Ari Emanuel’s "Anti-AI" Bet on Live Entertainment

We're going to UFC tomorrow night? I've never seen it, and I've never been to an event, but it has captured everyone's imagination. It's this amazing business. I think you bought it in 2016. Can you just explain the magic of this business?

1. Spotting the Potential of the UFC

When I started, I represented WWE. And I represented the UFC. When I signed the UFC, it was on Spike. We had a whole division inside the company looking at ratings, and all of a sudden, they came in and showed me, "Here's this thing on Spike, and here are the numbers." Then I realized, "Wow, this thing's ratings are starting to move."

So I figured out, "Oh, it's Dana White and the Fertittas." I represented the WWE, and they're close enough, so I called them. I called Dana, and eventually I got a meeting.

I completely screwed up the meeting. I was talking about the WWE. It was just bad. It was one of my worst signing meetings. I just kept at it because I knew, based on their ratings and what they were getting as the domestic license fee, that it wasn't enough money. I knew if I got my hands on it, I could do some stuff with it, even just as a representative.

Eventually, after doing a couple of things, he signed with me. The organization signed with me. They were making $15 million a year from Spike, and I think the first deal I made at Spike increased it to $75 million, something like that. We made a video game deal, which they had never had. After 2 years, we moved it to Fox for $150 million.

Good growth rate so far.

We've done well. Then my life changed because Silver Lake came into my life. We started buying companies. We bought IMG, and we started building an infrastructure because IMG had sports and events—whether it was licensing, distribution, production, or a lot of things that companies needed on a global basis, not just a domestic basis.

The Fertittas decided they wanted to sell. A little bit before that, we had bought PBR, Professional Bull Riders, and had started turning that thing around. Silver Lake—my partner Egon Durban—realized that we did more negotiations on the domestic side, broadcasting TV shows and movies, than almost anybody else. We could handle a sport if we owned it.

I concluded where the world was going. I was talking about how it was going to go to streaming. Sports were going to be important. It was on cable, and it was going to move there because they were going to go for AVOD and everything. So we bought it.

At the time when we bought IMG, the closest bidder, we think, was bidding at $1.9 billion. We paid $2.4 billion. Everybody thought it was the highest price ever paid. When we bought the UFC, on the current trajectory, it was 20 times. If I made the proper domestic deal, I could take the leverage down.

2. Dyslexia and Relentless Drive

I just did the math: Here's how much they needed, here's how much programming there was, and then here's how much—because remember, at the time, Fox owned these RSNs, the regional players. They had just spun off the library. I said, "They have to pay. Here's a normal increase." Not like the rest of your people who sit in this chair when you ask them how they do their analysis.

We bought it. People thought we were crazy. Then the world blew up. Rupert decided to sell to Disney. Those 2 people were not bidding. Comcast didn't want it. Warner Bros. didn't want it. Paramount had not decided what they were going to be.

Right.

So now I'm looking at myself. Can we swear on this?

Of course.

Yeah. We're fucked, right? I mean, I had no bidders, and my contract was coming up in a year. So we went back to Fox, sans what they were going to have remaining, and said, "You should buy this."

Lachlan didn't want to do it, from his point of view. I think it was 3 or 4 months into closing our deal, coming off Fox, when ESPN fired John Skipper, who was always stringing me along that he wanted it. He never wanted it. Bob Iger and Kevin Mayer said, "We want it because we're going direct on ESPN." We made a deal.

The pay-per-views were coming on Saturday, which we have stopped now since we're going to Paramount. And we have these normal fights every weekend—our Fight Nights. I did my job. It was emotionally trying, but we got it done.

3. The "Fight Island" Story

What then happened, which was incredible and horrible all at once, was COVID.

Right. The world shuts down. You went to the Middle East, right?

Dana goes, "We're putting the fights on." I said, "I've got your back." He goes, "Get me an island." I called my partners in the Middle East, in Abu Dhabi, and Kaldoun, who owns Man City. I said, "We need an island. We need planes, and we need testing—everything." Honestly, we needed this, and he said yes.

We brought fighters in from Europe and from the United States. We tested everybody. Everybody was isolated for 2 weeks. We spent like 2 months there, I think—maybe 3 months. No one else was doing anything.

No sports were on.

Yeah, and it blew up.

How much of an inflection was that in audience size?

It meant our pay-per-views were getting like 1 million views. It was insane because there were no sports on. Zero. I don't know if you remember that period. It was like nothing.

Yeah, there was literally nothing.

The 2 sports that were the first 2 up were the UFC and PBR. We had a whole document on our testing. It was crazy.

If I boil down your whole life, is it making shit happen over and over and over and over, relentlessly?

Relentlessly, not taking no. But I think that's most successful people.

How are you so good at that? You have a very distinctive style of being extremely good at that. How did that develop?

When you have 2 older brothers who are really good at their jobs, and a mother and a father who just push you. There are many good things to dyslexia. Any parent that has a dyslexic child, I will tell you it does get better if you hang in there.

I don't get embarrassed easily. I'm not somebody who, when someone says no, cares. I just keep going, trying to open more doors. Those elements in my life—my mom, my brothers, competition—I'm competitive with myself.

Yeah. Very. What's that feel like?

Horrible. It's exhausting, but it's gotten better over time.

But what is it like internally? Are you literally waking up beating yourself up?

Yeah.

Every day?

4. Jeff Bezos' Advice

Oh, yeah. I mean, there's that clock, there's that voice ticking off all the things you have to do and playing the chess match.

One of the things Jeff Bezos said to me was so good. It really did help me. He said, "At your age, Ari, you now have to know when you're on the field and know when you're off the field."

The problem in the past was that it was helpful to a point, but you can't get really successful that way. I was always on the field. Always.

Defined as what?

Meaning I was always playing chess in any conversation.

Yeah.

Thinking of the angle, working the situation. Sometimes it should just be a good conversation. Just chill out. Chill the fuck out, right?

I never realized that. Many things helped me. That little conversation was, like, "You know, he's actually right." And it actually makes you better when you're on the field.

And being off the field for you means what?

In any conversation, I'm not calculating 5 moves ahead or figuring out all the different things. It can just be a good conversation.

I'm curious, so I read a ton. I read a ton of articles.

I tell my office, “I want to talk to that person.” I’m on the field a lot.

“Chill,” exactly. Chill the fuck out. You don’t have to be on the field. What about wrestling? How good were you at wrestling? What made you good? What was your style? What did it teach you?

You know what wrestling does do? I think MMA, and when you’re in high school and you have to go from my size now to 132 pounds—it’s easier when you’re younger—and you have to starve yourself, plus work out and go to school, the mental fortitude of that just keeps on going in your life. You can handle that emotional pain.

