security concerns in the region. It's not surprising...
Published Sun, 25 Oct 2026 10:37:10 -0500
by Ray Flook
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Article Summary
- WWE Crown Jewel 2026 remains set for Riyadh on November 7 despite U.S. warnings and rising regional security fears.
- TKO boss Ari Emanuel says WWE Crown Jewel is still on, while the company monitors conditions and weighs contingencies.
- Political ties to Donald Trump and WWE’s long Saudi partnership may help explain why Crown Jewel has not been moved.
- Canceling or relocating WWE Crown Jewel could damage Saudi optics and reportedly cost TKO and WWE up to $90 million.
In less than two weeks, Roman Reigns, Sami Zayn, Liv Morgan, Chelsea Green, Cody Rhodes, Randy Orton, and a whole lot of folks who work for the TKO-owned WWE both inside and outside of the ring will be heading off to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for WWE Crown Jewel 2026. But the big cloud hanging over the November 7th event has nothing to do with the action planned for inside the squared circle. Heading into the weekend, Jay Clayton, director of national intelligence, sent a memo to Secretary of State Marco Rubio that agencies have "received intelligence that Iran has substantially increased efforts to target U.S. personnel. The lethal plotting efforts by the Iranians against U.S. citizens have reached advanced stages in both the Middle East and certain other countries" (with the New York Times reporting that the Trump administration confirmed the memo on Friday night through a U.S. official). The report follows the US Embassy's move to order non-essential personnel and their families to leave Saudi Arabia and to issue a level three travel warning for the country, advising against travel.
And yet, as of this writing, "everything is still set" for WWE Crown Jewel 2026 in Riyadh, according to TKO executive chairman and CEO Ari Emanuel, who offered a recent update to FOX News. "Right now, everything is still set. This weekend coming up in Abu Dhabi, we have a UFC fight. We have in the middle of November, a Frieze art show. So far so good. Nothing's been canceled. We have a whole team kind of working on this, and if that doesn't happen, where we can move it. It's a daily monitoring." While more than a few fans on social media are surprised and alarmed that the WWE is still moving forward with the event, we're actually surprised that folks are surprised when you look at the players in play:
Donald Trump: We don't need to tell you how friendly Trump and the McMahons have been over the years when it comes to the WWE. But that bond only grew once Trump became POTUS, with the WWE Hall of Famer tapping Linda McMahon as Secretary of Education. And let's not forget those recent photo ops between Triple H and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. By pulling the event and relocating it somewhere else, TKO/WWE would be sending the message that Trump doesn't have control over what's going on in the Middle East. We can't see them wanting to get on his bad side, especially with all of the butt-kissing goodwill TKO earned by hosting a UFC event at the White House in honor of Trump's birthday (but disguised as an event in honor of America's 250th birthday).
Saudi Arabia: While Trump wouldn't want any bad optics from a political perspective, we can't imagine Saudi Arabia would be too thrilled with how such a move would look from a financial perspective. In 2019, the WWE and the General Entertainment Authority announced that their partnership would now include two large events in the country, held in Riyadh and Jeddah. For the WWE, it was a financial win on a number of levels – but for the country, the deal was another example it could use to sell itself to the rest of the world as their destination for large-scale events and programs. That pitch takes a major credibility hit when one of your current partners is having to pull up stakes and head back to the U.S,
Money, Money, Money… MONEY! Though no one has gone on record about a backup location or whether there are insurance guardrails in place when a company has to change plans to this extent due to circumstances outside its control, the Wrestling Observer reports that WWE and TKO could lose between $70 million and $90 million.
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