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Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Ari Emanuel - The Anti-AI Bet - [Invest Like the Best, EP.448]
01:01:24
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- [00:00]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
The best operators have a relentless focus on leverage, finding ways to multiply their impact rather than just working harder. But here's what I see happening in finance teams everywhere. Brilliant people getting buried in expense management. Busy work. If you think about it, you become a finance leader because you love strategic work. Modeling scenarios, optimizing capital allocation, finding the insights that actually move the business forward. But instead you're chasing receipts and categorizing transactions. It's the opposite of leverage. This is exactly why I'm so bullish on what the team at Ramp has built. Kareem and Eric understood that every minute spent on manual expense management is a minute stolen from high leverage work. So they automated all of it. Automatic categorization, receipt matching, spending controls that actually work. I love the network effect that this creates. When finance teams at companies like Shopify and Stripe automate the mundane stuff, they free up cycles to think bigger, to ask bigger questions, spot patterns others miss and make the kind of strategic bets that separate great companies from good ones. The math is simple. Get your time back, focus on what matters. Check out ramp.com invest and see what happens when you eliminate the busy work cards issued by Sutton bank member fdic. Terms and conditions apply. As an investor, gaining an edge means having the right tools. And one platform leading the way is AlphaSense. Trusted by 75% of the world's top hedge funds, AlphaSense is the market intelligence platform that gives institutional investors access to over 500 million premium sources, from company filings in broker research to news trade journals and more. And with its recent acquisition of Tigus, it also includes the world's largest library of expert interview transcripts. Over 200,000 calls covering more than 24,000 public and private companies all in one platform. So investment teams can move faster, go deeper and make high conviction decisions with confidence. Now AlphaSense is transforming the research process with the launch of its Deep Research tool, part of the next generation of its AI powered platform. Unlike other deep research tools, AlphaSense's version is purpose built for investment research. It runs multi step iterative analysis using AlphaSense's proprietary content, including those 200,000 expert transcripts and in minutes services. Insights that would take multiple interviews and days of digging to uncover. It's like adding 10 analysts to your team, helping you accelerate analysis, deepen understanding and make sharper decisions. See it in action@alpha-sense.com invest. To me, Ridgeline isn't just a software provider. It's a true partner in innovation. They're redefining what's possible in asset management technology, helping firms scale faster, operate smarter and stay ahead of the curve. I want to share a real world example of how they're making a difference. Let me introduce you to Brian. Brian, please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your role. My name is Brian Strang. I'm the Technical Operations Lead and I work at Congress Asset Management. How would you describe your experience working with Ridgeline? Ridgeline is a technology partner, not a software vendor and the people really care. I get sales calls all the time and I ignore them. Ridgeline sold me very quickly. We went from 7 billion to 23 billion and the goal is 50 billion. Ridgeline was the clear frontrunner to help us scale. In your view. What most distinguishes Ridgeline they reimagined how this industry should work. It was obviously they were operating on another level. It's worth reaching out to Ridgeline to see what the unlock can be for your firm. Visit ridgelineapps.com to schedule a demo hello and welcome everyone. I'm Patrick o' Shaughnessy and this is Invest like the Best, this show is an open ended exploration of markets, ideas, stories and strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. If you enjoy these conversations and want to go deeper, check out Colossus Review, our quarterly publication with in depth profiles of the people shaping business and investing. You can find Colossus Review along with all of our podcasts@joincolasis.com Patrick O' Shaughnessy.
- [03:43]
Ari Emanuel
Is the CEO of Positive Sum.
- [03:45]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast.
- [03:48]
Ari Emanuel
Guests are solely their own opinions and.
- [03:50]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Do not reflect the opinion of Positive Sum. This podcast is for informational purposes only.
- [03:55]
Ari Emanuel
And should not be relied upon as.
- [03:57]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
A basis for investment decisions. Clients of Positive Sum may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.
- [04:04]
Ari Emanuel
To learn more, visit psc UM VC.
- [04:11]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
My guest today is Ari Emanuel. Ari runs one of the most influential portfolios in global sports, entertainment and media. He oversees tko, which includes the UFC and wwe, serves as the Executive Chairman of WME Group, and recently founded mari, a new company focused on global events and live experiences. At the center of this conversation is Ari's anti AI bet. As AI makes digital content cheaper and everyday work more automated, he believes that value will increasingly concentrate in live and physical experiences. He explains how he's building his portfolio around that belief, what defines a great live experience, and how he thinks about AI's impact on content and IP. Ari is best known as a deal maker and he shares the principles behind his success. Relentless follow up over Communication Velocity and an obsession with making things happen and how those things become the operating system he uses today. If you're listening to this, I recommend watching the video of this interview. Ari's energy is constant and visceral and gives a different dimension to this episode. Please enjoy my conversation with Ari Emanuel. 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. You bought it in 2016. Can you just explain the magic of this business?
- [05:23]
Ari Emanuel
When I started, I represented the 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 and they showed me, here's this thing on Spike and here's the numbers. And then I realized, wow, this thing's ratings are starting to move. So I figured out, oh, it's Dana White and the Fiditas. And I represented the wwe, and they're close enough. So I called them.
- [05:48]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Called Dana.
- [05:49]
Ari Emanuel
Yeah. And eventually I got a meeting, and I completely screwed up the meeting. I was talking about the wwe. It was just bad. It was one of my worst signing meetings. And I just kept at it because I knew based on their ratings and what they were getting as a license fee, a domestic license fee, it wasn't enough money. And I knew if I got my hands on it, I could do some stuff with it, just as a representative. So 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, I increased it to 75, something like that. And we made a video game deal, which they never had. And after 20 years, we moved it to Fox for $150 million.
- [06:31]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Good growth rate.