That’s also in business. When we talk about, “I can handle a lot of emotional pain,” I think one of the hardest things now for kids—which I hope I teach my kids—is that the emotional endurance you need in life right now is even more challenging. I think business is harder because business is no longer binary. It’s multilayered.

You have to realize sometimes that you have to have a relationship with somebody even though there are things in that relationship you don’t like, too, right? I don’t think that was in business in the past. You had to think through all those things. It’s just emotionally draining right now because there are so many things going on.

What was the most extreme emotional pain you ever felt in business? This situation with the UFC—the contract thing with the UFC?

Yeah, because I put all the chips in the middle: $4.2 billion in the middle. Clients were investing. My biggest investor was investing. I had done the calculation, like, “Here’s—” I didn’t see that Rupert was going to sell, and we were coming to the end. The contract was 4 months away.

Because of that, my thyroid went on the fritz. It was so much pressure. I’d never had that physical—actual physical—experience. I went down to 142 pounds.

Holy shit.

Yeah. Dana talks about this: all gray hair, emaciated, sweating. I mean, it was horrible. Finally, I went to the doctor, and he goes, “You know, your thyroid’s fucked. It was going at a rate.” That was hard.

Once it got done, everything came back and calmed down. I was no longer on the field all the time.

5. Power Dynamics in Content Distribution

What does the power dynamic feel like today around content, those that own it, and the places that it could be distributed, versus the past of that same power structure and how it’s evolved?

In the past, the owners of distribution couldn’t own the whole thing. Now, with cable gone—and broadcast not gone, but in decline—we just talked about whether it’s going to be Warner Bros. with Netflix or whether it’s going to be Paramount. There’s not a lot of supply chain. These guys are doing it, and they’re doing it within each other’s boundaries. Sony’s one of the suppliers. There’s some.

Before, there was a lot. Even when I was in the business, you had tax incentives for production. There was a company called Witt/Thomas, and all these independents used to supply content. They used to get tax benefits and supply great programming, and it was unbelievable.

Then you had syndication, and that’s how, at the beginning of my career, we made all this money. Television was a great business. You put a show on, and if you’re an independent, you don’t own the show. Like Carsey-Werner: Tom Werner, who owns the Boston Red Sox, and I think he still owns Liverpool, and he owns some foreign thing. You put That ’70s Show on, or The Cosby Show, or Roseanne, and you do 150 episodes. You sell it to a station group for $5 million an episode. One hundred fifty—you can do the math.

That I can.

Then you do a second window into cable, and then a third window happened when Netflix came around. You’ll see it—you do that multiple times after they’ve run their course. The second window is syndication. The third window is syndication. The fourth window—now it’s really just what we just did for The Office, and you can do for The Simpsons, Family Guy, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Seinfeld.

You’re doing it at Comcast. That’s the window. It’s $500 million for the new window. It’s a very good deal. But then, I think 3 years ago, the Writers Guild took away our packages. It used to be that you had all these independents supplying all the content. Now it’s the majors supplying the majors, and so it’s a lot different.

I don’t think that has been beneficial. I do think what’s going to happen now, though, is that AI is definitely going to reduce costs. I had a client who’s a writer-director. I’m not going to say who. He had to do an outline for a project, and he gave, I think, Grok or Perplexity an incredible prompt based on a piece of IP. The outline for the project came back.

Pretty close.

No, no. Now remember, AI, as people say, is the greatest average, which it is.

Yeah.

He said it was unbelievable. Now he’s going to have to do work on it, but that would have taken months.

Months. Yeah. Is your take on AI that it basically supercharges the very best people disproportionately?

Yes. Yeah.

In my house, right? I’m not in other businesses, but my son works at Apple. I think programmers are feeling that. I think they’re feeling that probably in finance. When you saw Sora 2, what did you think?

Oh, I wanted to sue them because they stole a bunch of stuff. They put the UFC up there. They put the WWE up there. They put bull riding up there, and really bad stuff.

What it’s going to do, whether it be Sora, Grok, Perplexity—all of it—is just going to make production costs, filming, DPs, costume design—it’s just going to change all of that. Then you’re going to be able to either bring Bette Davis back or Elizabeth Taylor. It’s going to happen.

Mm-hmm.

And so you’re going to see, in a good way, like in the music business, you can do an album in your bed.

Yeah. Movie business.

I think the same thing’s true in the movie business. I don’t know where it’s going, but it’s going to be cheaper and there’s going to be a lot of it.

I think the walls around creating content are going to come down for the first time because of the cost, because it used to cost $100 million.

Yeah.

It’s no longer going to be that.

In a world where the marginal cost of content creation is getting close to zero, where does the value occur? If we have 4 billion great creators, and maybe with 6G Wi-Fi, maybe everybody with their social platforms is a distributor, right? Through social. Let’s just say we’re right. The marginal cost becomes zero.

You’re Dwayne Johnson, and you have—I don’t know how many people he has on social, but it’s a lot. Hundreds. Or Kim Kardashian, or you name the person. Aren’t you a distributor?

Yeah. You know, those are the questions that are going to arise pretty soon. I say to people at William Morris, for the first time, taste matters—a lot.

Say a little bit more about that.

I don’t know about you, but I get called all the time: “Oh, this is a great script.” Shut the fuck up. Knowing what is good, what is commercial, and what sells—no, I’m not always right. I’m probably batting .300. I’m in the Hall of Fame, right? So 60% of the time, I’m screwed.

But people with taste who know this business, who know what an audience—a mass audience—likes, are hard to find. If you have taste and you’re seeing a lot of programming, you can say, “There’s talent there.” That actually has value.

So you put it on your Dwayne Johnson. Let’s take it out to its farthest limit. Let’s just say my conclusion is right, and Dwayne Johnson has a development team. They’re looking for stuff, they’re picking it, and they’re putting it on their service, right?

Dwayne’s paying that person. I don’t know if they’re paying them $1 million or $10,000 because the thing costs nothing. There’s a value proposition there. Are you getting a sponsor? Are you getting subscriptions? I don’t know. That, in some capacity, is going to happen.

Brands are going to be really important. Old IP is going to be really important. I think the value of sports is going to be even more valuable.

What about the content side of this?

What content side?

The use of IP by—

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s going to be huge business. I do believe it’s David Ellison’s bet, right? That there’s going to be more need for content than there’s ever been, and there’s going to be more consumption. I agree with that. And it’s going to be cheaper.

What about the use of content by labs where maybe they shouldn’t have used it to train models, for example?

Oh, yeah. They should all get sued.

You think that’ll work? How do you think that’ll play out?

Well, we sent the bad letter to Sam. “Stop using the UFC and the WWE.” So they’re going to have to pay.

Yeah. I think unless the Supreme Court says something—I don’t know how you don’t pay for it when Larry David creates Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld, and you’re taking it to train your model and you’re going to make a lot of zeros. You don’t think Larry David deserves to get paid? I think that’s crazy.

