The Enhanced Games left Wall Street largely disappointed after its inaugural event over Memorial Day weekend. Shares of its parent company, Enhanced Group Inc., fell nearly 45% to close at $2.96 on Tuesday.

Enhanced Group began trading on the New York Stock Exchange earlier this month under the ticker ENHA after merging with a special purpose acquisition company. The transaction valued the business at $1.2 billion, and in the immediate aftermath, shares saw a 21% spike. Now, its market cap is less than $400 million.

A spokesperson for Enhanced Group declined to comment on the company’s share price.

The Olympics-style competition—which allows the use of FDA-approved, performance-enhancing drugs—debuted on Sunday at Resorts World Las Vegas. Both enhanced and clean athletes competed in swimming, weightlifting and track and field for prizes ranging from $20,000 for coming in seventh to $250,000 for topping a podium. A $1 million bonus was dangled to those who broke world records.

When Australian businessman Aron D’Souza unveiled his plans for the Enhanced Games in 2023, he said athletes would “obliterate all the world records” by “unlocking human potential.”

But contrary to the company’s bold claims, numerous world records didn’t fall on Sunday. In fact, only one did after Greek swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev completed the 50-meter freestyle in 20.81 seconds, besting the 20.88-second mark Cameron McEvoy set in March. And that was even subject to dispute after viewers called into question the veracity of the time. The Enhanced Games dismissed the claim, calling it “completely unfounded internet drivel,” according to The Guardian. Either way, the record doesn’t actually count because of Gkolomeev’s PED use and his high-tech suit that is outlawed in the sport.

U.S. Olympic bronze medalist sprinter Fred Kerley, who said he was competing without PEDs, crowed that Usain Bolt’s record time of 9.58 seconds in the 100-meter dash would get “destroyed,” while predicting he would match the 9.81 seconds he ran to land on the podium in Paris two years ago. Kerley did win the sprint, albeit with a time of 9.97 seconds; the race had to be restarted four times because of false starts and untied shoes.

A spokesperson for Enhanced Group said the company was “delighted with the performance of the inaugural Games” and called it “a first step toward success.” They pointed to the 22 personal bests set by 14 athletes, including Megan Romano beating her 50-meter freestyle time from 13 years ago. In total, athletes earned $6.6 million at the competition.

Official viewership data has not yet been released for the Enhanced Games, though the spokesperson said that could come this week. The broadcast, which featured former NFL linebacker Emmanuel Acho and Braintree founder and controversial anti-aging evangelist Bryan Johnson, was available on the Roku sports channel in North America, and it was streamed across YouTube, X (formerly Twitter), Rumble, Twitch and Kick. As of Tuesday, it had picked up slightly more than 900,000 views on YouTube.

The Enhanced Games plans to stage competitions annually, and it’s eyeing a similar time in 2027 to hold its next event; the company has a three-year deal with Resorts World.

Declining share price or not, a person familiar with the matter said the company continues to be optimistic about its future and ability to fundraise.

Enhanced Group isn’t solely in the business of staging athletic competitions. It also sells a collection of longevity and wellness products through its website and telehealth platform, including testosterone injections and peptides. The company’s largest shareholder is German biotech billionaire Christian Angermayer, who founded psychedelic drug startup Atai Life Sciences.

In the aftermath of its debut event, the Enhanced Group did boast about its success in sponsorships. On Tuesday, the company released a statement saying that it secured more than $32 million in “aggregate sponsorship deal value” ahead of the first meet, citing deals with Roku (NASDAQ: ROKU), Betr and Rumble (NASDAQ: RUM). It also noted that with seven months left in the year, it already had exceeded its sports revenue guidance of $31 million.

“We reset what this category is capable of,” Maximilian Martin, CEO of Enhanced Group, said in the release. “The $32 million we secured with our first event is not a ceiling. It is a starting point.”

Iran’s supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, would have to approve any final deal with the U.S. through secret courier networks while remaining in hiding as a “designated target,” counterterrorism experts said Tuesday.

The unprecedented arrangement, they claimed, means Washington is negotiating a high-stakes accord with an entirely invisible counterparty, with a potential memorandum signed by a regime leader and a “designated target” who can never publicly show his face.