- [06:32]
Ari Emanuel
So far, we've done well. And then my life changed because Silver Lake came into my life. We started buying companies. We bought img, and we had started building an infrastructure. Because of img, they had sports and events, an infrastructure to, whether it be licensing, distribution, production, a lot of things that companies needed on a global basis, not just a domestic basis. And then the Fatidas decided they wanted to sell. And a little before that, we had bought pbr. The professional bull riding had started turning that thing around. And Silver Lake, Egon, my partner, Egon Durbin, realized we do more negotiations on the domestic side, broadcasting for TV shows and movies, than almost anybody else you could handle. And we'd already done it for Other people, you could handle sports if you owned it. And I concluded where the world was going. I was talking about, it's going to go to streaming sports, going to be important. It was on cable. It's going to move there because for AVOD and everything. So we buy it now. At the time when we bought IMG, the closest bidder, I think, was churning at 1.9 billion. We paid 2.4. Everybody thought it was the highest price ever paid. When we bought UFC, on the current trajectory, it was 20 times. If I made the proper domestic deal, I could take the leverage down. And I thought I just did the math. Here's how much they need it because of. Here's how much program. Because remember, at the time, fox owned these RSNs, the regional players, and they had just the spokes off the library. And I said, they have to pay. Here's a normal increase. Not like the rest of your people that sit in this chair when you ask them how they do their analysis. Cut to, we buy it, people think we're crazy. And then the world blows up. Rupert decides to sell to Disney. Those two people are not bidding. Comcast didn't want it, Warner's didn't want it, and Paramount had not decided what they were going to be. So now I'm looking at myself. We're fucked. I got no bidders and my contract's coming up in a year. So we go back to Fox, sans what they were going to have remaining, and say, you should buy this. Lachlan didn't want to do it for his point of view. I think it was three or four months into our deal. Coming off Fox, ESPN fires John Skipper, who was always shining me on, that he never wanted to. And Bob Iger and Kevin Mayer say, we want it because we're going to go direct on espn, and we make a deal for both. You're coming on Saturday to the pay per views, which we have stopped now since we're going to Paramount, and we have these just normal fights every weekend, our fight nights. So I did my job. It was emotionally trying, but we got it done. And what then happened, which was incredible and horrible all at once. Covid happens, world shuts down. Dana goes, we're putting the fights on. I said, I got your back. He goes, get me an island. I call my partners in the Middle east in Abu Dhabi, and Khaldun, who owns Man City, And I said, we need an island and we need planes and we need testing everything, because there's not going to be an island. We need this. And he says yes. So we bring fighters in from Europe, we bring fighters in from the United States. We test. Everybody's isolated for two weeks. And we spent two months, I think maybe three months there.
- [09:37]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
And no one else is doing anything.
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Ari Emanuel
No. No sports on, and it blows up.
- [09:40]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
How much of an inflection was that in audience size?
- [09:43]
Ari Emanuel
Our pay per views were getting. I think we were getting like a million views. It was insane because there was no sports on. Zero. I don't know if you remember that period. It was nothing.
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Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Yeah, there's literally nothing.
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Ari Emanuel
And we were the first two up, the UFC and pbr, and we had a whole document on our testing. It was crazy.
- [09:59]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
If I boil down your whole life is it makes shit happen over and over and over and over.
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Ari Emanuel
Relentlessly, Relentlessly. Not taking no. But I think that's most successful people.
- [10:08]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
You have a very distinctive style of being extremely good at that. How did that develop?
- [10:13]
Ari Emanuel
Well, when you have two older brothers that are really good at their job and a mother and a father that just push you, and there's many good things to dyslexia and any parent that has a dyslexic child, I will tell you, it does get better if you hang in there. So I don't get embarrassed easily somebody saying, no, who cares? I just keep on trying to open more doors. So those elements in my life, my mom, my brothers, competition, and I'm competitive with myself. Very.
- [10:40]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
What's that feel like?
- [10:42]
Ari Emanuel
Horrible. You know, it's exhausting. But it's gotten better.
- [10:48]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Well, what is it like internally? Are you literally waking up, like, yelling at yourself?
- [10:51]
Ari Emanuel
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Every day. Yeah, yeah. There's that voice ticking off all the things you got to do and playing the chess match. And one of the things that Jeff Bezos said to me, it was so good. It really did help me. He said, you have to at your age, Ari. Now know when you're on the field and know when you're off the field. The problem in the past, it was helpful to a point, but you can't get really successful. I was always on the field.
- [11:14]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Always defined as what?
- [11:16]
Ari Emanuel
Meaning I was always playing chess in any conversation, thinking of the angle working, the situation, and sometimes it should just be chill the fuck out. I never realized that many things helped me. But that little conversation, he's actually right. And it actually makes when you're on the field better. And I wasn't mature enough to realize that until somebody slapped me in the face.
- [11:38]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
And being off the field for you means what?
- [11:41]
Ari Emanuel
Well, in any Conversation. I'm not.
- [11:43]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
You're not calculating for.
- [11:44]
Ari Emanuel
I'm not calculating out all the different things. It can just be a good conversation. Now 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 want to talk to that person. I'm on the field a lot, but there's sometimes chill the fuck out, you know, you don't have to be on the field.
- [12:01]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
What about wrestling? How good were you at wrestling? What made you?
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Ari Emanuel
I was pretty good.
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Patrick O'Shaughnessy
What was your style? What did it teach you?
- [12:06]
Ari Emanuel
I was fast. I was quick takedowns. You know what? It does do wrestling and I think mma. And when you're in high school and you have to go from my size now to 132lbs easier when you're younger and you have to starve yourself, plus work out and go to school, and the mental fortitude of that just keeps on going in your life, that you can handle that emotional pain. And that's also in business. I can handle a lot of emotional pain. And I think one of the hardest things now for kids, which I hope I teach my kids, is that emotional endurance that you need in life right now is even more challenging. I think business, just because business is no longer binary, it's multi layered. And you have to realize sometimes you have to have a relationship with somebody, even though there's things in that relationship you don't like. And I don't think that was in the past. In business, you had to think through all those things. And it's just emotionally draining right now because there's so many things going on.
- [12:57]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
What was the most extreme emotional pain you ever felt in business?
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Ari Emanuel
The situation, the contract thing with the UFC, because I put all the chips in the middle. $4.2 billion in the middle. Clients were investing. My biggest investor is investing. I had done the calculation. I didn't see that Rupert was going to sell. And we're coming to the end. Contract's four months away. Because of that, my thyroid went on the fritz. There was so much pressure. I'd never had that physical axle. I went down to 142 pounds.
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Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Holy shit.
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Ari Emanuel
Dana talks about this gray hair and emaciated sweating. I mean, it was horrible. And finally I went to the doctor and he goes, you know, your thyroid's going at a rate. So that was hard. But once it got done, everything came back and calmed down. No longer was on the field all the time.
- [13:43]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
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.
- [13:52]
Ari Emanuel
Like how's it evolved in the past he had the FinCEN rule where 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 is it going to be Warner Brothers with Netflix or is it 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 before. When I was in the business, you had tax incentives for production. There's a company called Whit Thomas and all these independents used to supply. They used to get tax benefits and supply grade programming. And it was an unbelievable business. 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. If you were an independent, you'd own the show. Carsey Warner, Tom Warner, who owns the Boston Red Sox and I think he still owns Liverpool and he owns some 400. So you'd put the 70s show on or the Cosby show on or Roseanne or you do 150 episodes. You sell to a station group for $5 million an episode. 150. You can do the math.
- [14:56]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Yeah, I can.
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Ari Emanuel
And then you do a second window into cable and then a third window happened when Netflix came around. And then you do that multiple after they've run its course. The second window of syndication, the third window of syndication, the fourth window. Now it's really just which we just did for the Office and you can do for the Simpsons and you can do for Family Guy and Curb and Seinfeld. They're paying a lot of money for the Office. 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 about four years ago, three years ago, the Writers Guild took away our packages. But it used to be you had all these independents supplying all this content. Now it's the majors supplying the majors. So it's a lot different. And I do think that has not been beneficial. I do think what's going to happen now though, AI is definitely going to reduce costs. So I had a client who's a writer, director, I'm not going to say who, he's got to do an outline for a project he gave, I think Grok Or Perplexity. An incredible prompt based on a piece of ip. The outline for the project, pretty close. Now, remember, AI, as people say, is the greatest average, which it is. He said it was unbelievable. Now he's going to have to do work on it, but that would have taken months.