6. Live Events as the "Anti-AI" Bet

Let’s talk about IRL stuff in this context. Obviously, you’ve created a portfolio of some of the marquee live events, and I know you believe very deeply in this. Is there a way to think about this almost like the anti-AI bet, or the AI-proof bet?

AI is going to be big.

[Laughter.] Which I think is a proper conclusion.

Lots of R&D. Yeah, there are a lot of really smart people spending a lot of money on it, and they’re smarter than me.

Okay. The Netherlands just said 4-day workweeks. Drive times now are 11:00 to 4:00 across America. Hotel bookings on Thursdays are way up, and there are a lot more data points to this. So, the weekend starts Thursday now. We're in 2025; maybe by 2027, they start Wednesday.

We're social animals. You're coming to a UFC fight. You're a social guy. What are you going to do? You're going to watch a lot of content. David Ellison's conclusion is, you're going to watch a lot of content. Right? There's going to be more content than ever, at cost zero, on his service and on 4 big services.

You're going to be watching, you're going to be going to concerts, going to stand-up, going to live events, sports, or my live events that I've just bought. And so, the value of that is just because there's only so much. People are creating new ones, but that's my whole bet. Simple.

I don't know how to write an algorithm for AI. I don't know how to build a data center. I'm not in the chip business. I just know how to create really great live events, monetize them, and have a great user experience. And it's the opposite, because data centers aren't the opposite bet. Live is the opposite bet.

What makes a great live event? What are the ingredients?

There has to be a specific audience. In art, there's a very specific audience, right? There's a culture around art. It's global, and there's really good conversation about it. Antique cars are another one of my businesses. Very specific.

Sports

UFC, bull riding, WWE. Very specific, right? Taste, food festivals. So, I'm in the areas where I know there's great cultural stickiness and affinity. It's global.

Why did we do Freeze? It was only in 2 places: the UK and New York. We knew there were art festivals all over the place that were run poorly. We knew we could take it globally, spread the sponsorship, determine what city needs them, and they would pay us to bring events. So, we get site fees.

They say, "Hey, bring Freeze—a great brand that knows how to do this properly—with the food around it, all the things, lectures, et cetera. We're going to pay you to come here for 10 years to put on the event." We just closed that deal in Abu Dhabi.

When you start doing those things properly—in our Madrid Open, which is our tennis tournament, it's one of the 9 major 1000s—we're going to build another stadium, build another food festival, and do concerts after the tennis tournament. We just know how to do it. How to do it.

When we look at these things, we look at them in a way that asks, what are they missing? We're one of the only companies on a global basis that does live events. Sometimes you have companies that do great live events, but they're local. They're guys that are in Arizona; they're guys that are just in the UK. When they come into our organization, we're in 32 countries, and we know, "Oh, you know something? There's an affinity here."

You said 2 other things: monetization and user experience. I'm going to save monetization because I have a specific question about it. What is great user experience?

When they go around, there's food, there's lectures, and there are surrounding events that make the event itself and everything inside the event really special. It's a great way—I can't express enough the need for people to get community, because we're all sitting there staring.

Staring, you know. I remember one of the things that made me think about this, also, about why live events are so important and why sports were so important. Tiger talked about it at one point. I saw a documentary, I think, when he first won: people were clapping. The second time, uh-uh. Phones were up and people were screaming.

Right? That's because you want to show how great your life is, right? And all those same things detach you, and you want a place where you can have a great experience with other people.

Yeah. And that just goes well for music, live sports, and live events.

Yeah, and you're selling status to some degree. You're selling the video they're taking. This is status.

Yeah. Yeah.

7. Monetizing Premium Experiences

Monetization is the one that intrigues me the most, based on a conversation you and I have had before, which is, we're still figuring out the demand curve inside one of these events.

You know, we bought this company, On Location. You know about that?

A little bit, but remind me.

Gerry Cardinale first owned it with the NFL, and they were doing the premium hospitality for the Super Bowl. We thought, "Well, that's incredible," because people are asking for premiums now, and rich people are asking for more and more because they can get everything, so they want even specialer.

There was a tiered market—not in a bad way. Some people are going to pay $100, some people are going to pay $300, and then some people are going to pay crazy.

So, in the Super Bowl, you can go to Tiffany's and get a blue football, have 10 people with you, get a lecture from Peyton Manning, walk on the field pregame, come out with the team, be on the stage for weigh-ins at the UFC, and sit at the table with Dana White. For that, I'm going to pay $50,000 a ticket, or I'm going to pay $300,000 for the Super Bowl, or XYZ for the Olympics. It's crazy.

And you still haven't found the ceiling?

Oh, no, no, we're just adding. The Olympics, FIFA, UFC, WWE—in every category, there are premiums. And people pay crazy.

How much of it do you think is them paying for the video that they get on that versus the actual experience?

I think it has to be pretty high. But I think that's fantastic. You worked your ass off. You love this thing.

Yeah. Whether it be music, events, or sports, I want a different experience in my life.

Yes, for that, but just life.

And I think COVID made that happen, too.

Yeah. And people are doing it. Where it ends, I don't know, but it is a huge premium business.

How far can you push this? It feels like you've collected lots of the marquee assets and things that you love. What's the runway feel like to you for this?

One thing that we're doing in the live-events business that I started—

This is Freeze, and this is—

Yeah, this is—it's called IMG. This is Frieze, Barrett-Jackson, our tennis tournaments, our participatory sports like Escape from Alcatraz and the Melbourne Marathon, and our Taste Festivals, Winter Wonderland—that business.

So, we bought a ticketing business inside that, this thing called TodayTix. The ticketing business mainly—almost all they do is the theater business. When COVID happened, unlike other ticketing businesses, which had to keep operating, they shut the whole thing down, rewrote the operating system, and it's incredible.

We'll create a destination with an incredible ticketing asset. Where I think it's going is, hopefully, we create a platform that has events because we operate events pretty well, plus a destination. You white-label ticketing, then we can create a sponsorship layer, a site-fee layer, and maybe white-label some stuff and go from there. So, that's the dream. That's the way.

What is the most surprising thing about the landscape of sports and live events to you today?

You think about sports, so you have the beast of all beasts, the NFL. The NBA, global. Baseball, hockey, the English Premier League, the Spanish League, the French League—you just go. They're all owned by federations, and there are very few independent ones. And very few people know how to run them.

When we were buying the UFC, we were having this argument internally. Egon would say, "Well, the best people that can pay the most are the broadcasters." Well, they would ruin the sport. There are so many things that happen when you run one of these things. You have to make really hard decisions, right?

First of all, there's a limited amount that's available to buy. In the wrong hands, the ones that are independent—I mean, unless Adam Silver is there, unless Roger Goodell is there—those things don't run the way they're supposed to. Those things are hard.

And the same thing with our sport. We're about to start our boxing business.

