Top executives of TKO Group, the parent company of UFC and WWE, are among several new investors purchasing ownership stakes in the Las Vegas Raiders.A spokesperson for Ari Emanuel and Mark Shapiro confirmed their intentions to The Athletic on Tuesday. Emanuel serves as TKO’s CEO and executive chairman, while Shapiro is the company’s COO.The deal is expected to close later this month, the spokesperson said. NFL owners voted to approve the plan Tuesday, a league source confirmed.Shapiro and Emanuel will each acquire stakes of less than 10 percent once the purchases are finalized. Neither has previously invested in an NFL team, but they maintain powerful positions across entertainment, heading major talent agencies and recently acquiring premium event package company On Location.Also in line for new ownership stakes in the Raiders are Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell and Blackstone executive Joseph Baratta. Egon Durban, co-CEO of the private equity firm Silver Lake, is expanding his existing ownership stake from 11 to 22 percent, while real estate developer Michael Meldman is upping his share from 7.5 to 12.9 percent, according to Sports Business Journal.The new purchase gives Durban, Meldman and the new investors a combined 25.3 percent stake in the Raiders that was previously held by the First Football investor group, which reportedly bought it in 2007 for $500 million. CNBC has valued the franchise at about $9.9 billion.Mark Davis, son of Al Davis, who was the principal owner of the Raiders from 1972 until he died in 2011, remains the majority owner with 36 percent of the Raiders. Former NFL quarterback Tom Brady owns 5 percent, alongside business partner Tom Wagner, who also owns 5 percent. Hall of Fame defensive lineman Richard Seymour, who played for the Raiders from 2009 to 2012, owns .5 percent.Durban is in line to take over control of the team if Davis sells or in the event of his death, according to a succession plan the NFL approved in March.Emanuel and Shapiro’s purchases coincide with recent promotional collaborations between the Raiders and TKO. Allegiant Stadium has hosted the last two iterations of WWE’s flagship WrestleMania event, the most recent of which was in April. The stadium was previously the site of the Canelo Alvarez-Terence Crawford superfight in September 2025, TKO’s first boxing event.Emanuel, Shapiro have interesting history with NFLEmanuel and Shapiro are two of the most important executives in media, but Shapiro gaining a piece of an NFL team is particularly fun, as it seems as if it could have been scripted out of “Playmakers,” a show about a fictional pro football team that went heavy on risque topics that the NFL found problematic.It was 22 years ago that Shapiro, running ESPN programming as a wunderkind in his 30s, drew the league’s ire over the show’s subject matter. Something of a pop culture hit, the 11-episode series was highly rated, and Shapiro, a little ahead of his time, was trying to make the network a little less reliant on games.The NFL’s league office and its owners hated it. After pressure from then-commissioner Paul Tagliabue, all the way to former Disney chief Michael Eisner, the drama of whether it would be canceled was a soap opera in its own right. It was not renewed for a second season because ESPN did not want to further antagonize its most important partner.Since then, Shapiro has built TKO/Endeavor with Emanuel to the point that they could join Tom Brady in having an ownership stake in the Raiders. You couldn’t script it.— Mike Jones contributed to this story.