- [16:11]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Is your take on AI that it basically supercharges the very best people disproportionately?
- [16:15]
Ari Emanuel
Yes.
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Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Have you seen that elsewhere?
- [16:17]
Ari Emanuel
I'm not in other businesses, but my son works at Apple. I mean, I think programmers are feeling that. I think they're feeling that in probably finance.
- [16:24]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
When you saw Sora too, what'd you think?
- [16:27]
Ari Emanuel
Oh, I wanted to sue him because he stole a bunch of stuff. You know, he put the UFC up there, they put the wwe, they put bull riding and really bad stuff and. But what it's going to do, whether it be Sora Grok, it's just going to make production costs, filming DPs and then you're going to be able either bring Bette Davis back or Elizabeth Taylor. It's going to happen. So you're going to see in a good way, like in the music business, you can do an album in your bed. I think the same thing's true.
- [16:54]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Do a movie in your bed.
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Ari Emanuel
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. And I think the walls around creating content for the first time because of the cost, because it used to cost shitloads a month. Yeah. It's no longer going to be that. So that's going to come down.
- [17:08]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
In a world where the marginal cost of content creation is getting close to zero, where does the value accrue?
- [17:14]
Ari Emanuel
Well, if we have four great bidders and maybe with six wi fi, maybe everybody with their social platforms is a distributor through Social. Let's just say we're right. The marginal cost becomes zero. And you're Dwayne Johnson and you have. I don't know how many people he has on Social. A lot, A lot. Or Kim Kardashian or you name the person. Are you not a distributor? Those are the questions that are going to arise pretty soon. And then I say to people at William Morris, for the first time, taste matters a lot.
- [17:46]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Say a little bit more about that.
- [17:47]
Ari Emanuel
I don't know about you, but I get called all the time. This is a great script. Shut the fuck up. Knowing what is good and what is commercial and what sells. Yeah, no, I'm not always right. I'm probably batting 300. I'm in the hall of Fame. So 60% of the time, I'm screwed. But people would taste that, know this business that know kind of what an audience, a mass audience likes is hard. So if you have taste and you're seeing a lot of programming and you can say there's talent there that actually has value. So you're Dwayne Johnson. Let's just take it out of that. Let's just say my conclusion's right and you take it out to its farthest limit, where Dwayne Johnson has a development team and they're looking for stuff and they're picking it and they're putting on their service for Dwayne. And Dwayne's paying that person. I don't know if they're paying him a million dollars or $10,000 because the thing costs nothing. There's a value proposition there, and you're getting a sponsor, you're getting subs. I don't know. In some capacity that's 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.
- [18:49]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
What about the content side of this, the use of ip?
- [18:53]
Ari Emanuel
Yeah, that's going to be huge business, I do believe. I think it's David Ellison's bet 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.
- [19:04]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
What about the use of content by labs where maybe they shouldn't have used it to train models, for example?
- [19:11]
Ari Emanuel
Yeah, they should all get sued.
- [19:12]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
How do you think that'll play out?
- [19:14]
Ari Emanuel
We sent a bad letter to Sam. Stop using the UFC and the WWE and Sora. So they're going to have to pay, I think, unless the Supreme Court says something. When Larry David creates Curb 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 goes to get paid? I think that's crazy.
- [19:34]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
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 the right way to think about this. Almost like the anti AI bet or the AI proof bet.
- [19:47]
Ari Emanuel
AI is going to be big, big, which I think is a proper conclusion. There's a really lot of smart people spending a lot of money at it, and they're smarter than me. So Netherlands just said four day work weeks. Drive times now are 11 to 4 across America. Hotel bookings Thursdays, way up. And there's a lot of more data points to this. So the weekend starts Thursday now and we're 2025, maybe 2027. They start Wednesday. So 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. You're going to watch a lot of content. There's going to be more content than ever. Cost zero on his service, on four big services. 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. So the value of that, because there's only so much and yeah, people are creating new ones, but so that's my whole bet. 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 a chip business. I just know how to create really great live events, monetize them, have a great user experience. And it's the opposite, because data centers aren't the opposite bet. Live is the opposite bet.
- [20:57]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
What makes a great live event? What are the ingredients?
- [21:00]
Ari Emanuel
Well, there has to be a specific audience. So in art, there's a very specific audience. There's a culture around art. It's global. There's really good conversation about it. Cars NT Cars. Another one of my businesses, very specific sports, ufc, bull riding, wwe, very specific taste, food festivals. So I'm in the areas that I know there's great cultural stickiness, affinity. Affinity. It's global. So one of the things that we know. Why did we do Freeze? It was only in two places. It was in UK and New York. We knew there were art festivals all over the place, run poorly. We knew we could take it globally, we could spread the sponsorship, we could determine that city needs them and they would pay us to bring events. So we get site fees. So, hey, bring Freeze. Great brand, knows how to do this properly, the food around it, 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. So when you start doing those things properly in our Madrid Open, which is our tennis tournament, it's one of the nine 1000s, we're going to build another stadium to build another food festival. We're going to do concerts after the Tennis tournament. We just know how to do it. So when we look at these things, we look at them in a way that what are they missing? Because we're one of the only companies on a global basis that do live events. Sometimes you have companies that do great live events, but they're local, they're guys that are in Arizona or guys that in just the UK when they come into our organization, we're in 32 common. We know, oh, you know something, there's an affinity here.
- [22:30]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
You said two 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?
- [22:36]
Ari Emanuel
So when they go around, there's food, there's lectures, there's surrounding events that make the event itself and inside the event really special. And it's a great way. I can't stress enough the need for people to get community because we're all sitting staring. I remember one of the things that made me think about this, also about why live events were so important and sports were so important. Tiger talked about at one point, I saw a documentary, I think it was when he first won. The people were clapping. Second time, phones were up and people were screaming. And that's because that thing, you want to show how great your life is and that all things detaches you and you want a place where you can have with other people a great experience. And that just bodes well for music, live sports, live events.
- [23:22]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
And you're selling status to some degree, like you're selling the video they're taking. No, no, no.
- [23:25]
Ari Emanuel
This is status.
- [23:26]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
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 of one of these events.
- [23:36]
Ari Emanuel
You know, we bought this company on location. Do you know about that?
- [23:39]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
A little bit. But remind me.
- [23:40]
Ari Emanuel
So on location, Jerry Cardinal first droned it with the NFL and they were doing the premium hospitality for the Super Bowl. And 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. And that there was tiered market, not in a bad way. Some people I want to pay a hundred dollars, and some people I'm going to pay $300. And then some people are going to pay crazy. So in the super bowl, go to Tiffany's and get a blue football and have 10 people with you and get a lecture from Peyton Manning and walk on the field, pre game and come out with the team and be on the stage for weigh ins at the UFC and sit at the table with Dana White. And 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.