So, if you approach boxing—

Well, we've started—we've announced the boxing league with Paramount, and we do the big, kind of like, huge super events.

As you approach that opportunity, tell me the story of how you built this. I know you're really excited about the boxing stuff.

Don King screws over Ali. Then the Ali Act gets passed. It changes the sport.

Now, first of all, to create a league in a combat sport, the only person that could have ever done it is Dana White. Ever. He did it with the UFC. And the only other person that could have done it—and it's sports entertainment—is Vince McMahon. Right? It's incredible. Those 2 guys.

So, we now look at that. The Ali Act's going to exist. We're going to put it in—hopefully, we can get this passed—and add an element to it so that we could create another opportunity for fighters. We're going to have, like we have in the UFC, the best fighters fight the best fighters.

Mhm.

And we think we can create a UFC, but with boxing, and Zuffa Boxing. If we do that, I think fighters are going to make more money, because right now, you don't know any great fighters. It's not like I can literally name one.

Name one.

We think we can do that, and then boxers will make more money. It will be a business for them. And it's a great sport. The one I was more jazzed than ever about—we put a great fight on at Allegiant Stadium, where the Raiders play.

Mark Davis, my partner, was unbelievable. You’ve got to know who he is. He was part of that and was unbelievable in helping us with it.

When you put a great fight and a great card on, how many people showed up? Because boxing is so ingrained in our world: 70,000 people. They did not leave. It was spectacular. If we do that now, I think it can be as big or bigger than UFC and WWE, and they’re big. We’re going to do our best to do it, because I think the audience wants it, and I think it would be great for fighters.

8. Dana White’s Superpower

What makes Dana so incredible as an entrepreneur? What is his superpower?

1, he loves it. He loves it. He really does love combat sports.

Good place to start.

2 is he’s not scared. When you look at his poker play, I don’t know how he does it, because if I’m betting $5, I can’t play poker. He makes fun of me when we do this, right?

We’re celebrating the deal at Endeavor. He goes, “Fight. Come to Vegas. We’re going out for dinner. We’re celebrating.” I’m like, “Okay. What does that mean?” He says, “Well, we’re going to go gamble.” What? I don’t gamble.

I said, “Okay.” He goes, “How much do you want on your line?” I go, “$2,000.” I think I said $25,000.

We’re in the car and we’re driving. He goes, “You’re the biggest gambler I know.” I’m like, “No, I’m not.” He goes, “You just bet on me $4.2 billion, right?” He took $1 million. I think he got me up to about $50,000 on the line. I said, “Well, that’s not a gamble, because I did my version in my head—my calculation.”

He’s just a unique individual. He’s not partisan. He’s loyal. He has a vision. He backs your play. If you back him, he’s just that guy. He’s not afraid to take on a challenge and do the work. He works constantly.

In this space, he knows the space so well. He’s relentless.

How did you learn to become not afraid?

When you’re dyslexic and people are making fun of you—

Just power through.

Yeah. You can’t be embarrassed. There’s nothing more embarrassing than when you’re 13 years old and you’re in a remedial class or something. It wasn’t remedial. It doesn’t matter. You can’t be embarrassed.

You’re in school, and you know you’re not stupid. I was in special ed. There can’t be anything more embarrassing than that. So anything now, I don’t give a fuck. You can’t embarrass me. It was actually that simple.

What was the first experience, though, of clicking out of that to the opposite of, “Oh, fuck, I’m actually really—I could be really good at something”?

I don’t know what it was. My 3 boys were dyslexic, because it does get passed on. My father was dyslexic. When my boys were dyslexic, I put them into this school in the summer called Lindamood-Bell. They run a marathon on their brains to teach their left back lobe how to read. It’s 4 hours a day, relentless.

My mom did that to me. There was no Lindamood-Bell back then.

People call them tiger moms. I don’t know what you call a Jewish tiger mom, but it’s brutal, all right? I don’t care what anybody else is saying. “You’re going to college,” because I wasn’t going to go to college. “You’re reading. You’re getting good grades.” Tiger mom at a degree of 10.

And then, what was the first, like, early-20s, post-college big hit of success?

Here’s what I knew. I screwed around in Europe for a year and came back to New York. A friend of mine at the time was this guy by the name of Michael Mendelsohn, and he was working for this company.

Because I was hyperactive, too, I used to wake up at 5:00 in the morning and watch The Crusher and Dick the Bruiser and regional wrestling and TV shows. I never knew how it was made, but I watched everything.

I said, “What are you doing?” He said to me, “Oh, I’m working at William Morris.” How the fuck am I supposed to know what William Morris is? I’m from Chicago. My father’s a doctor. He’s an immigrant. William Morris—what the fuck is William Morris?

He tells me. For whatever reason, bang, the light went on. I didn’t have a job. I didn’t know whether I was going to go to business school, go back to Northwestern and go to some night-school business school, or work at the Merc. I used to do summer jobs at the Merc in the pits—220, 220. I used to do all that, right? That was what I thought I was going to do.

For whatever reason, the minute he told me, I said, “That’s it. That’s a gig for me.”

I got a job working for this guy by the name of Robbie Lands. I was working for Bob Duva, who went to work for Robbie Lands. It just started.

I helped with the Tennessee Williams, Lillian Hellman, and Dashiell Hammett estates, making rights deals for them and organizing them properly. He was, I think, at the time, 86. I was doing a really good job, and he turns to me and says, “I’m not promoting anybody. You should go out to L.A., and you can make a lot of money.”

He set up 2 interviews for me: 1 at CAA and 1 at a company called Leading Artists. I got the job in the mail room at CAA, making 15 cents a mile.

What did you learn in the mail room?

That I hated it. I learned how to actually drive around L.A. I learned the hierarchy of the business—business affairs people, studio heads, where stars were at the time, where movie stars played. That whole thing made you feel you were in the mix.

Yeah.

The movie business, how important it was, but the television business made a lot of money. I realized I could never be in the movie business.

Why?

Because you would have to do coverage while you’re in the mail room. I’m dyslexic. Movie scripts are 130 pages, 120 pages. TV scripts are 30 pages.

I’m not spending all weekend on a movie. I’m going to do TV. That little change—2 doors.

Yeah.

Bang. Then, when we started Endeavor, I was reading George Gilder’s book, “Life After Television,” and I’m like, “There’s going to be a lot more distribution.”

There were only so many content creators at the time. Content was going to change and expand, but there was limited supply and demand. Prices were going up for creators.

Television was where you could make huge money. When I was at CAA, I went on Bill Haber’s desk, the head of television at the time. It was Mike Ovitz, Ron Meyer, and Bill Haber.

Huge money was coming in because of television. Not that the movie business wasn’t making money, because you had the DVD dividends at the time, gross participation, and everything else. But you had a hit television show, like ALF. I remember sitting at the desk listening to all the calls, and there was a fight between Mike Ovitz and Bernie Brillstein on ALF and what they were paying out.

