Ari Emanuel on the Future of Entertainment: Hollywood, AI, Creator Economy, YouTube vs Netflix

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 dealmaker 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 emmanuel thank you hey welcome 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 yeah i think he's great i love this book Yeah, the book is incredible. So what's your take on what we just saw? There's a lot to cover there on my take. Let's start at the beginning. Ari, you have had an incredible arc. You've built an incredible business. And recently, you've had the opportunity to merge a bunch of assets, and just the thing has just taken a life of its own. Can you maybe walk us through the last four or five years of the evolution of Endeavor and your process of first leaving, building a business, than scaling it up and just all of that action, the TikTok of it all? So March 29th, when I first came here, I was making 15 cents a mile when I moved to LA. Went to work at CAA, et cetera, then started the company March 29th on my birthday, 30, almost 31 years ago. had this idea about where content was going from george gilder who wrote this book like i have for television and said there's going to be infinite distribution and then content's going to be really really valuable and there's going to be many forms of content and so we kind of went out and started growing the business and trying to get into every sector of the business made a two-horse race with when we quote-unquote merged with william morris I think one of my best deals actually, that merger. And then when Teddy Forsman passed away bought IMG with Silver Lake who had come into the company and then we were in sports and then we realized it was all in the representation business and then realized that because of what we built, the infrastructure we built in the global scale we had in the production and representation, we could start owning some of the assets as opposed to just representing them and kind of put them through our filters and kind of create more value. and so the first thing we did is we bought uh this company called professional bull riley that was i mean making uh three million dollars a year in profit we turned it into a really nice business it's still growing and then because of that um and we had negotiate you know we negotiated 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 say we overpaid it was the cheapest sports acquisition ever happened and definitely when we bought uh ufc they were like at four point at the time it looked incredibly expensive yeah and all we had to do is kind of make a broadcast deal that then took the multiple down from 30 20 times to kind of under 10. we then thought we could take all those assets my big mistake here um a conglomerate yeah the marketplace just didn't understand it yeah and so we tried to take it public right before covid failed i didn't realize how hard it was to go back out finally got it back public we kind of rolled all of the ufc into endeavor and um we still weren't getting any value we then vince said yes and we merged the assets a pure play was in sports, sports entertainment was a better conversation with the street. I mean, 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, you know, this afternoon we'll have Neil Mohan from YouTube. Right. Then you have characters like the Mr. Beast of the world 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, many forms of content. People consume podcasts. People consume stuff on Instagram and TikTok. People consume stuff now on the streamers And I don believe that traditional business is going away for a long time because a lot of us sports guys have the NFL the NBA has still sold stuff there plus also sold it to the Amazons of the world. And so you just have a vast kind of map of where distribution is. So distribution has gotten vast, but a lot of people would say, some people would say the kinds of content has gotten a little ossified calcified rigid maybe what does that mean meaning like you know you don't see like the broad swath of the content that you would see maybe 15 20 years ago people i think there's more content now but do you see people taking creative risk the way that they used to before i don't know i think i think i think i can't get enough content i don't think i don't know about you there's going to be more content than there's ever been I think there's incredible voices out there. I think the content that's being made is, there's a vast majority, and I think it's really incredible. I do. Ari, what do you think of podcasts and the general movement of top talent, Megan, Tucker? Tucker, you guys. Okay, sure. We're a little bit behind them, but the ability for them to be independent and not affiliated with the network. This is something we have not seen in the industry. There were gatekeepers. You used to have to get packaged, represented. And now, you know, 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? You're going to be independent. Yeah, why would we need them if we have this amazing audience that we convene? You know, the funny thing is, I think the podcasting business is going to turn into the syndication business that used to be on the broadcast and the station groups. So Oprah was the behemoth. The king world kind of thing? 