AI, Attention, and Ownership: Ari Emanuel Explains the Next Era of Entertainment

Ari Emanuel, the newest kingpin of combat sports, one of Hollywood's biggest power brokers. It's everywhere from the boardroom to, you know, even politics. There was another figure named Ari Gold that many people thought was named after you. The straight-talking deal maker has a reputation for getting what he wants. I'm back and you're fired. Emanuel has worked tirelessly to transform Endeavor into a multi-billion dollar behemoth. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Ari Emanuel.

Thank you. Hey, awesome. When’s the last time we saw each other at that dinner? Exactly.

Yeah. Did you see that panel?

Yeah.

You know Alex?

Yeah, I know Alex.

Yeah, I think he’s great. I love his book.

Yeah, the book is incredible.

So, what’s your take on what we just talked about? There’s a lot to cover there. Well, let’s start at the beginning. Ari, you’ve had an incredible arc. You built an incredible business, and recently you’ve had the opportunity to merge a bunch of assets, and the thing has just taken on a life of its own. Can you walk us through the last 4 or 5 years of the evolution of Endeavor—your process of first leaving, building a business, scaling it up, and all of that action, the tick-tock of it all?

Yeah. March 29th, when I first came here, I was making 15 cents a mile. When I moved to LA, I went to work at CAA, and then started the company on March 29th, my birthday, 30, almost 31 years ago.

I had this idea about where content was going from George Gilder, who wrote the book Life After Television. He said there was going to be infinite distribution, and then content was going to be really valuable. There were going to be many forms of content.

We went out and started growing the business and trying to get into every sector of the business. We made it a 2-horse race when we, quote-unquote, merged with William Morris. That was, I think, one of my best deals, actually—the merger.

Then, when Ted Forstmann passed away, we bought IMG with Silver Lake, which had come into the company, and we were in sports. Then we realized it was all in the representation business, and we realized that because of what we built—the infrastructure we built, the global scale we had, and the production and representation—we could start owning some of the assets as opposed to just representing them, put them through our filters, and create more value.

The first thing we did was buy a company called Professional Bull Riding. It was making, I think, $3 million a year in profit. We turned it into a really nice business. It’s still growing.

Then, because we negotiate every day against networks and studios, the UFC came up and we said, “Okay, let’s take a big swing.” The funny thing is, when we bought IMG, they said we overpaid. It was the cheapest sports acquisition ever to happen. When we bought the UFC, they were like at 4.

At the time, it looked incredibly expensive.

Yeah. All we had to do was make a broadcast deal that took the multiple down from 30 uh 20 times to kind of under 10.

We then thought we could take all those assets—my big mistake here—and make a conglomerate. The marketplace just didn’t understand it.

Yeah.

We tried to take it public right before COVID. It failed. I didn’t realize how hard it was to go back out. We finally got it back public. We rolled all of the UFC into Endeavor, and we still weren’t getting any value.

Then Vince said yes, and we merged the assets. A pure play in sports and sports entertainment was a better conversation with the Street.

When you started, we had the traditional cable networks, then we had cable. It was a very hierarchical and easy-to-understand hierarchy, right? And then you have the streamers, and now, this afternoon, we’ll have Neal Mohan from YouTube.

Right.

Then you have characters like MrBeast who can go direct. So, it’s very chaotic.

No, it’s actually just back to George Gilder. It’s back to George Gilder. There’s infinite distribution, right? There are many forms of content. People consume podcasts. People consume stuff on Instagram and TikTok. People consume stuff now on the streamers.

I don’t believe that traditional businesses are going away for a long time, because a lot of our sports guys have the NFL, and the NBA has still sold stuff there, plus also sold it to the Amazons of the world. You just have a vast map of where distribution is. Distribution has gotten vast.

A lot of people would say—the kinds of content have gotten a little ossified, calcified, rigid, maybe. What does that mean? Meaning, you don’t see the broad swath of content that you would see maybe 15 or 20 years ago. Do you see people taking creative risks the way they used to?

I don’t know. I think I can’t get enough content. I don’t think—I don’t know about you—but there’s going to be more content than there’s ever been. I think there are incredible voices out there.

