Mixed martial arts fighters parading through the chamber of the Lincoln Memorial before descending its steps for a face-off and press conference. Weigh-ins on the Ellipse. A star-spangled 90-foot “Claw” towering over the White House South Lawn. An octagon-shaped ring turned prime ad space — sponsors including Bud Light, Crypto.com and Polymarket paid substantial sums to have their names displayed — with the “People’s House” as the backdrop. Thousands of seats surround the ring where fighters will square off on Sunday for “UFC Freedom 250,” which CEO Dana White has predicted will draw “Super Bowl-type numbers.”
But behind the public spectacle are concerns about personal profit — and that President Donald Trump and his allies are positioned to benefit financially from the power of the presidency.
Trump purchased tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of stock in UFC’s parent company while promoting the event, according to a May financial disclosure. He’s holding a $1 million-per-plate fundraiser for his top super PAC the night before the cage match. And Trump “officially designed” a line of “Trump x UFC Freedom 250” medallions, which are selling for $250 to $12,000.
Those are just three of the ways the president stands to benefit from Sunday’s UFC event at the White House, which marks the president’s 80th birthday.
“This is a real distillation of this administration, which is to take public property and use it for private benefit,” said Brendan Ballou, a former Justice Department prosecutor who represented the plaintiffs who lost a court battle to stop the fight. “The danger in having corruption normalized is it will fundamentally tell the very rich and powerful that they are beyond reach of the law — and that message will extend beyond this administration.”
Sponsorship packages including ringside seats are being sold for $1 million or more. Asked if any of the money from those ticket sales would go to the president or his political or private business interests, a White House official said the administration has not been involved in any cost negotiations or sponsorship discussions.
“The federal government is not making any money on this event. UFC is funding and paying for this entire event,” the official said, adding that no taxpayer dollars would be used “outside of what would be applied towards employees’ normal duties and responsibilities.”
Whatever the financial arrangements, historians say there’s no real precedent for any of it.
“I can’t think of any previous president doing anything like it,” said Marc Selverstone, a historian at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. “Of course, presidents have long hosted sporting engagements at the White House, from tennis to golf to bowling to even T-ball for kids. But I can’t think of anything that’s been so commercialized as the UFC event, nor anything as publicly martial or gladiatorial.”
“Past presidents typically took extreme care to keep their private finances and business interests separate from the presidency,” said Nicole Anslover, a historian at Florida Atlantic University. “President Trump is breaking that precedent.”
The UFC fight isn’t the only construction project remaking the White House grounds this year — and it isn’t the only one where the administration has tried to control what the public sees.
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On Thursday, officials opened the UFC arena on the South Lawn for a press preview, allowing reporters to take photos and video. But they were barred from photographing or filming the demolished East Wing and the ongoing construction of Trump’s massive new ballroom nearby. One Secret Service officer even ordered a reporter to delete an iPhone photo he had taken of the construction site.
The Claw itself is also a break from precedent, Anslover said. Trump’s predecessors altered the White House grounds to accommodate personal sports hobbies — Harry Truman added a bowling alley, privately funded by friends from Missouri, and Barack Obama had part of a tennis court converted to double as a basketball court — but those were for private use, not “a massive structure to be used for public profit-making events,” Anslover told MS NOW.
The White House would not answer basic questions about how much access UFC fighters will have to the White House grounds, including whether they will emerge from the Oval Office — as Time magazine has reported — or the Executive Mansion’s Red and Green rooms for their walkouts to the caged octagon.
The White House referred MS NOW to the UFC; the UFC did not respond to a request for comment. A White House official told MS NOW that fighters will have dressing rooms in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and make their way from that building on what’s known as the “tradesman route,” historically used by contractors and service workers. They’ll enter the venue through the Palm Room doors, the official said, which open to the Rose Garden.
As for who will tend to the fighters, the White House said the UFC is using its own medical corps to manage the contestants’ medical needs, while the White House Medical Unit will be responsible for all patrons on the Ellipse and South Lawn.
A court filing on June 10 offered a glimpse of how choreographed the spectacle will be. According to the filing, on Friday each fighter will enter the Lincoln Memorial chamber by elevator from a lower level — accompanied by a child — before being filmed walking through the chamber and descending the steps to the press conference area. National Park Service staff, the filing notes, are also weighing a request to mount a camera on the memorial’s lighting equipment.
Jacqueline Alemany contributed reporting.
Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the timing of Trump’s purchase of stock in UFC’s parent company.
Laura Barrón-López covers the White House for MS NOW.