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. Yeah. So you're saying we could then syndicate- It will become the next cable slash syndication model through this, through the multiple channels. So we should be a network and we should develop talent. Yeah. You need some representation, guys. But you know what the problem is, Ari? It's like a lot of the representation, to be totally honest- Sucks. Yeah. Yeah, and we would only consider a peer 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, look- Anybody good, I don't know. We talking about you Ari One of the things that I noticed has become a common kind of thread with these big independents is they move from what used to be kind of commercial ad placements to sponsor deals where they got one sponsor to eventually owning their own business. Correct. And the value there is so much greater because the multiple, you get a multiple on revenue. You don't just get advertising, the marketing line. Right. You know, Tucker has his Alps product, which JCal fortunately is not on today. No, please don't put it on. You're saying use the promo code all in? Well, Jimmy's got his chocolate bar company. Is that the future, do you think, for monetization for the big independents? Is that they actually own the equity in what historically have just been sponsors for them? And that's where the value is? Well, you're going to own the equity in your podcast, right? And then a lot of people, and we started this business, I don't know, about 10 years ago, we started at WMU called Talent Ventures, where a lot of musicians, actors started because you know it's with the broadcast networks and cable channels ratings going down you know manufacturers had to get to the audience and so that they used to do it through commercials when that rating went down they started then giving equity or people started launching you know a lot of different products sometimes it was alcohol sometimes perfume sometimes food etc that will now start happening with people like you other podcasters Gwyneth Paltrow has done an exceptional job. That's just a natural evolution because of where broadcast television is and cable television is. Manufacturers are going to have to get to an audience. You guys have a very big and loyal audience. This 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 or are you taking the ownership dollar? And that's just evaluating the economics and whether you believe in a product. There's a lot of things that go into that. Yeah. 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 maybe operating leverage to actually go and be even more creative on the content versus maybe disrupt some of the legacy folks you've worked with? You know, we have a whole program being set up at TKO and William Morris about kind of how AI can help us. On the production side, there's a whole nother that the studios are doing and our clients are doing. You know, I have made a decision. I don't know enough about AI. I'm not smart enough to know enough about AI. I made a decision that live is content is where I'm going to sit. I'm really good at that. I'm really good at monetizing that. So we have a pure play sports, sports entertainment business. I just launched, which will launch in October, kind of what I believe is the next kind of live events business. You know, you have our sports business, you have Live Nation and Michael Rapinoe is an incredible, that's pure play music. And I think there's, when we were a public company, now we're a private company we had 700 events inside endeavor i have um it will be completed in the first week in october bought a lot of those raised about two billion dollars and about nine and i'm going to go pure play and events because i think it's the opposite if you have ai over there the opposite bet on a is not data centers it's live want connection you keep going back to live and i think it's kind of like a four-day work week now probably going down to three I was seeing Elon and seeing the robots, probably three-day work week for full employment. There are going to be a lot of free time. We definitely all need connections, as we can see right here. And so my whole thesis is live. And I think on the William Morris side, which is incredible, there's only two representation business. 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 like, let's just sit. 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, drive times, average drive times in America, 11 to 4. So people are doing their chores. 11 to 4. 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. Three-day weekends. three-day weekends i'm shocked what this is from back there you should start drinking coffee because if you just look at the data we're at four day work weeks now i think it's going to three-day work weeks which means more time for entertainment is your key piece to it sacks you wanted to get in well i was going to spit on something jama said which is you you have so many different things you're involved in how do you decide how to prioritize your time because Because you could be helping William Morris clients, there representation could be a never ending job by itself You got TKO you could be looking for new acquisitions How do you decide how to spend your time Thank God I have ADHD Listen, actually, this Friday is two years since we did the merger at TKO. We merged at, I think, $100 and then went down to $79. Anybody 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, I think everything we said we were going to do with regard to kind of streamlining the two businesses, integrating them, we brought over in February PBR on location and IMG, which kind of fills out the suite of what we do at TKO for everybody that wants sports. We've made our broadcasting deals, and we're just kind of powering away at what that, you know, focused on 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? You know, being in the representation business, whether it be Marty Scorsese or Dwayne Johnson or Mark Wahlberg or Peter Berg or a whole host of my clients, Aaron Sork, enables me to make the deals over at TKO because I'm in the conversation with YouTube, Amazon, Netflix, all the people I need to be in business. And 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 five or 10 years? Who's going to pay them the most amount of money? and creatively enable them to do what they want. 