I think the content that’s being made—there’s a vast majority of it, and I think it’s really incredible. I do.

Yeah. Ari, what do you think of podcasts and the general movement of top talent—Megan, uh Tucker, you guys? We’re a little bit behind them, but what about the ability for them to be independent and not affiliated with a network?

Yeah. This is something we have not seen in the industry. There were gatekeepers. You used to have to get packaged and represented, and now people come to us all the time with different opportunities to join different networks. I won’t talk about any specifics, but we’ve decided, well, why would we need them anymore?

Yeah, why would we need them if we have this amazing audience?

The thing is, I think the podcasting business is going to turn into the syndication business that used to be on the broadcast and station groups. Oprah was the behemoth.

Yeah. Oprah was the behemoth, and then Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz. She launched a bunch of them. You’ll probably see that reincarnated through people with podcasts if they want to. We saw that at Barstool. So, you’re saying we could then syndicate the cable and syndication model through this, through the multiple channels?

A network, and we should develop talent. You need some representation, guys.

But the problem is, Ari, a lot of the representation, to be totally honest, sucks.

Yeah, and we would only consider a pure relationship with somebody who has done it before at a high level, if you know anybody.

Yeah. I don’t.

You don’t?

Well, Ari, anybody good—I don’t know. We’re talking about you, Ari.

One of the things I’ve noticed as a common thread with these big independents is that they move from what used to be commercial ad placements to sponsor deals, where they got 1 sponsor, to eventually owning their own business.

Correct.

And the value there is so much greater because you get a multiple on revenue. You don’t just get advertising—the marketing line, right? Tucker has his Alps product, which Jake Hal uh fortunately's not on today.

No, please don’t put it on. And you’re saying, “Use the promo code Ari,” and—well, Jimmy’s got his chocolate bar company. Is that the future for monetization for the big independents? Do they actually own the equity in what historically have just been sponsors for them, and that’s where the value—

Well, you’re going to own the equity in your podcast, right? We started this business at WME, I don’t know, about 10 years ago, and called it Talent Ventures, where a lot of musicians and actors started businesses.

With the broadcast networks and cable channels, ratings were going down, so manufacturers had to get to the audience. They used to do it through commercials. When those ratings went down, they started giving equity, or people started launching a lot of different products. Sometimes it was alcohol, sometimes perfume, sometimes food, et cetera. That will now start happening with people like you and other podcasters.

Gwyneth Paltrow has done an exceptional job.

That’s just a natural evolution because of where broadcast television and cable television are. Manufacturers are going to have to get to an audience. You guys have a very big and loyal audience.

These events and things that you do over the air—products will come to you. You will make the decision: Are you taking the sponsorship dollar? Are you taking the ownership dollar? That’s just evaluating the economics and whether you believe in a product. There are a lot of things that go into that.

Ari, how much of your time are you spending trying to figure out where all these next-gen AI tools either help you, give you operating leverage to actually go and be even more creative on the content, versus maybe disrupting some of the legacy folks you’ve worked with?

You know, we have a whole program being set up at TKO and at WME about how AI can help us. On the production side, the studios and our clients are doing a whole other thing.

I’ve made a decision. I know enough about AI. I’m not smart enough to know enough about AI. I’ve made a decision that live content is where I’m going to sit. I’m really good at that, and I’m really good at monetizing that. So, we have a pure-play sports and sports-entertainment business.

I just launched what I believe is the next live-events business, which will launch in October. You have our sports business, and you have Live Nation and Michael Rapinoe's incredible pure-play music business. When we were a public company—now we’re a private company—we had 700 events inside Endeavor. It’ll be completed in the first week in October. I bought a lot of those, raised about $2 billion, and I’m going to go pure-play in events because I think it’s the opposite. If you have AI over there, the opposite bet on AI is not data centers. It’s live.

Humans want connection. Connection.

Back to live. I think it’s kind of like a 4-day workweek now, probably going down to 3. I was seeing Elon and seeing the robots—probably a 3-day workweek for full employment. There’s going to be a lot of free time. We definitely all need connections, as we can see right here. My whole thesis is live.