- [24:30]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
And you still haven't found the.
- [24:31]
Ari Emanuel
Oh, no, no. We're adding. So the Olympics, FIFA, ufc, wwe, in every category there's premiums and people pay.
- [24:41]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Crazy.
- [24:41]
Ari Emanuel
Crazy.
- [24:42]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
How much of it do you think is them paying for the video that they get on that versus experience?
- [24:46]
Ari Emanuel
I think it's pretty high. Yeah, pretty high. But I think that's fantastic. You work your ass off. You love this thing, whether it be music, events, sports. I want a different experience in my life. Yes, for that, but just life. And I think Covid made that happen too. And people are doing it. Where it ends, I don't know. But it is a huge premium business.
- [25:08]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
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?
- [25:15]
Ari Emanuel
So here's one thing that we're doing in the live events business that I started.
- [25:19]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
This is Freeze. And this is.
- [25:20]
Ari Emanuel
Yeah, this is. It's called Mari. Inside of Mari Freeze, Barrett Jackson, our tennis tournaments, our participatory sports like Escape from Alcatraz and Melbourne Marathon and our taste festivals, Winter Wonderland. That business. So we bought a ticketing business inside that. This thing called Today ticks the ticketing business. Mainly they do. Mainly, almost all they do is theater business. When Covid happened, unlike other ticketing business, which had to keep on operating, they shut the whole thing down and rewrote the operating system. And it's incredible. So 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, white lip ticketing. Then we can create a sponsorship layer, site, feel there, and maybe white label some stuff and go from there. So that's the dream, that's the wish.
- [26:12]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
What is the most surprising thing about the landscape of sports and live events?
- [26:15]
Ari Emanuel
Well, when you think about sports, so you have the beast of all beasts. NFL, NBA, Global Baseball, Hockey, English, Premier League, Spanish League, French. They're all owned by federations and there's very few independent and very few people that know how to run them. When we were buying the UFC and we were having this argument Internally, Egon would say, well, the people that can pay the most are the broadcast. Well, they would ruin the sport. There's so many things that happen. To run one of these things, you have to make really hard decisions, first of all. So there's a limited amount that is available to buy in the wrong hands, the ones that are independent, unless Adam Silver's 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.
- [27:01]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
So if you approach boxing, we have.
- [27:03]
Ari Emanuel
Announced the boxing league with Paramount, and we do the big, huge super fights.
- [27:07]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
As you approach that opportunity, tell me the story of how you build this.
- [27:11]
Ari Emanuel
Let's go back. Don King screws over Ali. 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. So he did it at the ufc. And the other only person who could have done it, it's sports Entertainment, is Vince McMahon. It's incredible. So we now look at that. The Ali act's going to exist. We're going to put it. Hopefully we can get this passed, add an element to it 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. And we think we can create like a ufc, but with boxing and Zufa boxing. And 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 literally can't name one. You can't 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. I was more jazzed than ever about that. We put a great fight on at allegiant stadiums where the Raiders play. And Mark Davis was unbelievable. My partner, Egon Durbin, who is part of that, was unbelievable, helping us with that. And when you put a great fight and a great card on how many people showed up because it's so ingrained boxing into our world. 70,000 people, and they did not leave. It was spectacular. So if we do that now, I think it can be as big or bigger than the UFC and the wwe, and they're big and going to do our best to do it, because I think the audience wants it, and I think it'd be great for fighters.
- [28:36]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
What makes Dana so incredible as an entrepreneur. What is his superpower?
- [28:41]
Ari Emanuel
One, he loves it.
- [28:42]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Good place to start.
- [28:43]
Ari Emanuel
He really does love combat sports. Two is he's not scared. He's just not. When you look at him, his poker play, I don't know how he does it, because if I'm betting $5, I can't blame poker. But he makes fun of me. While we do this, right? I'll tell you a story. We're celebrating the deal at espn. He goes, fly. Come to Vegas. We're going out for dinner and we're celebrating. I'm like, okay, what does that mean? We're going to go gamble. What? I don't gamble. I said, okay, how much do you want on your line? I think I said, 25,000. And we're in the car and we're driving. He goes, you're the biggest gambler I know. To me, I'm like, no, I'm not. He goes, you just bet on me. $4.2 billion. He took a million dollars. I think he got me up to $50,000 on the line. And I said, well, that's not a gamble. My version in my head, my calculation. So he is just a unique individual, that he's not partisan, he's loyal and he has a vision. He backs your play. He's just that guy. And he's not afraid to take on a challenge and do the work. I mean, he works constantly. So in this space, he just knows the space so well, and he's relentless.
- [29:54]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
How did you learn to become not afraid?
- [29:56]
Ari Emanuel
Well, when you're dyslexic and people are making fun of you, just power through. You can't be embarrassed. There's nothing more embarrassing when you're 13 years old. They put me in, like, a remedial class or something. Well, it wasn't remedial.
- [30:09]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
It was worse than that.
- [30:10]
Ari Emanuel
Yeah. And you're in school, and, you know, you're not stupid. I was in special ed. Well, there can't be more embarrassing than that. So anything now, I don't give a shit. You can't embarrass me. And it was actually that simple. When you're in special ed and you're 15 years old, and you're in high school, and your two brothers are some of the smartest kids from that high school, and you have to walk home, you're really good at math, you just can't read just because of how your brain's wired, and they put you in special ed, you're like, what the fuck?
- [30:35]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
So what was the first experience, though, of Clicking out of that to the opposite of, oh, shit, I could be really good at something.
- [30:41]
Ari Emanuel
I don't know what it was. My three boys were dyslexic because it does get passed on. My father was dyslexic. And when my boys were dyslexic, I put them into this class, this school in the summer called Linda Mood Bell. They run a marathon on their brains to teach their left back lobe how to read. It's four hours a day. Relentless. My mom did that to me. There was no Lindenwood belt. People called tiger moms. I don't know what you call a Jewish tiger mom, but it's brutal. So 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.
- [31:19]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
And then what was the first early 20s, post college, big hit of success.
- [31:23]
Ari Emanuel
Well, I screwed around in Europe for a year. I came back to New York and a friend of mine at the time was this guy by the name of Michael Mendelsohn. And he was working for this company. I used to wake up at five in the morning, just watch tv. And I used to watch the Crusher and the Bruiser and the regional wrestling and TV shows. And never knew how it was made, but watched everything. So I said, what are you doing? And he said to me, oh, I'm working at William Morris now. How the fuck am I supposed to know what William Morris says? I'm from Chicago. My father's a doctor. He's an immigrant. William Morris. What the fuck is William Morris? So he tells me, and for whatever reason, bang, the light went on and I didn't have a job. I didn't know I was going to go to business school. Back to Northwestern on night school, business school. And I was going to work at the Merc. Because I used to do summer jobs at the Merc in the pits. 2 in 20, 2 in 20. I used to do all that. I thought I was going to do that. I was good at math. And for whatever reason, the minute he told me that, I said, that's a gig for me. Got a job working for this guy by the name of Robbie Lance. I was working for Bob Duva, who went to work for Robbie Lance. And it just started. I helped with the Tennessee Williams, Lloyd and Hellman and Dashiell Hammett Estates, making rights deals for them and organized it properly. He was, I think, at the time, 86. And he turns to me and I was doing a really good job. And he says, I'm not promoting anybody. You should go out to LA and you can make a lot of money. And he set up two interviews for me, one at CAA and one at this company called Leading Artists, and got the job in the mailroom at CAA making 15 cents a mile.