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 that have historically done production on Netflix that they want to move to YouTube because Netflix, like the margins compressed and so they're offering worse deals. That's not true. Okay. That's not true. And so 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. Is there an emerging world? Listen, those are different. And it depends on where you're at. If it a YouTuber right And they want to scale up And they want to scale up and they have X amount They probably start on YouTube or start on or start at Facebook or start on Twitter Once they get to a certain level they make a decision Is, do they have 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. Are you seeing a burgeoning of independent financing for production that would go out on YouTube? Like where folks are saying, I just need production financing. Find me some partners and then. You mean for a YouTuber? For YouTubers, yeah. Yeah, I mean, sometimes. That's not something you're seeing kind of scale up right now. I'm definitely not in that space. You know, David said, that's not something I do see. There's people in my company that do, that we have a whole division for YouTubers, et cetera, podcasting. That's a whole group that we've started. it's very successful right now. 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. Well, remember the syndication model as broadcast television started to fade away as this, but there was a, at the beginning, there was a third window, which was Netflix. Now the cable and the station group window has kind of dissipated a little bit. Right. Right. But when you still, when you make a deal at a broadcaster, smaller now, you do have a bidding war between Netflix, whether it be, if you're at NBC, Peacock, we just finished a big, we're finishing up a big deal for The Office, which started on broadcast. The new stuff, they're buying out. Yes. Yeah. So you don't have this opportunity to do what, you know, the Simpsons did, to do what South Park did, to do what Seinfeld did. But you yourself are spending your- I don't know, 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? Because they can't become billionaires if they don't own IP. So there's a client by the name of Noah Hawley, just had the Alien Earth show that it premiered at Disney. He did Fargo also incredibly talented guy I just signed him right He gonna make a new deal now back in the day greg daniels or larry david or aaron sorkin or jim brooks clients made an unbelievable amount of money jim 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 so if you're really talented and you have success you will do really well and when it's when it gets re-aired and re and resold he'll do very very well it's not if you have a show that goes into syndication and it gets six million dollars an episode you can't make five six hundred million dollars anymore but but you can make... Tens of millions. More than that, but you can do very, very well. You were... So, 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? Is it Sherry, Azoff? Was it Justin Baldoni, Mike Ovitz? Which did you get the most pleasure fighting with? Of all these iconic fights you've had. You know, like I just said, all. No, I mean... Listen, when you're at the beginning of your career 30 years ago, and you do not have the ability to change price, and you have, at the time, you had William Morris, ICM, UTA, CAA, and you're the fifth, and you have to fight really hard because people just think you're a chump. Right. And I don't, when people don't think, because I'm dyslexic, I remember growing up, anybody that thought I was stupid, they touched the third rail. And so when you were growing up in this business and everybody thinks, oh, you're just, yeah, I'll push you over. I'm not good there. Any chance, no, but this is, and 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 talked to him all the time about it and he says, not my choice. Are you guys having David Zasloff on this panel? No. No, Zasloff. I think I should call him. Oh, is he holding the strings? Well, yeah. HBO. HBO. But you're Ari. You could go and just tell them to do it. Let's hope that deal happened. Please. On competition, was Michael Ovitz a mentor to you or a competitor? I worked for Mike for, I was in the mailroom, then I was on a desk. He was, you know, 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. I mean, he was a visionary for it. The one thing when I was a young guy looking at it and looking back at that he started, he took Coke. I think it was from Gray Advertising at the time. I think it was Gray. And I always said to myself at the time, like, he had so much currency at the time. Why didn't he buy Gray Advertising? And he could have changed the dynamic of the agency. He could either take it public. And so that went, and then I was at this company called Inner Talent. They got bought by ICM. ICM, like, had the greatest agents all, and it just was bad management. and then we started the firm and i just said you know i'm not going to have a bad culture like icm and when the opportunity comes i'm going to go for assets that i could own and change kind of the dynamic of what an agency and what representation and what that's what no one had done before is 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 what i don't want to buy a studio. I don't want to buy a sports team. Okay. 