Ariel Emanuel

in it. So, you were a talent agent for much of your professional career, but now you're running a multi national, multi billion dollars sports entertainment conglomerates. So what's it like running a multinational sports company that's public as opposed to being a talent agent. For me, it really feels natural right now. Is definitely different because it's bigger. It's everything I've ever dreamed of. I still do a lot of

work with clients on the talent side, whether it be writer, director, actors, etcetera. UM, But then there's the portion of my life where you're dealing with investors. You're dealing with how to grow the business where you want to go. A great training ground has been the town agency business, because you have to build a business for your clients. You have to make sure that they're happy. And now I'm doing all that plus doing stuff for the company, but also making sure

that the shareholders are happy. To deal with quarterly earnings now, and that's a bit of a pain. Sometimes people would say, I don't really find it a pain. I don't know why, and I guess. Uh. John Donahoe from Nike said to me one time, Well, when the earnings are good, it's an easy process. And they've been good for five quarters now. Um so right now, I feel good about the process. So we'll see. Maybe I don't. I'm feeling good where we sit and where the future looks, but I haven't

experienced the downside of that conversation. Talk about the future of the entertainment business, Um, where do you think it's going. You think there's going to be movie theaters forever where everything will be streamed at some point. And as somebody represents talent, what are you telling talent about where they

should be putting their efforts. When we started the agency march, you know what everybody said, there's gonna be no more dramas and no more television, So Here's what I would say to you is distribution is going to change and going to expand there's gonna be new technology to come into our business. When the movie doesn't happen in DVDs, I mean, it just keeps on expanding. And now you have digital, you have influencers, et cetera. The theatrical business

is as important as it ever been. Is there going to be a nine point three billion dollar business. Maybe it'd be an a billion dollar business. I'm not sure, but it's not going away. And anybody that says to you, and I won't name names, that says the movie business over our fools, the movie business not over, the television business on over We have new verticals which are content on gambling, social content. It's it is just an expanding world.

And so I think UM, as everybody is now on the demand side of the business, fighting over distribution and content, I've made a decision, and we've made a decision as

a company to be on the supply side. And there's very few suppliers and in the end, the brands we own UM, whether it be the UFC bull Riding now, Barrett Jackson and all the other Freeze or the clients we represent that are we're helping them become brands and companies are going to be more valuable in the future than less valuable because as distribution expands and you have the supply side of that equation, and there's very few suppliers.

UM economics improved. So during covid UM the production of TV shows and movies kind of went down to and almost nothing. So what did a firm like yours do Because you didn't have a lot of representation, you could do well in the first three or four months like most firms, cut costs, cut people, uh, put people you know, on hiatus. It was a horrible time because I'd never gone through this, and I don't think anybody has gone through this. But the funny thing is, you know, by

the end UM we had started working through it. On the representation side and the events side. We did about seven d our economics. Even during covid we figured it out by the end. On the on PBR at the time in ufc uh PBR was actually the first sport back UM and the head of it, Sean kind of figured that out how to do it with testing, et cetera. And then Dana was very quickly right behind that, and Dana calls me up. He said, get me an island. I said, what he said, get me an island. I'm

gonna put on fights. And he was like, we're going. Nobody's getting no, he's getting laid off. He's he's he's an incredible executive. And I said, okay, you know, I didn't know what to do. And then as you know, you know, because i've seen you in in Abu Dhabi, Um, how doone called me? And he said, because it was rumors about this, And he says, why don't you come here. We'll give you an island and we'll figure out economics. And I called up Dana and I said, here's the situation,

here's the economics. He goes, we're going and we set up in Abu Dhabi. I mean it's famous now, I mean it kind of I think, really catapult the the sport in this horrible time, we set up Fight Island and the that whole engine that Dana runs and and Dana's force of nature. You know, we put we put the sport up on its feet and we we flew everybody out, tested him, and we put the fights on. It was crazy. Now you are one of three very

famous brothers. You're holding for infamous or infamous. Your oldest brother, Zeke Emmanuel, is a very well known bioethicist and medical doctor and on TV a lot for his views on healthcare. Ram Emmanuel is now Ambassador Japan, previously was chief of staff to President Obama and also mayor of Chicago. Uh. And you are the youngest of the three brothers. Is that right? Or is? My father used to say, God

rest this whole the picture. That's Yiddish for small. So Uh, what is it that your parents did that produced these three very talented children who are in different areas of life, but all have done quite well well. First of all, I would say, Uh, when we were growing up, one of the things I try to do with my kids and I have four children, is they let us figure stuff out. They didn't program us every hour or what we were doing. You had to fend for yourself. You

had to figure things out. And the other thing that my parents did is education was crucial um. And if you didn't perform ah, then there was punishment um, meaning you'd be grounded you you know, And there was competition of who got the better grades between the kids and so with those two things, and you know, my father was a workaholic. He was a pediatrician, uh, and you kind of went around with him when he went on rounds.

And on my mother's side, you know, she was a woman that went against the grain in the suburbs of Chicago, was very prominent in civil rights, which for that period of time was you know, nobody could believe that in Chicago and the suburbs. So you saw two people that were willing to go out and be themselves. Let us be ourselves, um, and then get gave us some pretty good guardrails. Have You've achieved what you've achieved despite two problems that some people would say might make it difficult.