- [32:48]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Where'd you learn in the mailroom that?
- [32:50]
Ari Emanuel
I hated it. I learned how to actually drive around la. And I learned the hierarchy of the business, business affairs, people, studio heads at the time, where movie stars played the movie business, how important it was. But the television business made a lot of money. And I realized I could never be in the movie business.
- [33:09]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Why?
- [33:10]
Ari Emanuel
Because you would have to do coverage while you were in the mailroom. I'm dyslexic. Movie script, 130 pages. 120 pages. TV script, 30 pages. I'm not spending all weekend on now that little thing. Because the money was in television.
- [33:24]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
That little change.
- [33:25]
Ari Emanuel
Two doors bang. And then when we started endeavor with George Gilder's book, and I'm reading it in Life After Television, I'm like, there's going to be a lot more distribution. There's only so much content creators at the time, content was going to change and expand, but there's limited supply and demand. Prices are going up for creators and television, where you could make. I went on Bill Haber's desk, the head of television at the time, with Mike Ovitz, Ron Meyer, Bill Haber. The huge money, huge money was coming in because of television. Not that the movie business wasn't, because you had the DVD business at the time and gross participation and everything else. But you had a hit television show like alf. I remember sitting on the desk listening to all the calls, and there was a fight between Mike Owens and Bernie Brillstein on alf. What they were paying out. That thing paid out a fortune. And then it paid out. Syndication one, syndication two. And I was like, that baby's for me.
- [34:19]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
What was the key to being an exceptional agent?
- [34:21]
Ari Emanuel
Being relentless when you're trying to get somebody staffed. One of the greatest things Robbie Lance ever taught me. You know why people call me back, Robbie? You say in his Austrian accent, because I represent Milos Forman, who did Amadeus, and I represent Peter Schaffer. I represent Al Pacino. They'll call you back. So having a great client meant you had access. So you had to have taste and you had to get great clients. And once you did that and they continued to grow, you became more and more powerful. So that's what I did.
- [34:48]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
How did you get your first great client? Who was it?
- [34:51]
Ari Emanuel
I'm at CAA and I go to this company, Intertalent and Mark Rosenberg. I'm not sure it was my first client. It might have been my second client because Greg Daniels, who created the Office and King of the Hill and Parks and Rec, he might have been my first client. But Amy Littman, who created Party of Five, also might have been.
- [35:05]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
I'm too old.
- [35:06]
Ari Emanuel
Yeah, but they had created a show. I thought the shows were great. Took over those clients, they led to other clients. And then 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. They would go from at the time Saturday Night Live to the Simpsons, this whole Harvard Lampoon group and all those. A lot of them, not all SNL guys, the writers, because I was in the writer business, came from the Lampoon, Harvard, going to Harvard, go there. So signed a bunch of people off of that, put them on snl, snl, they went to the Simpsons or they had the pedigree and then you moved them around.
- [35:41]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
I have like 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, the.
- [35:52]
Ari Emanuel
Velocity of the velocity.
- [35:53]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Like you get engaged and then it's just. You feel like you got plugged in into the matrix or something. What is that?
- [35:57]
Ari Emanuel
What's the origin of that? I have no idea. Can you describe, Can I do that? I use the phone. I say this all the time. I use it as a weapon. And I have two people working for me and I do now a lot of stuff on AI with regard to conference calls and follow up.
- [36:13]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
What is your system?
- [36:14]
Ari Emanuel
I want to know what the system is. I have no idea. I just. You must know, I've grown it over years, that it's its own animal.
- [36:20]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
What's the principle behind it?
- [36:22]
Ari Emanuel
Relentless follow up and communication over communication. I hate it. Like my brother Zeke is horrible at it. He's my eldest brother. I say to him, I just sent you this to call this person because you asked me and I've connected you and 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 is very good at it. Who's in the business, who's in the entertainment, because he's seen me do it. But one is you Got to communicate. You got to over communicate. If they're not getting back to you, you got to keep on calling them. What are you doing? That's the job.
- [36:54]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
How do you make people love you for it versus be annoyed by it?
- [36:57]
Ari Emanuel
I don't know if people love me for it, but I try and make it.
- [37:00]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
At least they respect it.
- [37:01]
Ari Emanuel
I know you want to kill me. You know, you have to bring levity to it, but it is a force. Yeah, I understand that.
- [37:07]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
How many calls do you think you do a day?
- [37:09]
Ari Emanuel
A lot. A lot. My friend Pete Berg was in the car with me once. We were coming back, I don't remember. We're coming back from a golf match and he's sitting in the car and the system starts, the phone calls. And the phone calls can be from residents of the United States to a young actor, a writer, an idea I want. And he turns to me in the middle of it and he goes, I'm too anxious right now. I can't breathe. And I'm like, what's the problem? He goes, do you realize what's going on on that thing? And yeah, I know. I'm sorry about it.
- [37:37]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
It just works. No, I love it. I think it's fantastic.
- [37:40]
Ari Emanuel
Did I come at you pre harm my system?
- [37:42]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
No, it just feels different. It feels like the thing matters. That's nice. Too few things feel like they matter.
- [37:48]
Ari Emanuel
If I'm going to be involved in something, it matters to me. So therefore I'm going to take it to the point where I can get it done.
- [37:55]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
What have you learned from Egon?
- [37:56]
Ari Emanuel
You know, the great thing about him is he continues to want to learn. He's a guy that's made a lot of money. He takes a lot of big risks, but he's smart about them in his calculation. Unlike me. Eminem writes all the time songs. He writes, writes, writes, writes, writes beforehand. And then when he gets in there, he pulls his Jay Z. This is what Rick Rubin told me. He doesn't write any of his lyrics. They're about to start. He comes back in tune hits. He does the rap. He's instinctual, but incredible. Egon does unbelievable analysis. And I saw it in our take Private. I see it when he goes after a company. He's relentless when he wants something and he takes criticism for a guy at his level, PE guy, as good as he is taking criticism and listening to it and absorbing it and then adapting with it. Incredible. I've never seen that. Most of these guys, they're alone. Go fuck yourself. But he does all Those. It's really incredible. And then he learns from it, adapts. I don't know anybody. There are probably people on par with him. I don't know a lot of them. He has a point of view on industries. Like he came after me. He was a tech guy. Here's where I think the business is going. Which matched up with mine. Content, et cetera. But then the superpower. Probably one of the best financial engineers I've ever seen. Of all these guys, it's not even.