That thing paid out a fortune. Then it paid out syndication 1, syndication 2, and all the different avenues. I was like, “That baby’s for me.”

What was the key to being an exceptional agent?

Being relentless. When you’re trying to get somebody staffed, 1 of the greatest things Robbie Lands ever taught me was, “You know why people call me back?”

Robbie used to say in his Austrian accent, “Because I represent Miloš Forman, who did Amadeus, and I represent Peter Shaffer. I represent Al Pacino. They’ll call you back.”

Having a great client meant you had access. You had to have taste, and you had to get great clients. Once you did that, and they could continue to grow, you became more and more powerful. That’s what I did.

How did you get your first great client? Who was it?

I’m at CAA and I go to this company, InterTalent. Mark Rosen—I’m not sure if he was my first client; he might have been my second. Greg Daniels, who created The Office, King of the Hill, and Parks and Recreation, might have been my first client. Amy Lippman, who created Party of Five, also might have been. I’m too old.

They had created shows. I thought the shows were great. I took over those clients. They led to other clients.

Back then, there was no YouTube. There was no Instagram. There was none of that. People weren’t creating that way. The great shows were from Saturday Night Live to The Simpsons. There was this whole Harvard Lampoon group, and a lot of them—not all—the SNL guys, the writers, because I was in the writer business, came from the Lampoon. Harvard. Go to Harvard.

So you signed a bunch of people off of that, put them on SNL. From SNL, they went to The Simpsons, or they had the pedigree, and then you moved them around.

9. Using the Phone as a Weapon

I have a bizarrely specific question. I’ve been on the receiving end of what it’s like to communicate with you and your team. It’s unlike anything that I’ve experienced in terms of the speed—the minute you—

The velocity of it.

Yeah, the velocity. You get engaged, and then it's just like—

You feel like you got plugged into the Matrix or something. What is that? What's the origin of that?

I have no idea.

Can you describe how it works?

I use the phone. I use it as a weapon. I have 2 people working for me, and I do now a lot of stuff on AI.

Yeah. With regard to conference calls and follow-up, what's your system? I want to know what the system is.

I have no idea. I've grown it over years, and it's kind of like its own animal. What's the principle behind it? Follow-up? Relentless follow-up?

Relentless follow-up and communication. Yeah, overcommunication.

Like my brother Zeke is horrible at it. He's my oldest brother. I say to him, "I just sent you this to call this person because you asked me, and I've connected you. The next call is not that person. What are you doing?"

I don't understand. It drives me crazy with my kids, too. My middle kid, who's in the business and in entertainment, is very good at it because he's seen me do it. One is, you've got to communicate, you've got to overcommunicate. If they're not getting back to you, you've got to keep on calling them, like, "What are you doing?" That's the job. How do you make people love you for it versus be annoyed by it?

I don't know if people love me for it, but I try and make it like, "I know you want to kill me." You have to bring levity to it. But it is—it works.

They respect it.

I know you want to kill me. You have to bring levity to it. But it works.

It's a force. I understand that. How many calls do you think you do?

A lot. My friend Pete Berg was in the car with me once. We were coming back from a golf match, and the system starts—the phone calls. The phone calls can be from presidents of the United States to a young actor, a writer, or an idea I want. He turns to me in the middle of it and goes, "I'm too anxious right now. I can't breathe."

I'm like, "What's the problem?" He goes, "Do you realize what's going on on that thing?" And I'm like, "Yeah, I know. I'm sorry about it." It just works. I'm sorry if it—

No, I love it. I think it's fantastic.

Did I come at you, or was it my system?

No, it just feels different. It feels like the thing matters. That's nice. Too few things feel like they matter. I think you're good at it.

Well, if I'm going to be involved in something, it matters to me. Therefore, I'm going to take it to the point where I can get it done.

What have you learned from Egon?

You know, the great thing about him is he continues to want to learn. He's a guy who's made a lot of money and takes a lot of big risks, but he's smart about them. Eminem writes songs all the time. He writes, writes, writes, writes, writes beforehand, and then when he gets in there, he calls his riff.

Jay-Z—this is what Rick Rubin told me—doesn't write any of his lyrics. They're about to start, he comes back in, the tune hits, and he does the rap. He's instinctual, but incredible.

Egon does unbelievable analysis. I saw it in our tech private-equity business, and I see it when he goes after a company. He's relentless when he wants something. He takes criticism. For a guy at his level, a big guy, as good as he is, taking criticism and listening to it, absorbing it, and then adapting with it is incredible. I've never seen that. Most of these guys are alone: "Go fuck yourself."

But he does all those things. It's really incredible. Then he learns from it and adapts. I don't know anybody who's on par with him. There are probably people as good as him, but I don't know a lot of them. I don't think there's anybody better.

He has a point of view on industries. He came after me—he was a tech guy—and said, "Here's where I think the business is going," which matched up with mine: content, et cetera.

So he has vision in there. But then the superpower is that he's probably one of the best financial engineers I've ever seen, of all these guys. It's not even close—defined as knowing what he wants and being able to execute on that vision.

At a balance sheet, he sees a different language than most dudes. He sees the value proposition and has been not 30% right, but 70% right. That's rare.

How do you think about your own investing that's not one of these massive, major platforms? Just a normal investment—how do you do that in your life?

You know, I don't know.

Listen, I have some big investments called TKO. I'll bet on myself. I'm not smart enough to buy bonds. I'm not smart enough to know. I believe in Elon Musk.

10. Betting on Elon Musk

Talk about him a little bit. I know you recently saw some of the robotic stuff. Tell me what your impression was.

Well, I saw the 3 or 4 generations of the hand. I came up to him and said I wanted to do UFC fights with the robots. That's one of the things we started talking about. We just had a fight in China, and I sent Dana White to see some of the robots there to see if we could then do a fight—Chinese versus American.

Yeah, it was really great. Wow, everyone in the world would watch that. All right.

So I went up to see him—the 3 or 4 iterations of the hand, the Optimus hand.

What did you see?

Just how much technology had advanced from 1 to 4, or 1 to 3—I don't remember—was unbelievable. What the hand could do was beyond anything. I mean, it does what you and I do. Then he showed me a couple of them that could fight and throw punches and kicks. The balance and the pushing were unbelievable.

If I'm a betting man, first of all, I'm betting on that dude. I bet a lot on SpaceX, xAI, and Twitter.

I almost hesitate to ask because everyone knows Elon is awesome, or has been awesome, and is great at what he does. But how would you describe his greatness? What's your interpretation of it?

I'm having Thanksgiving at my house with my brother Rahm Emanuel, who's in the Obama administration. He was chief of staff. Elon is a friend, and we were falling off a cliff.

So we're in California, and I said, "Hey, can we come down to see SpaceX and Tesla?"