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. And yeah, I mean, TKO is in a great place right now with all the deals we made. We have a great partner in David Ellison. And you saw what happened at the VMAs where our thought process they put it on MTV they put it on CBS and they put it on streaming the largest audience they ever got That going to be the same thing for the UFC And now Bob Iger and Jimmy Potara are going to launch the WWE on ESPN I think it's going to be incredible for that asset. Do you think that all sports... There's nothing left right now. We're launching, you know, we have a big fight this weekend, the Canelo fight with Netflix. So we're in 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 just need faster action? What happens to things like baseball? What happens to maybe the slower, more prolonged sports? I think everybody's going to have to adapt. The thing I like about our sport is, like the UFC, it's fast. It's fast. Bull riding, eight seconds. You can watch it on your phone. um wwe is family entertainment and and all of them are um the both the ufc and the wwe are huge global brands i think all of them except you know 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 but um i think a bunch of them are going to have to adapt and i think 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 kind of new environment. I think baseball's cut like 40 minutes off of the average. Yeah, it's incredible what they've done. They've always been innovative when they launched BAM and they've been ahead of the curve. What do you think about international markets? Obviously, India and China, huge markets. The NBA has done an exceptional job They probably going to have something in Europe The Knicks my Knicks which are going to win the chip this year They going to be playing in Abu Dhabi their preseason games How do you view the internationalization of these live events I mean, just look at that 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 which we have a facility in the a pi um we're going to abu dhabi we we've always in ours been international it's a requirement for continued growth in the sports that you have to go international so all of them are going to adapt a little bit and try and figure that out i want to i want to shift and ask a personal question you come from an incredible family your brother zeke is an incredible doctor your brother rom worked at the white house was mayor of chicago you're incredibly ambassador japan now yeah you're an incredible entrepreneur and businessman is there competitiveness has there ever been competitiveness amongst the three of you as you guys you think one's in chicago one's in washington one's in la it's like magnets when they come together like you know like they explode yeah i mean really yeah but where did it come where did it wait but where did it come from let me just tell you something i'm winning no but where did it come from and who did mom love most? You know, my mom says this all the time. My Ram, you say, you don't love me as much as you love Zeke. Zeke is the doctor and vice-president of Penn. And she turns to him and she goes, that's all of us. She goes, I hate you all equally. Ah, so that's where it comes from. Still trying to get mom's love. I got it. And what about your long-term, you have a long-term friendship with one of our besties, Elon. Yeah. How did that evolve? After 9 I gave up my Ferrari I bought a Prius Didn really like the Prius I was looking for a better car I read the article that he launching I just call him He picks up comes in the office I say I have to have one of these cars. I think I got number 11. I still own it, the kind of the first model. And he and I have just been friends ever since. I just actually on Tuesday, you know, i went up to see the robots because i want to do a ufc fight with his robots and the robots meaning robots versus robots yeah i think it'd be incredible yes and i saw what he is creating the man's a genius the hand is incredible their ability to kind of he had one he showed me one that was kicking um and and boxing and when he talks about it he talks about you know there's probably about 100 million people in the united states that actually are working bodies when you have a robot it it occupies five people works 24 hours a day um and there's no hr there's no issues he says the pro you know he goes through the pro he goes through all the numbers and it's a it's an incredible argument and i think he'll be able to produce a million of them it's going to be really profitable and they're going to cost a dollar an hour to operate and When I saw what the hand was doing, I think it was the third or fourth generation, I was like, it's incredible. And now the movement and the charging that he's got down, it's really, he's a special human being in that capacity. Really special. Yeah, he really is an American treasure. Ladies and gentlemen, Ari Emanuel. Amazing. Thanks, bro. Great to see you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Don't trust it. Wow. Thank you.