- [39:09]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Close defined as knowing what he wants.
- [39:12]
Ari Emanuel
When he looks. When he looks at a balance sheet, he sees a different language than most dudes and sees the value proposition and has been right. Not 30% right. 70% right. That's fucking rare.
- [39:27]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
How do you think about your own investing? That's not one of these massive major platforms. It's just like a normal investment. How do you do that?
- [39:34]
Ari Emanuel
I got some big investments called tko. I'm betting on myself. I'm not smart enough. Now I have bonds. I'm not smart enough to know. I believe in Elon Musk.
- [39:44]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Talk about him a little bit. I know you recently saw some of the robotics stuff. Tell me what your impression was.
- [39:49]
Ari Emanuel
Well, I saw the three or four generations of the hand. I came up to him, I 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. I sent him to see some of the robots there to see if we could then do a fight.
- [40:01]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Chinese versus American.
- [40:01]
Ari Emanuel
Yeah.
- [40:02]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Yeah.
- [40:02]
Ari Emanuel
It was really good. Wow.
- [40:03]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Everyone in the world would watch that.
- [40:04]
Ari Emanuel
So I went up to see him. The three or four iterations of the.
- [40:08]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Hand, the Optimus hand. What did you see?
- [40:11]
Ari Emanuel
Just how much technology was from 1 to 4 or 1 to 3, I don't remember. Was unbelievable. And what the hand could do. It does what you and I do. And then he showed me a couple of them that could fight and throw punches and kicks and the balance and the pushing. Unbelievable. So if I'm a betting man. First of all, if I'm a betting man, I'm betting on that dude. I bet I'm on him on SpaceX x Xai Twitter.
- [40:35]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
I almost hesitate to ask because everyone knows Elon's awesome and has been awesome and is great at what he does. But how would you describe his greatness? What's your interpretation of it?
- [40:43]
Ari Emanuel
There's nobody like him. I remember it was 08. I'm having Thanksgiving at my house with my brother Rahm, who's in the Obama administration. He was chief of staff. Elon's a friend and world's falling off a cliff. So we're in California. 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 because there's cars backed up that have to be fixed. He's starting a new car company. He's sleeping there like he did@twitter. SpaceX. He just will not stop, just will not stop until it's fixed. And so, you know, we get in there, he walks with my brother, shows him SpaceX. This is at the beginning. 08. Yeah.
- [41:24]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Nothing, nothing.
- [41:25]
Ari Emanuel
SpaceX. He's building it. But he was sleeping there on two hours sleep. He needs that in his life, even though he hates it at times because I remember him calling me and he was so upset with Tesla and what should he do with it? And we would have conversations. But he wills things with sheer brains and power and guts and endurance to make them right. And that's his superpower because it gives in a weird way, even though it's, I think, emotionally brutal on him, taking all the punches and feeling that. It also does give him a huge amount of energy and emotion, satisfaction.
- [42:00]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
You've got this show called Rushmore, which is about greatness. What is it about greatness?
- [42:04]
Ari Emanuel
I don't believe in legacy. I don't believe that business people 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 it's presidents, leaders, maybe some actors. If you asked person on the street, Lucille Ball, you wouldn't know. But I do think there's characteristics of those four people that are important to know about. Like how did they get there and are there patterns? And as we just said, we just did a rushmore on the 90s of music with Jimmy Iovine and Rick Rubin, who are two guys that should be as producers on Rushmore, in my opinion. And Rick Rubin talks about how Eminem, he constantly writes his lyrics. He's writing all the time.
- [42:42]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Yeah. Two different kinds.
- [42:43]
Ari Emanuel
And Jay Z doesn't? No. There's a lot of ways to get to the top. And I think one of the things I always talk about, we as humans, we can at least see greatness in how they do it and then adapt it or learn something there and take that learning and keep on evolving. But I think it's always important to learn from history as if rhymes and then take things and use them in Your own life, and that's why I'm doing it.
- [43:07]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
What have you learned about. With a life like the one you've led, it's not lacking adventure how to talk to your kids about it and not create a circumstance where there's expectation.
- [43:19]
Ari Emanuel
I got a daughter that works at the wwe. I got a son that's working for Rick Caruso, hopefully Knockwood, he runs for governor. And then my son is in the business, he's a producer. And the other one works at Apple. And they have had unbelievable luxury. I think if you ask people, I hope if you ask people, they're pretty normal kids because one, they weren't over programmed. I wasn't a helicopter father. Their mother was in helicopter mother. The summers they ran around in Rhode island and played golf and played tennis. And if they did stupid shit, 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. Even though they hate. They would tell you. My eldest son, Noah, it's one of my favorite moments, we're flying somewhere and he goes, I just want to be normal. I said, who the fuck wants to be normal? Normal sucks. And I said, what the fuck is normal? Normal? What is that? I don't even know what that is.
- [44:14]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
People say a lot of things, mostly amazing about you. One of the things everyone says is that you're one of the consummate dealmakers. What is a great deal in your mind, Some of you agree that you made a lot of great deals. What is a great deal? What is a great process of deal making?
- [44:29]
Ari Emanuel
You know when you're making a deal and they're all different. People have said this, both sides have to feel good. Your job is to make sure the other side, whether it's true or not, feels good.
- [44:39]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Simple.
- [44:40]
Ari Emanuel
That's not easy. How do you do that?
- [44:42]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
What's the art of that?
- [44:43]
Ari Emanuel
There's so much nuance to that. Sometimes certain people, it's just a fight. You're just aggressive. Like, okay, we're in a battle, certain people and certain negotiations. And everybody feels as you're in a dance and you're trying to get them and you just have to hang in there and do the dance till get to the end of the song. And it's not a battle. I mean, I've been in screaming matches like, okay, fuck you. I know you need it. You know I need it. We're firing guns, we're shooting. So I Like the second one better. And that's just about charm, and that's just about how you have to play. Sometimes you got to get mad. It takes time. Somebody was asking me, what's the art? It is so complicated.
- [45:18]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Yeah. It can't be reduced.
- [45:19]
Ari Emanuel
I don't know if it can be reduced. That's when I was constantly on the field. I was always the first one. I was always shooting. I was always in a fight. As I've gotten bigger, there's a lot more dancing. I was a pretty ugly fighter, though.
- [45:31]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Don't say worse.
- [45:32]
Ari Emanuel
I mean, I was just constantly angry, pissed off. And you're standing in the way of where? Because I've already played the chess match out. If I get this, this, and this. And here's what happens. You're standing in the way of my chess match. And so I'd be pissed.
- [45:47]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Seemed to work, though. I like the extremes. What's the fastest money you've ever made? And what's the longest game you've ever had to play?
- [45:54]
Ari Emanuel
The greatest deal I ever made was, quote, unquote, merging with William Morris. $44 million paid out the CFO and Jim Wyatt. They never thought we were going to write a check for $20 million and have the votes to fire them. Patrick Whitehall and I did that. Got the deal done and the merger done, I think, in a year. And they had a horrible culture. So everybody hated each other. And we just played the chess match on their side and then took over the company and brought in Silver Lake.