Yeah.

Now, the president's bailing out car companies. Elon—because I know it—Tesla's in trouble. He's sleeping because there are cars backed up that have to be fixed. He's starting a new car company. He's sleeping there, like he did at Twitter and SpaceX. He just will not stop. He will not stop until it's fixed.

So we get in there. He walks with my brother and shows him SpaceX. This is at the beginning, in '08.

Yeah, nothing yet.

Nothing at SpaceX, right? He's building it. And he's got these 2 things. But he was sleeping there on 2 hours of sleep.

I think he needs that in his life, even though he hates it at times. I remember him calling me, and he hated it—he was so upset with Tesla and what he should do with it—and we would have conversations.

But he wills things into existence with sheer brains, power, guts, and endurance. That's his superpower. In a weird way, even though I think it's emotionally brutal on him—taking all the punches and feeling that—it also gives him a huge amount of energy and emotional satisfaction.

You've got a show called Rushmore, which is about greatness. What is it about greatness that so drives you?

I don't believe in legacy. I don't believe that businesspeople have legacies. I think Elon will have a legacy. I think Jeff Bezos will have a legacy. I think Steve Jobs has a legacy. Probably, mostly, that's about it. You know, presidents.

Yeah. Leaders. Maybe some actors.

But I do think there are characteristics of those 4 people that are important to know about. How did they get there? Are there patterns?

As we just said, we did a Rushmore on the '90s of music with Jimmy Iovine and Rick Rubin, who are 2 guys who should be on Rushmore as producers, in my opinion.

We as humans can at least see greatness and how they do it, then adapt it or learn something there, take that learning, and keep on evolving. I think it's always important to learn from history, use it as a prism, and then take things and use them in your own life. That's why I'm doing it.

What have you learned, with a life like the one you've led—which is not lacking adventure—about how to talk to your kids about it and not create a circumstance where there's an expectation?

Well, I have a daughter who works at the WWE. I have a son who's working for Rick Caruso. Hopefully—knock wood—he runs for governor. Then my son is in the business; he's a producer. The other one works at Apple.

I have 4 kids, and they have had unbelievable luxury. I hope if you ask people, they're pretty normal kids. One, they weren't overprogrammed. I wasn't a helicopter father, and their mother wasn't a helicopter mother. In the summers, they ran around in Rhode Island and played golf and played tennis.

And if they did stupid shit, they heard about it.

They got punished.

And they didn't run our lives. So, they're pretty normal kids, and I'm not sitting there trying to always help them. I make an introduction, and then it's their job. It's their job, even though they hate it—they would tell you.

My eldest son—no, this is one of my favorite moments. We were flying somewhere, and he goes, “I just want to be normal.” I said, “Who the fuck wants to be normal? Normal sucks, right? What the fuck is normal? What is that? I don't even know what that is.”

When you ask around, people say a lot of things, mostly amazing, about you. One is that everyone says you're one of the consummate dealmakers. What is a great deal? What, in your mind, makes a great deal? Some would agree that you've made a lot of great deals. What is a great deal? What is a great process of dealmaking?

11. The Art of Dealmaking

When you're making a deal—and they're all different—both sides have to feel good. Your job is to make sure the other side, whether it's true or not, feels good.

Mhm.

Simple. That's not easy.

How do you do that? What's the art of that?

There's so much nuance to that. Sometimes, it's just a fight. You're just aggressive, like, “Okay, we're in a battle.” Certain people and certain negotiations—and everybody feels this—you're in a dance, right? You're just trying to get them, and you have to hang in there and do the dance till we get to the end of the song.

And it's not a battle. I mean, I've been in screaming matches. “Okay, fuck you. We're going to—I'm—you know, I know you need it. I know I need it. We're just—”

What's yelling and talking about?

We're firing guns. We're shooting.

I like the second one better.

That's just about charm, and that's just about knowing how you have to play. Sometimes, you got to get mad, and it takes time.

Somebody was asking me, “What's the art?”

Yeah.

It is so complicated. It can't be reduced.

Yeah, I don't know if it can be reduced. When I was constantly on the field, I was always the first one. I was always shooting. I was always in a fight.

Right. As you've gotten bigger, you're dancing more.

As I've gotten bigger, there's a lot more dancing. More dancing. Yeah, I was a pretty ugly fighter, though.

What's the fastest money you've ever made, and what's the longest game you've ever had to play?

My greatest negotiation. Can I do it that way?

Yeah, of course.

The greatest deal I ever made was, quote unquote, merging with William Morris for $44 million. We paid out the CFO and Jim Wiatt. They never thought we were going to write a check for $20 million and have the votes to fire them. Patrick Whitesell and I did that and got the merger done, I think, in a year.

They had a horrible culture, so everybody hated each other. We just played the chess match on their side, took over the company, and brought in Silver Lake. The rest is history.

Yeah. And that then led to everything. Just to zoom in on that negotiation a little bit: They were in trouble financially?

They were losing clients and were financially in trouble, and they all hated each other. They knew they didn't have good leadership, and we could just keep putting out bad press on them and taking agents and taking clients over.

It took 7 years to do that. Then, once we were in the room, we just pitted board members against them and brought them onto our side because we actually treated them well. We actually did.

And then, when the vote came, before the merger, we said, “You guys now have to get rid of Jim Wiatt because he's a disaster, and the CFO.” All their hands went up because they realized, “Wait a second, these guys are good guys.” And we were. So, even before the merger closed, they got rid of them, and then the whole thing just happened.

That led to Egon Durban coming into my life. Teddy had gotten sick and passed away—Teddy Forstmann—and we were going after IMG. It was the best deal I've ever made.

What was that flip like, from agent to owner?

This is where Egon was a great teacher. He helped us think through it because we knew we were going after IMG. Once we had IMG, I knew instinctually that Patrick took over the college football business that they had, and I moved to the UK. I took over IMG. That's how we split the baby.

Nobody was telling me I had to move to the UK. I just realized, “Wait a second, I just spent $2.4 billion. You better fucking get your ass to the UK and understand that business,” right?

None of those people wanted to stay because they didn't want us to win. IMG didn't want us to win. They wanted somebody else to win. They wanted The Chernin Group to win.

This is where I learned a lot from Egon in this negotiation. He said, “I think The Chernin Group—they were going to pay, I think it was $1.9 billion.” And he said, “We're paying $2.4 billion.” I said, “$2.4 billion? Why don't we pay $2.1 billion?” He goes, “We're going to make it so they can't say no. They can't say no, and they can't go back, because they don't want us.”

He was 100% right. We paid $2.4 billion, and we got it. Then I realized, “This is my money. Time to move.” My family stayed in Rhode Island and L.A. I moved for, I think, 4 or 5 months to the UK and went all over Europe. I went to Spain for the tennis business. I mean, all over. I learned all the players.