On the William Morris side, which is incredible, there are only 2 representation businesses. William Morris is the biggest one of all of them, and there’s going to be more room for content.

I want to slow down and double-click into this. Just wait. So, we work Monday through Friday. Saturday—

I don’t think a lot of people work Monday through Friday anymore.

But I’m saying, let’s just say—yeah, we used to. Monday through Friday, Saturday you’re schlepping the kids to soccer, Sunday you get a rest day, watch some football, then rinse and repeat.

That’s all a lie now. That’s going away. No, no, no. Right now, average drive times in America are 11:00 to 4:00. So, people are doing their chores—

11:00 to 4:00? Doing their stuff that they have to do on the weekends in the morning or in the afternoon. They have their mobile phones; they’re doing their stuff.

Thursday, hotel bookings are way up, way up. So, 3-day weekends.

3-day weekends. I’m shocked. What? Well, get him some coffee, please.

From back there, you should start drinking coffee because if you just look at the data, we’re at 4-day workweeks now. I think it’s going to 3-day workweeks, which means more time for entertainment. That’s your key piece to it.

Sacks, you wanted to get in.

Well, I was going to just riff on something Chamath said, which is that you have so many different things you’re involved in. How do you decide how to prioritize your time? You could be helping William Morris clients. Your representation business could be a never-ending job by itself. You’ve got TKO. You could be looking for new acquisitions. How do you decide how to spend your time?

I have ADHD. Listen, actually, this Friday is 2 years since we did the merger at TKO. We merged at, I think, $100, and then went down to $79. Anybody who says they don’t look at their stock price, I look at it every—like—19 times a day.

Yesterday, we hit $200. We’re doing everything we said we were going to do with regard to streamlining the 2 businesses and integrating them. We brought over PBR, On Location, and IMG in February, which kind of fills out the suite of what we do at TKO for everybody that wants sports. We made our broadcasting deals, and we’re just powering away at what we have to do.

Are you personally, at this point, just kind of out of representation?

No, no, no.

Or do you dip down sometimes and help clients? How do you see that?

Being in the representation business, whether it be Marty Scorsese, Dwayne Johnson, Mark Wahlberger, Peter Berg, or Greg—a whole host of my clients—enables me to make the deals over at TKO because I’m in the conversation with YouTube, Amazon, Netflix, and all the people I need to be in business with. I do that.

The running of that business now—because I’m not in, like, “You didn’t call this person back”—I don’t do that anymore. But in the representation of my clients and the clients of the agency, I’m in it every day because it does help the other businesses.

Which platform are you the most obsessed with? YouTube, Netflix, all? Okay, but which one, if you have a client, do you think is the most important over the next 5 or 10 years?

Who’s going to pay them the most money and creatively enable them to do what they want?

Well, Ari, let me ask you a question. This is a really important question. I was going to ask this of Neil as well. I’ve heard from a number of folks who have historically done production on Netflix that they want to move to YouTube because Netflix’s margins have compressed, and so they’re offering ownership.

That’s not true.

I’ve heard a lot of folks say, “Well, if I go independent, I have unlimited upside if I publish on YouTube. I just need financing. Find me some partners.” Is there an emerging world—

Those are different. It depends on where you’re at. If it’s a YouTuber and they want to scale up—

Want to scale up, and they have X amount, they’ll probably start on YouTube, or start on Facebook, or start on Twitter. Once they get to a certain level, they’ll make a decision: is there a product that’s right for a half hour or an hour on Netflix, or a feature film?

Right. That’s different from what YouTube’s business plan is, and Neil will talk to you about that. So, again, you can’t generalize that conversation.

I’m seeing a burgeoning of independent financing for production that would go out on YouTube, where folks are saying, “I just need production financing. Find me some partners.”

Is it for a YouTuber?

For YouTubers, yeah.

Sometimes. I’m not—that’s not something you’re seeing kind of scale up right now. I’m definitely not in that space. As David said, that’s not something I see. There are people in my company who do that. We have a whole division for YouTubers and podcasting. That’s a whole group that we’ve started. It’s very successful.