- [46:19]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Rest is history.
- [46:20]
Ari Emanuel
And that then led to everything.
- [46:23]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
So just to zoom in on that negotiation a little bit.
- [46:25]
Ari Emanuel
So here's what happened.
- [46:26]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
They were in trouble financially.
- [46:29]
Ari Emanuel
They just were losing clients and financially in trouble. And they all hated each other, and 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. It took seven years to do that. And then we just pitted board members against them and brought them on our side because we actually treated them well. We actually did. And then when the vote came before the merger, you guys now have to get rid of Jim Y. 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 it just all happened. And then that led to Egon coming into my life. Teddy had gotten sick and passed away. Teddy Forstman going after IMG and it was the best deal I've ever Made.
- [47:11]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
What was that flip like from agent to owner?
- [47:15]
Ari Emanuel
This is where Egon was a great teacher. He helped us think through because we knew we were going after img. And then once we had img, I knew instinctually, Patrick took over the college football business that they had. And I moved to the UK and I took over img. And that's how we split the baby. And 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. And 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 Chernitz Group to win. And this is where I learned a lot from Egon. In this notation, he says, I think the Chernin they were going to pay. I think it was 1.9 billion. And he said, we're paying 2, 4. I said, 2, 4. Why don't we pay 2.1%? He goes, we're going to make it so they can't say no and they can't go back because they don't want us. And he was 100% right. Pay 2, 4, we get it. And then I realized, this is my money. Time to move. Family stayed in Rhode island and la. I moved for, I think it was four or five months to the UK and all over Europe. I went to Spain for our tennis business all over. Learned all the players. That's another place. When I got done, I was physically fried. Fried because I was then flying back on weekends, and it was crazy. And then I represented writers, directors, actors. Plus I had to do that. So that was when it all happened.
- [48:30]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Do you care about money anymore? Are you motivated by money?
- [48:33]
Ari Emanuel
I didn't really care about money since my first show went in syndication. When King of the Hill went into.
- [48:37]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Syndication, what happened then?
- [48:39]
Ari Emanuel
I was making 15 cents a mile. When you're making 15 cents a mile 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.
- [48:49]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
So then if money sunsetted, what became the thing?
- [48:52]
Ari Emanuel
I want to be right? My ideas, I want to make sure.
- [48:55]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
That they're right, because that feels good. Simple as that.
- [48:58]
Ari Emanuel
I'm not the stupidest, Emanuel. I still have competition with those two.
- [49:03]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
What have you learned from Rahm?
- [49:05]
Ari Emanuel
When you talk to my brother Ram about politics, and you can talk to him about a lot of other things, but when it comes to his metier. And we're not talking about just domestic politics. We're talking about global politics, how to handle allies in Asia to combat China or what to do on Israel or any subtext. I'm going to boast about my brother Rahm. When you look at the potential field of potential candidates for presidents and there's Gretchen Whitmore. I know, I know Josh. I know a lot of these guys and they're all very qualified on a global basis. And he is as relentless and as driven as I am. And what I do was in two White Houses, was the whip in Congress, was the mayor of a big city and understands everything going on in one of the biggest, most important areas in the world for us, Asia, and had galvanized and his responsibility as ambassador galvanized that region to combat China. There's nobody more qualified. Whether that makes him a future candidate, I have no idea. But my brother understands. It used to be when you were CEO is just bilateral, now it's multilateral. I don't think anybody looks at that board better than him in politics and in global issues. And he learned from incredible people. Bill Clinton was incredible. Obama was incredible. Worked out their agenda at Details. You can ask him about the Supreme Court in Pennsylvania issues and how they handle that. He's at an inch. I'm at an inch in my business. He's at an inch. And he understand then 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, he is just hysterical. I mean, I love him. He's a bioethicist. I think he's incredible thinking about medicine and he loves it. So I just love him.
- [50:44]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
What happens when you're no longer at the 1 inch level, when you are no longer deep in the flow?
- [50:51]
Ari Emanuel
Well, I'm now at William Morris.
- [50:52]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Has it been easy?
- [50:54]
Ari Emanuel
I just said this to one of the companies that I run, Barrett Jackson and Craig Jackson wants to step back. And I said to him, you know, you're never stepping back. He goes, what are you talking about? I said, well, here's what I did. Let's go private. Richard Weitz and Christian Mayer are going to take over the business and they're going to do some really great things and they're going to fuck shit up. And you know the only way they're.
- [51:13]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Going to learn by doing those two.
- [51:14]
Ari Emanuel
Things, by fucking shit up. You don't really learn that much for doing good things. And I said, and you've got to Permit the fuck ups. And 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 that thought process. Not a lot of people have that run companies.
- [51:37]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
What was your most formative fuck up? The thing you fucked up that taught you most well?
- [51:41]
Ari Emanuel
I fuck up all the. I thank God Mark Shapiro's in my life and he got 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 Weitzel with Irv Weintraub, Jim Wyatt and Dave Orchester. And I went nuts. I was playing the chess match out and they didn't let me get to the end. And I actually went talking about the negotiation. I screamed at them. We're sitting at a table like this at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I went nuts. I said, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. We could buy you. We're 2 inches big and it's William Morris because we were more profitable. And I said, you know nothing about business. And I go fucking nuts. And Patrick, to his credit, he knows when I hit the DEFCON 4 or 5, he's just get the fuck out of the way. Meeting ends, it's over. And we're walking down Wilshire. And he goes, well, that's over. I said, no, that's not over. This is happening a year and a half later, two years later, it was back on the table. But that was a fuck up because it just pushed us way, way back. But I just, I saw defcon, I was so pissed.
- [52:36]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
What do you think the future of TV and movies are?
- [52:39]
Ari Emanuel
There's going to be a lot more of them. And I actually think what I said to you, I think that 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. And sometimes they sponsor them and sometimes they ask them to take equity. And same thing's going to happen with content. We talked about this. I think the cost is going to go down to zero or very close. And Dwayne Johnson, Mark Wahlberg, Dana White, Pat McAfee, they're all going to become their own channels, I do believe. Actually, I don't know if that's in two years or in seven years. So then 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, all that stuff.
- [53:22]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Give me advice. I have a channel. I have a lot of people.
- [53:26]
Ari Emanuel
I think the podcasting business is going to become like the cable business. It's going to become like Oprah.
- [53:31]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
What does that mean?
- [53:31]
Ari Emanuel
Oprah had Dr. Phil. She sponsored people and then she took them out into syndication on the station groups. You're going to find a young you, and 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, and 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 marketing team internally. So you're going to become your Oprah. You've become Oprah. Great. 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. And then there's multiple ways you can monetize that. Maybe you turn that into a book.
- [54:14]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Play the game.
- [54:16]
Ari Emanuel
That's my opinion.
- [54:17]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
What's your craziest view on the future of sports? We'll finish where we started.
- [54:20]
Ari Emanuel
Prices are going way up.
