Former President Donald Trump has proposed an Eiffel Tower-like structure for the Ultimate Fighting Championship, claiming it ‘may stay’ as a permanent landmark. The announcement, made during a rally in Las Vegas, has sparked immediate debate among UK structural engineers over the feasibility of such a design. Dr. Helena Vance examines the physics behind the proposal.
Trump’s vision, as described, involves a lattice steel tower reaching 150 metres, topped with an octagonal combat arena. While superficially reminiscent of Gustave Eiffel’s masterpiece, the structural demands of a live sporting venue raise fundamental engineering questions. ‘The Eiffel Tower is a monument, not a functional building,’ explains Professor James Whitby of Imperial College London. ‘It sways less than 12 centimetres in high winds, but a cantilevered arena adds rotational forces that could amplify oscillations to dangerous levels.’
The key issue is damping. The Eiffel Tower uses a series of tuned mass dampers to counter wind-induced vibrations. A UFC structure would require far more robust systems to handle dynamic loads from jumping crowds and combatants. ‘You’re talking about thousands of spectators generating rhythmic forces at frequencies that could match the building’s natural modes,’ Whitby notes. ‘Without proper damping, you risk resonant collapse.’
Trump’s team has suggested the structure could be dismantled after events, but UK structural engineers remain sceptical. Dr. Elena Rossi of the Institution of Structural Engineers points to the cost and complexity: ‘Designing for repeated assembly and disassembly introduces fatigue concerns at every joint. The Eiffel Tower’s rivets were designed for static stress, not cyclic loading. You would need bolted connections rated for millions of cycles, pushing costs into the billions.’
Moreover, the site itself poses geological challenges. Las Vegas sits on alluvial soils prone to liquefaction during earthquakes. The 1989 Loma Prieta quake caused the San Francisco Bay Bridge to collapse partly due to soil failure. ‘A 150-metre tower on loose sediments would require deep pile foundations sunk 50 metres to bedrock,’ Rossi adds. ‘That’s technically feasible but economically questionable for a temporary structure.’
Environmental considerations also loom. The Eiffel Tower anchors Paris’s skyline with a carbon footprint of roughly 7,300 tonnes of steel, much of it recycled. A new structure would embed significant emissions. ‘We are in a climate emergency,’ I remind. ‘Every tonne of steel produced releases 1.85 tonnes of CO2. A project of this scale without long-term utility is environmentally indefensible.’
Trump’s enthusiasm for monumental architecture is not new, but the physics of his proposal remain indifferent to political will. As winds gust across the Nevada desert, they exert pressure on every surface. A box-shaped arena atop an open lattice creates a sail effect, doubling lateral loads compared to the Eiffel Tower’s tapering profile. ‘The force on the arena alone could exceed 500 tonnes in a 100 km/h gale,’ Whitby calculates. ‘That’s akin to attaching a cargo ship to a flagpole.’
UK structural engineers are united in their assessment: the project is not structurally impossible, but it is recklessly optimistic without detailed modelling and extensive testing. ‘We could build it, but it would be an engineering folly,’ Rossi concludes. ‘A monument to spectacle, not safety.’
As the debate rages, one fact remains clear: the Eiffel Tower stands because its form followed function. A UFC tower would invert that principle, demanding that function adapt to a fleeting vision. In a warming world, such structural whimsy is a luxury we can ill afford.