Right, Ari, there was a time when the dream of content creators was being able to own their IP. Netflix came in and said, “Hey, we’ll pay you much more, but you don’t get to own The Simpsons anymore. You don’t get to own this IP.” Yet—

The syndication model, as broadcast television started to fade away, had a third window at the beginning, which was Netflix. Now, the cable and station-group window has kind of dissipated a little bit, right? But when you make a deal at a broadcaster—smaller now—you do have a bidding war between Netflix, and, if you’re at NBC, Peacock. We’re finishing up a big deal for The Office, which started on a broadcast.

The new stuff, they’re buying out.

Yes. Yeah, so you don’t have this opportunity to do what The Simpsons did, to do what South Park did, or to do what Seinfeld did.

The last deal I just made for South Park is pretty good for the guys.

No, I know, but that seems to be the last generation to get that. This new generation seems to be just giving their IP over to Netflix. You yourself are saying, “I want to own the IP,” and you’re choosing to buy them. So, what is your advice to the clients? They can’t become billionaires if they don’t own IP.

There’s a client by the name of Noah Hawley who just had the Alien: Earth show that premiered on Disney. He did Fargo, also. He’s an incredibly talented guy. I just signed him, and he’s going to make a new deal.

He did well.

All of those people I said did very, very, very well. Yes, he will not make as much money as they did in syndication, but he will do very, very, very well. If you’re really talented and you have success, you will do really well. When it gets re-aired and resold, he’ll do very, very well.

If you have a show that goes into syndication and it gets $6 million an episode, you can’t make $500 million to $600 million anymore. But you can make tens of millions—more than that—and you can do very, very well.

Yeah, I mean, I’m not crying. You’re famous for fighting hard. In fact, there was an iconic character created on Entourage for that.

Yeah.

Which was your favorite fight? Was it Sherry Lansing, Justin Baldoni, or Mike Ovitz? Which did you get the most pleasure fighting with, of all these iconic fights you’ve had?

I just said, all. No, listen, when you’re at the beginning of your career, 30 years ago, you don’t have the ability to change price. At the time, you had William Morris, ICM, UTA, and CAA. You’re the fifth, and you have to fight really hard because people just think you’re a chump.

When people don’t think—because I’m dyslexic, I remember growing up, anybody who thought I was stupid touched the third rail. When you were growing up in this business and everybody thinks, “Oh, you’re just—” I’m not good there.

No, but this is a serious question: bringing Entourage back. Why hasn’t this happened? We love this. We grew up on it. How many people want to see the reunion? You’re the guy who can make it happen.

I’m friends with Adrian Grenier. I talk to him all the time about it. Are you guys having David Zaslav on this panel?

No. No, it’s Zaslav.

You guys should call him.

Well, yeah, but he’s the one holding the strings.

Well, yeah, they—HBO.

HBO. But you’re Ari. You could go and just tell them to do it.

Let’s hope that deal happens.

On competition, was Michael Ovitz a mentor to you or a competitor?

I worked for Mike. I was in the mailroom and then I was on a desk. He was incredible, and he kind of changed the business. Before him was Lou Wasserman. They would be on Mount Rushmore. I think Mike did so many things right. He was a visionary.

The one thing I thought about when I was a young guy looking at it, and looking back at it, was that he took Coke. I think it was from Grey Advertising at the time. I think it was Grey. I always said to myself at the time, he had so much currency. Why didn't he buy Grey Advertising? He could have changed the dynamic of the agency. He could have either taken it public.

Then I was at this company called InterTalent. They got bought by ICM. ICM had the greatest agents of all, and it was just bad management. Then we started the firm, and I just said, "I'm not going to have a bad culture like ICM. When the opportunity comes, I'm going to go for assets that I could own and change the dynamic of what an agency and what representation could be."

And that's what no one had done before: think in terms of equity. Are there any assets that you don't own that you wish you did, or would you like to buy a studio? Would you like to buy sports teams?

I don't want to buy a studio. I don't want to buy a sports team. I just started this company. I raised about $2 billion. I'm going to start this big events company, so my plate's really full. I'm loving life right now.

TKO is in a great place right now with all the deals we made. We have a great partner in David Ellison. You saw what happened at the VMAs, where our thought process was: They put it on MTV, they put it on CBS, and they put it on streaming. It was the largest audience they ever got.

