TKO employees woke up to some serious corporate drama this week as-per a bombshell report from PWInsider and a document obtained by Fightful Select – the company rolled out a whole new severance plan starting July 18, 2025. So what’s changed, and why has it got so many people fired up? Let’s break it down.
First, the core components of the severance package are now all about two things: COBRA benefits and severance pay. On the upside, employees who qualify still get health insurance coverage through COBRA after being let go, but there’s a catch – they’ll need to keep paying their regular monthly premium share if they want to keep those benefits while receiving severance pay. So basically, it’s “you can have your coverage, but you still have to pay your part.”
But here’s where things get spicy: Eligibility now requires you to have at least one year of continuous service to even qualify for a severance package. On top of that, the math for how much severance you get has been slashed. The “two weeks of severance pay per year of service” calculation is – in plain English – a big cut compared to what employees were used to (it was roughly a month per year of service before).
Severance minimums and maximums are also now sharply divided by title:
Senior Vice Presidents (SVP): Minimum 16 weeks, max 52 weeks
Vice Presidents (VP): Minimum 8 weeks, max 36 weeks
All others below VP: Minimum 4 weeks, max 24 weeks
Unsurprisingly, the reaction around TKO has not been pretty and many employees feel disgusted. Fightful Select revealed how employees, especially those with fewer than five years on the clock, are venting their frustration. The atmosphere? Pretty sour, with plenty of folks speculating that this move is TKO’s way of preparing for eventual layoffs, though nobody has actual proof of that… yet.
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