When I got done, I was physically fried.

Fried. Yeah.

I was flying back on weekends and flying—I mean, it was crazy. And then I represent writers, directors, and actors. Plus, I had to do that. So, that was kind of when it all happened.

Do you care about money anymore? Are you motivated by money?

I didn't really care about money since my first show went into syndication. When King of the Hill went into syndication—

What happened then? You just made enough?

I was making $15 million a year, right?

Yeah.

When you're making $15 million a year and then, all of a sudden, you can go look at the math. It was $6 million an episode. And they did 14 seasons. You're okay.

So then, if money sunsetted, what became the thing?

I want to be right. My ideas—I want to make sure that they're right, because that feels good.

And you are. Simple as that.

Yeah. You know, I'm not the stupidest Emanuel. I still have competition with those 2, emotionally.

What have you learned from Rahm?

Talk to my brother Rahm about politics. You can talk to him about a lot of other things, but when it comes to his métier—and we're not talking about just domestic politics, we're talking about global politics, like how to handle allies in Asia to combat China, what to do on Israel, or any subject—there's nobody more thoughtful. I mean, I'm going to boast: It's my brother Rahm.

When you look at the potential field of candidates for president, there are some—I mean, Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro, I know a lot of these guys, and they're all very qualified on a global basis. Rahm is as relentless and as driven as I am in what I do.

He was in 2 White Houses. He was the whip in Congress. He was a mayor of a big city and understands everything going on in one of the biggest, most important areas in the world for us: Asia. In his responsibility as ambassador, he galvanized that region to combat China.

There's nobody more qualified. Whether that makes him the president—the future candidate—I have no idea. But my brother understands. We were talking about it: It used to be, when you were CEO, it was bilateral. It's just bilateral. Now it's multilateral, right? I don't think anybody looks at that world better than him in politics and global issues.

That's rare, and he learned from incredible people. Bill Clinton was incredible. Obama was incredible. He worked out their agenda. And when it comes to details, you can ask him about Supreme Court issues in Pennsylvania and how they handle that.

I mean, he's down to an inch. I'm at an inch in my business. He's at an inch. He understands what that means for the congressional races, what that means for the Senate, the messaging that you have to do, and how to stay on message.

And Zeke Emanuel is just hysterical. I love him. He's a bioethicist. I think he's incredible thinking about medicine. Why he does what he does, I have no idea, and he loves it. So, I just love him.

What happens when you're no longer at the one-inch level? When you're no longer deep in the flow?

Well, I'm not now at William Morris.

And so, has it been easy?

Yeah. I just said this to one of the companies that I run, Barrett-Jackson. Craig Jackson wants to step back, and I said to him, “You're never stepping back.”

He was, “What are you talking about?” I said, “Well, here's what I did. Let's go private. Richard Weitz and Christian Muir are going to take over the business.”

And they're going to do some really great things, and they're going to fuck up. And you know the only way they're going to learn? By doing those 2 things: by fucking up. You don't really learn that much from doing good things. And I said, “You've got to permit the fuck-ups.”

The problem is, I said, I started my business 31 years ago. It's my name. Your father started your business, and now it's your name. You just won't let anybody fuck up. What's the worst thing that could happen if it fucks up? Is the business going away? No. So let them fuck up. Not a lot of people who run companies have that thought process.

What was your most formative fuck-up? The thing you fucked up that taught you the most?

Well, I fucked up all the time. Thank God Mark Shapiro's in my life. I think the biggest fuck-up, truly, because we're building the business and you pick bad people—but we had a bad meeting, Patrick and I, at Whitehall with likely Irv Weintraub, Jim Wiatt, and Dave Wershafter.

I went nuts because I was playing the chess match out and they didn't let me get to the end. I was talking about the negotiation, and I screamed at them. We were sitting at a table like this at the Bel-Air—or, no, the Beverly Hills Hotel. I went nuts.

I said, “You don't know what the fuck you're talking about. We could buy you. You know, we're like 2 inches big, and it's William Morris,” because we were more profitable. And I said, “You know nothing about business,” and I went fucking nuts talking about it.

Patrick, to his credit, knows when I hit DEFCON 4 or 5. He just gets the fuck out of the way. The meeting ends. It's over.

Yeah.

We're walking down Wilshire, and he goes, “Well, that's over.” I said, “No, that's not over. This is happening.”

And so, a year and a half later, 2 years later, it was back on the table. But that was a fuck-up because it pushed us way, way back. I just thought DEFCON—I was so pissed.

What do you think the future of TV and movies are?

There are going to be a lot more of them. I actually think what I said to you—I think you're seeing it now. Marketing companies are going to podcasters and streamers and marketing with them, or giving them brands and giving them ownership to sponsor them and market them. Sometimes they sponsor them, and sometimes they ask them to take equity.

The same thing's going to happen with content. We talked about this. I think the cost is going to go down to 0, or very close. Dwayne Johnson, Mark Wahlberg, Dana White, and Pat McAfee are all going to become their own channels. I do believe that. Actually, I don't know if that's in 2 years or in 7 years.

And so representation has to change its infrastructure, like we changed when we took over sports to be able to handle that conversation, with regard to licensing, marketing, and all that stuff.

So, like, give me advice. I have a channel. I think the podcasting business is going to become like the cable business. It's going to become like Oprah.

What does that mean?

You know, Oprah had Dr. Phil.

Oh, I see.

She sponsored people, and then she took them out in syndication on the station groups.

You're going to find a young you. Maybe it's in medicine, or maybe it's in something that interests you. And you're going to bring them into the fold with your sponsors, your distribution, and everything. You're going to take a piece of it.

Maybe there's a product that comes off of it, and you're going to own a piece and he's going to own a piece. And then you're going to figure out, maybe I need my own sponsorship and marketing team internally. And so you're going to become you. Somebody needs to—you're Oprah. You become Oprah.

And so that's what— that's what's great, right?

Sounds good to me.

And so that will be the first iteration of this. You never know, you might find a movie that you like or a documentary you like, and you send it out to your subs. There's multiple ways you can monetize that. Maybe you turn that into a book. That's going to be the business.

What's your craziest view on the future of sports? We'll start and finish where we started.

Prices are going way up.

Prices for everything?

Prices for teams.

Okay, talk about that, because in the NFL everyone's like, “There's no more rich guys to buy the teams.”

Well, they'll just change. They'll go from private-equity firms owning 10% to 50%—yeah, 35, you know. And instead of only being able to take $1 billion of debt out, they'll take $2 billion.

That shit will change. But the price of sports for the end user is going to be more. Therefore, there's going to be tiers at Netflix, you know, with the sports tier. You pay $15.

Yeah. They're going to have to make a decision: when do they go direct?

It depends when—

Yeah, yeah. It depends on when this thing caps out.

We just saw a big input of money, which is betting. That will increase.