That's going to be the same thing for the UFC. Now Bob Iger and Jimmy Pitaro are going to launch WWE on ESPN. I think it's going to be incredible for that asset.

No, I don't. There's nothing left right now. We're launching—we have a big fight this weekend, the Canelo fight with Netflix. So we're in a good place.

Ari, do you think that all sports continue to do well in the future, or will some sports have to adapt for the fact that kids have a shorter attention span? They need faster action. What happens to things like baseball? What happens to the slower, more prolonged sports?

I think everybody's going to have to adapt. The thing I like about our sport is that it's like the UFC: it's fast. Fast bull riding—8 seconds. You get it; you can watch it on your phone. WWE is family entertainment, and all of them—the UFC and WWE—are huge global brands.

I had a conversation with Roger Goodell yesterday. I was like, "How many storylines can you get?" It was an unbelievable weekend, except for Monday night when the Bears lost. I think a bunch of them are going to have to adapt, and for some of them, pricing is going to have to come down because I don't think the U.S. domestic market is the right place for them. As it relates to hockey and baseball, the big ones, they've done an incredible job adapting to the new environment.

Baseball's got about 40 minutes off the average game.

Yeah, it's really incredible what they've done. They've always been innovative. When they launched BAM, they were ahead of the curve.

Think about international markets. Obviously, India and China are huge markets. The NBA has done an exceptional job. They're probably going to have something in Europe. The Knicks—my Knicks, which are going to win the chip this year—are going to be playing their preseason games in Abu Dhabi. How do you view the internationalization of these live events?

I mean, just look at the Brazil game for the NFL. Incredible. Look at what baseball did when they launched the Dodgers and the Cubs in Japan.

Everybody's realizing the value that can happen now. We just had a UFC event in Shanghai, where we have a facility in a PI. We're going to Abu Dhabi. We've always been international. It's a requirement for continued growth in sports that you go international. So all of them are going to adapt a little bit and try to figure that out.

I want to shift and ask a personal question. You come from an incredible family. Your brother Zeke is an incredible doctor. Your brother Rahm worked at the White House and was mayor of Chicago. He's ambassador to Japan now, yeah. You're an incredible entrepreneur and businessman. Is there a competitiveness? Has there ever been competitiveness amongst the 3 of you?

You think one's in Chicago, one's in Washington, one's in L.A.? These cities are magnets. When they come together, they explode.

Really?

Yeah.

Where did it come from? Wait, where did it—wait, but where did it come from?

Let me just tell you something: I'm winning.

But where did it come from, and who did Mom love most?

You know, my mom says this all the time. Rahm says, "You don't love me as much as you love Zeke." Zeke is the doctor and the vice provost at Penn. She turns to him and she says, "That's all of us." She goes, "I hate you all equally."

Still trying to get Mom's love. I got it. What about your long-term friendship with one of our besties, Elon? How did that evolve?

After 9/11, I gave up my Ferrari. I bought a Prius. I didn't really like the Prius. I was looking for a better car. I read the article that he's launching. I just called him. He picked up. He came into the office. I said, "I have to have one of these cars." I think I got number 11. I still own it—the first model.

He and I have just been friends ever since. Actually, on Tuesday, I went up to see the robots because I want to do a UFC fight with his robots.

The robots—meaning robots versus robots?

Yeah. I think it'd be incredible.

I saw what he's creating. The man's a genius. The hand is incredible. He showed me one that was kicking and boxing. When he talks about it, he talks about how there's probably about 100 million people in the United States who are actually working bodies.

When you have a robot, it occupies five people. It works 24 hours a day, and there's no HR. There are no issues. He goes through all the numbers. It's an incredible argument, and I think he'll be able to produce 1 million of them. It's going to be really profitable. And they're going to cost $10,000.

When I saw what the hand was doing, I think it was the 3rd or 4th generation.

Yeah, I was like, "It's incredible." And now the movement and the charging that he's got down—it’s really incredible. He's a special human being in that capacity.

Yeah, he really is an American treasure. Ladies and gentlemen Ari Emanuel amazing. Thank you so much. Great to see you.

Thank you. Thanks.