“Khamenei is a designated target, and every confirmed sighting is a coordinate,” Dr. Omar Mohammed told Fox News Digital.

“The courier system used for messaging is not transitional. It is the operating system of his rule.

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“Any deal the United States signs will have to be designed for a permanently invisible counterparty whose enforcement depends on his continued survival. That is not arms control as it has been conventionally understood. It is a memorandum signed under American military pressure, with a regime whose leader cannot show his face.”

Mohammed’s remarks came after Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained to reporters in India why the deal was suffering delays.

“It’s just the response,” Rubio said. “I mean, when you get down on some of these things, you’ve got to hear back, and it takes the Iranians — takes them a little while longer to get back,” he explained.

“That is Secretary Rubio confirming the courier latency on the record,” said Dr. Omar Mohammed, director of the Antisemitism Research Initiative Program on Extremism at George Washington University. “Rubio is describing a structural feature of negotiating with a supreme leader no one can locate.

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“Mojtaba is in hiding, messages are moving by courier, and responses are arriving days late.

“Rubio just confirmed the symptom, and the administration is being honest about the problem. The question is whether the framework can be designed to survive it,” Mohammed claimed.

Khamenei has spent nearly three months in hiding as tensions with the U.S. escalate.

He went underground as soon as a strike on Feb. 28 killed his father, amid reports that he was gravely injured.

He was struck in Operation Epic Fury — “wounded and likely disfigured,” according to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. His wife and son were killed in the same strike.

“Officials at the highest levels of the Iranian government do not know where he is,” Mohammed said, meaning every piece of information he receives is “dated, and his responses come with significant latency.”

The remarks come as Iran and the United States continue talks aimed at reaching a deal to end the war that began Feb. 28.

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“If there’s going to be a deal, we’re going to have to work through that. But this is, you know, it’s either going to be a good deal or there isn’t going to be one,” Rubio said Tuesday.

A senior administration official said the U.S. is prepared to ease sanctions if Iran makes major concessions on uranium enrichment. Frozen Iranian assets have also emerged as a key hurdle.

Iran said Monday that no agreement with the United States was imminent, despite progress toward a framework in talks.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said the focus of talks remained ending the war on all fronts, including Lebanon, and that a possible memorandum of understanding did not include specific details on managing the Strait of Hormuz.

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“The real question for Washington is not how fast the framework can be signed,” Mohammed added.

“It is also what enforcement looks like when the counterparty’s signature comes through a courier.”

Moscow’s envoy accuses Washington of failing to honour commitments under the 1947 UN Headquarters Agreement.

Russia has slammed the United States for failing to grant a visa to Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Alimov to attend a United Nations Security Council meeting in New York, calling the decision a breach of Washington’s obligations.

Vassily Nebenzia told the Security Council on Tuesday that the country should have been represented by Alimov – “who oversees matters related to the United Nations” – at the meeting.

“However, despite all of our attempts to persuade the US side to issue a visa to him, that visa was ultimately not granted,” Nebenzia said.

The 1947 agreement that established the international body’s headquarters in New York requires the US to issue visas to foreign diplomats looking to attend UN functions “without charge and as promptly as possible”.

Nebenzia said not granting a visa to Alimov is a violation of that treaty and also a slight to Beijing, which is chairing the Security Council in May.

“We view this not just as a breach by Washington of its obligations under United Nations Headquarters Agreement, according to which access to United Nations needs to be provided for all officials and member states, barring none, but we also view this as an egregious instance of disrespect for the Chinese presidency of the Security Council,” he said.

The US Department of State did not immediately respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

The visa controversy comes at a time of receding tensions between Washington and Moscow as US President Donald Trump pushes to end the war in Ukraine.

Trump has been regularly speaking with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. But Washington has continued to enforce sanctions against Moscow over the Ukraine invasion.

Both Putin and Trump have separately visited China and met with its president, Xi Jinping, in recent weeks.

Earlier this week, Iran’s Foreign Ministry said Abbas Araghchi, the country’s top diplomat, cancelled his participation in Tuesday’s Security Council meeting due to visa issues.

During last year’s UN General Assembly, in September 2025, the US imposed strict limits on the movement of the Iranian delegation in New York.

In 2019, the US also delayed then-Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s visa for the General Assembly but eventually granted him entry.