- [54:21]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Prices for everything.
- [54:23]
Ari Emanuel
Prices for teams.
- [54:24]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Okay, talk about that. Because like in the nft, there's no more rich guys to buy the teams.
- [54:28]
Ari Emanuel
Well, they'll just change. They'll go from PE firms owning 10% to owning 50 or 35. And instead of they can only take a billion dollars of debt out, they can take $2 billion.
- [54:38]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
It'll just go up.
- [54:39]
Ari Emanuel
That shit will change. But the price of sports for the end user is going to be more. Therefore, then there's going to be tiers at Netflix, which is sports tier. You pay $15 and they're going to have to make a decision. When do they go directly? It depends.
- [54:53]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
The leagues.
- [54:53]
Ari Emanuel
Yeah, it depends on when this thing caps out. We just saw a big input of money, which is betting that market will increase and the amount of money they pay will increase. Premium ticket will go up and ticketing will go up and prices are going up. Price going up.
- [55:07]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
What do you think of gambling? What do you think of betting?
- [55:09]
Ari Emanuel
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, you'll have an AI company come in and look at all the data and 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. So it'll be harder to cheat. Not that people won't try. I think it helps actually the engagement. Now, do I think gambling is good? Is a different conversation.
- [55:40]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Do you?
- [55:41]
Ari Emanuel
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 on gambling, Smoke, health, smoking. Smoking and drinking. I feel bad for my children. It's unrelenting. Articles, conversation. It's horrible. But that's the job of being a parent.
- [56:00]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
When you see the layer of massive technology companies, you talk to all these guys all the time. I'm sure. What's your impression of what's going on in big tech writ large?
- [56:08]
Ari Emanuel
So here's my understanding with Sam San has made a trillion two in obligations.
- [56:14]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
It's a big number, whatever it is.
- [56:16]
Ari Emanuel
He has 800 million subs. Let's just say he does 14 billion in revenue. He'll probably lose $5 billion. Do you understand that 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 and then the government's going to have to pick them up and we're going to be more efficient. And 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.
- [56:49]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Who is the person that you represent or have represented that's the most innovative in this landscape right now? You mentioned Dwayne the Rock Johnson. He seems pretty damn innovative.
- [56:57]
Ari Emanuel
They're all testing new. 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. But they're just great creators. Marty Scorsese isn't. He's just a great creator. But there's some actors, writers, directors that 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, they have to start playing with it. And they're all starting to play with it.
- [57:24]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
What has you most worried about the future and most excited?
- [57:26]
Ari Emanuel
Do you have kids? Yeah, I'm worried for my kids. Why I didn't tell you this. So I'm sitting there, I'm having my normal every six month meeting, lunch, dinner with Elon and we're talking about AI. He said this to me. He goes, live cannot be disrupted. I said, okay, I have two ears. So we're talking about AI. And he goes to me, all right, do you have a dog? I said, yeah, well, here's AI. 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 which, you know, as a parent, we have to think about where my kids sit. That makes me nervous because I'm like, I'm over the hill in four months. I'm 65. Who gives a shit about me? I have 30 year olds. I have a 23 year old that 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?
- [58:19]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
What do you think the answer to that is?
- [58:20]
Ari Emanuel
I don't know. I actually don't know.
- [58:22]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Do you have a guess?
- [58:22]
Ari Emanuel
No, I don't. Do you? You talk to a lot of people. What are they saying to you?
- [58:26]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Create things, make things. Ideas, use the tools, make new things. So far, these things are going to make everything.
- [58:33]
Ari Emanuel
And I'm not sure. I know everybody's saying it's coming very fast. There's a numerator and a denominator here in the United States. I think it's just us in 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 in the next at full AGI capacity, meaning literally the power. The power and also how we deliver the power.
- [59:02]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
So big problem to solve. Could take a while.
- [59:05]
Ari Emanuel
It's going to take a while. So we have a little bit of time. But we have to still be thinking, what the fuck are we telling our kids?
- [59:11]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
What about what's most Exciting.
- [59:13]
Ari Emanuel
Most exciting for me, I've started this new business called Mari. Trying to make that into the next live Nation. They're in music or build this new company. Having learned, because I'm not a PE firm, but I'm a company, but I've learned all these different skill sets.
- [59:30]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Why do that one separately than the original company with ufc?
- [59:34]
Ari Emanuel
Because Silverlake just wanted endeavor to be an agency. So he was one 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. And the good thing is, which I felt really good about, I actually did feel really good. This crazy idea I had. People say, yeah, you're right. So now I want to make them a lot of money, which I've done for a lot of people. Now I'll make myself a lot more money. Not that I care, but you want to be right. No, but I want to be right. It is a benchmark, and these people should make a lot of money because I want them to. That's the most exciting thing.
- [60:08]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
I know you love art. What is the world of art taught you?
- [60:10]
Ari Emanuel
Well, you know, I have a very specific area of art I collect.
- [60:14]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Which is what?
- [60:15]
Ari Emanuel
I collect African American artists, mainly American, but now Africa and other places from about 1940 to now.
- [60:25]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Why that I don't know.
- [60:27]
Ari Emanuel
It just spoke to me. I have no idea why. So it was from Sam Gilliam, Bob Thompson to Kara Walker, Mark Bradford to Noah Davis. He passed away. Incredible artist. And I just. I love it. And I've been doing it now for 17 years, 18 years in this specific area. And so I'm just deep and unrelenting.
- [60:49]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Shocked.
- [60:49]
Ari Emanuel
Shocking. Yeah.
- [60:51]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
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?
- [60:57]
Ari Emanuel
The kindest thing anybody's ever given me is trust. Clients trust me with their biggest dreams. Crazy. When Tyler Perry comes to me and says, here's what I want to do, or Marty or Larry David or. That's an incredible gift of kindness. And then same thing with Egon backing my play multiple times. And then I would just say to you, I have now in my life a great life. I never realized that before. I was just on the field. And I have a great second wife, Sarah Staudinger, who's got a great fashion business, Todd. And I think I have great brothers, but I have four incredible kids and that I'm a lucky guy. I love them and they love me. And as your kids get older, it's crazy to have these conversations with these things that are now adults and they say to you and do things that are just beyond your imagination and it is the nicest thing to see that happen in your life from a kid. For me, that they didn't think I was supposed to go to college and that this life has happened for me and my parents were incredible. All those things collectively are the 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 get off the field.
- [62:18]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
I absolutely love talking to you. I love your energy.
- [62:20]
Ari Emanuel
Thank you.
- [62:21]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
I love how you approach the world. You're so distinct and interesting. Thank you so much for your time.
- [62:26]
Ari Emanuel
I really appreciate you.
- [62:28]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
If you enjoyed this episode, visit joincolas.com where you'll find every episode of this podcast, complete with hand edited transcripts. You can also subscribe to Colossus Review, our quarterly print, digital and private audio publication featuring in depth profiles of the founders, investors and companies that we admire most. Learn more@joincolasus.com Subscribe. Sa.