That market will increase, and the amount of money they pay will increase. Premium tickets will go up, and ticketing will go up. Prices are going up. Prices are going up.

What do you think of gambling? What do you think of betting?

Well, I think it's good, actually, in the following way. For us—I'm just talking about our businesses—the more data, the more you can't cheat. And I think what's going to happen is you'll have AI companies come in and look at all the data, and you won't be able to cheat. You're going to understand, you're going to triangulate, and understand there's something happening over here with this picture. And you're going to look at video, and it's going to be like, boom. It's going to be so hard to cheat.

It will be harder to cheat, not that people won't try. I think it helps the engagement. Now, do I think gambling is good? That's a different conversation. Do you?

I don't gamble.

Do I think gambling is good? You know how I come at you hard? Imagine what I do to my kids about gambling, smoking, and drinking.

Health, smoking, and drinking.

I feel bad for my children. I mean, it's unrelenting: articles, conversations. It's horrible.

Yeah. When you see the tech—the layer of massive technology companies—I mean, you talk to all these guys all the time, I'm sure. What's your impression of what's going on in big tech, kind of writ large?

So here's my understanding with Sam. Sam has made $1.2 trillion in obligations. It's a big number, whatever it is. He has 800 million subs. Let's just say it does $14 billion in revenue. It'll probably lose $5 billion. Do you understand it?

I'm definitely not as smart as you or any of these investors. They must see something. And the only way it pays off—unless I'm wrong now, George Gilder would scream at me—he goes, “Every technology has created more jobs. This is the only technology at this level of spend. You have to be taking jobs. Jobs have to go away.”

Then the government's going to have to pick them up, and we're going to be more efficient. I don't understand the math. I'm not smart enough to understand the math. You know what I do know? How to put on a fight and put on an event. That's what I know.

Who is the person that you represent or have represented who's the most innovative in this landscape right now? You mentioned Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. He seems pretty damn innovative.

Yeah. They're all testing new things. Kim Kardashian is, Mark Wahlberg is, Dwayne Johnson is. They're all looking at it and figuring out how to play in it. Not all of them. Aaron Sorkin isn't. Larry David isn't. Marty Scorsese isn't. They're just great creators.

But there are some actors, writers, and directors who are looking at it and trying to figure out where they sit in it. And I think the first thing they all have to do is start playing with it. They're all starting to play with it.

What has you most worried about the future and most excited about the future?

Do you have kids?

Yeah.

I'm worried for my kids.

Why?

You mean I didn't tell you this? I'm sitting there, having my normal every-6-month meeting—lunch or dinner—with Elon, and we're talking about AI. He said this to me. He goes, “Life cannot be disrupted.” I said, “Okay.”

I have 2 years. Then he goes to me, “All right, do you have a dog?” I said, “Yeah.” He goes, “AI is you, and you're the dog.”

I said, “I don't like that.” He goes, “That's what's happening. That's going to happen.” Well, you and I have kids. I haven't figured out, you know—as a parent, we have to think about it—where my kids sit. That makes me nervous. That makes me really nervous.

You're kind of set.

I'm over the hill. Yeah, in 4 months I'm 65. Who gives a fuck about me?

You know, I have 30-year-olds. I have a 23-year-old who works at Apple. I've heard him speak about his kids. That's hard. What are we telling them? What are they supposed to be doing?

What do you think the answer to that is?

I don't know. I actually don't know.

Have a guess?

No, I don't.

Do you? You talk to a lot of people. What are they saying to you?

Create things. Make things.

Right. Ideas.

Yeah, ideas. Use the tools.

Yeah. Make new things.

Yeah. So far, these things aren't going to make everything. And I'm not sure how fast—I know everybody's saying it's coming very fast. So there's a numerator and denominator here, right? In the United States, I think it's just us and China, really. But I don't know if it's the numerator or the denominator, but there's this thing called energy and energy delivery that I'm not sure yet is there for it to be at full AGI capacity.

Meaning literally the power?

The power and also how we deliver the power. So it's a big problem, but yes. It'll take a while.

Yeah. It's going to take a while. So we have a little bit of time. But we have to still be thinking, like, what the fuck are we telling our kids? What about what's most exciting?

I've started this new business called Mari, trying to make that into the next Live Nation in music. Or, you know, build this new company after having learned—because I'm not a PE firm, but I'm a company. But I've learned all these different skill sets.

Why do that one separately from the original company with UFC and WWE?

Because Silver Lake just wanted WME, the William Morris Endeavor, to be—he just wanted Endeavor to be an agency. So he was selling down the events and a bunch of other assets that we wanted to buy at TKO to pay down the debt. And live is where I wanted to be, so I was like, “Fuck it. I'll just raise a bunch of money.”

The good thing is, which I felt really good about—I actually did feel really good about it—this crazy idea I had, people were saying, “Yeah, you're right.” And so now I want to make them a lot of money, which I've done for a lot of people. Then I'll make myself a lot more money. Not that I care, but it is a—

To be right.

No, but I want to be right. It is a benchmark, right?

I know you love art. What has the world of art taught you?

I have a very specific area of art I collect.

Which is what?

I collect African American artists, mainly American, but now Africa and other places, from about 1940 to now.

Why that?

I don't know. It just spoke to me. I have no idea why. So it's from Sam Gilliam and Bob Thompson to Kara Walker and Mark Bradford, to Noah Davis—he passed away. Incredible artist. I just love it, and so I'm just deep.

Yeah. And unrelenting. [laughter] Shocking. Yeah. Long live.

My favorite question is my last one that I ask everybody. What is the kindest thing that anyone's ever done for you?

12. The Kindest Thing

The kindest thing anybody's ever given me is trust. Clients trust me with their biggest dreams. Like, crazy. When Tyler Perry comes to me and says, “Here's what I want to do,” or Marty or Larry David, that's an incredible gift of kindness. Egon backing my play multiple times—that's an incredible gift.

And then I would just say to you, I have now in my life a great life. I never realized it before. I was just on the field. And I have a great second wife, Sarah Staudinger, who's got a great fashion business, Staud. And I think I have great brothers, but I have 4 incredible kids. And I'm a lucky guy, because I love them and they love me.

It's crazy as your kids get older. It's crazy to have these conversations with these kids that are now adults. And they say to you and do things that are just beyond your imagination. It is the nicest thing to see that happen in your life. For a kid like me, they didn't think I was supposed to go to college. And that this life has happened for me. My parents were incredible. So I'm like, all those things collectively are the—

A lot of kindness.

—kindness that has happened. And there's plenty of times I was not deserving of it. I definitely was not, because I didn't realize how you're supposed to act, and you're supposed to get off the field.

So, yeah. I absolutely love talking to you. I love your energy. I love how you approach the world. You're so distinct and interesting. Thank you so much for your time.

I really appreciate you.