One is, when you were growing up, your dyslexic and I guess you still have some dyslexia, and you had attention deficit disorder, which um, some people have as well. Maybe some people say definitely have not gotten over that. So okay, those are things that may sometimes go together, dyslexia and attention deficits order. How did you overcome those? And they still challenges for you. When I was growing up, I had, you know, my mother, and she made sure

that I was going to graduate high school. I was going to go to college and I was going to learn how to read. And the good thing about it is UM. I think it's a superpower. Now. Back then I hated it. I mean I remember crying every day when I had to go to the reading teacher for three hours and sit in there like front window. And it was horrible with my A d h D and UM.

But now, because of the diversity of my business, the A d H D and enables me to kind of move around and focus a lot on specific businesses and and the dyslexia for whatever reason, and I think money people have different points of view on dyslexia. It does enable me to kind of think in a different way. One of the things that happens when you're dyslexic also you utilize a lot of people around you to help you learn. And in business that has translated to making

sure that you trust a lot of people. I'm not afraid to risk because I was made, you know, kind of I went through a lot of tough times reading UM and embarrassment, so nothing now kind of shakes me up. And and then when you're running a company, if you empower a lot of people to help you get to the end goal, which is what you have to do. When you're dyslexic, you're more successful. And so I mean those are now attributes and powerful things in my life.

Before they were very difficult. How did you have when I go to my Callister College, a very good school, but not as well known as some other schools, you know. I applied to Amhurst, which my brother Zeke went to. I didn't get in. I got deferred from Bowden. Callister accepted me. But later, if you graduated, you became a professional racquetball player. For a while. I played racquetball for about a year and a half. Yeah, is that an

easy way to make money? No? I was going to go to business school, try to get to the Northwestern and I realized, you know, I don't really want to do that. And I turned to my father, who would go on to school in in Europe, and he said, he gave this is what's so great about my my my father when when he was alive, he said, here's a credit card, here's some cash, no plan. Two days later,

I was in Paris. He called me up about eight months later to a year later, I don't actually remember, and he said it's time to come home, and I came home, packed up my car in Minnesota, moved to New York, and a friend of mine at the time, I was working in the mail room of William Morris, and he explained to me what William Morris was, because I didn't know there was agents or what that Pantillias being a major talent agent, so that the one we

also bought. Kind of funny. And then I went to work in New York and got a job working for this gentleman and older, kind of well established agent by the name of Robbie Lance. And finally he turned to me, and he was such a wonderful man, Robbie Lance, and he said to me, Um, you know I'm a four I'm not going to promote anybody. You should go to Los Angeles. You'll make a lot of money and you'll be an agent there because I'm not going to promote anybody.

And so he got me an interview at C A A. And Ray Kurtzman said to me, which he can't say now, he goes, you're too old to go into the mail room. So I did what I normally do. I peppered him with calls. I mean I think I called him like three times a day every day for two weeks. And he turned to me at the time, and he was another great man, and he said on a Thursday, and he said, if you can be out here on Monday, you have a job in the mail room. I got

out there. I bought a La Car, used car for thousands five or something, and I was in the mail room and everybody was younger, and I was off to the races. Well, explain this to me very often. I've read that people work in the mail room. I think David Geffen started the mail room, Barry Diller started the mail room. What actually happens in a mail room at one of these talent agency firms that enables you to

rise up. You would make copies of scripts, and um, you drive the scripts around two clients or two studio heads, and you know, you deliver paperwork everywhere. You'd get lunches, and then you'd become an assistant, and then you'd become an agent if you were good enough, and that process of you know, learning the town and et cetera to be an each and you have to have clients, I assume yes. So to get clients, do you have to go to lunches and dinners or how do you get clients?

We don't have any clients. Well, um, I was at eight. I was promoted in a television department because I had worked for the head of business affairs and then one of the lead agents there, and also this gentleman named Bill Haber, and I was in the office as their assistant every day for seven days, you know, Monday through Sunday, um, doing whatever it took. And they were great teachers, you know,

both Bruce Ynicker and Bill Haber. They promoted me. And then you would go out to the studios and go to sets where people were shooting and writers were writing, and I was a writer's television agent, and you would read stuff that came over the transform and you would try to sign him and um, I've even though I'm dyslexic, I read a lot, went to watch a lot of TV shows, saw what I liked, and signed a lot of clients that were quote unquote talented, and I think

they are talented and they're still talented. And built my business. How long before you say, you know what, I should have my own company. Um, So I had been what by the time I had started endeavor. I think I had been an agent for about four and alfter five years um and I was looking at the world. I read this book by George Gilder called Life After Television, and it talked about infinite distribution and that distribution in our business was going to expand with cloud computing, etcetera.

And I brought him in to speak that I see him and nobody really understood. And I talked to him after reading the book, and uh, I said, you know it's going to go from four networks to six. I'm in the television business. The way you make money at the time and television you put TV packages on the air. I've got a great client list. Why would I put a package on the air where you can make a lot of money for your clients and for yourself and give it to them for what I thought was a

okay salary. Again, my father almost had a heart attack because they were offering me a lot of money to stay. My contract was up, and I can you know with three other gentlemen, we said, you know, I said I could with my with my clients. If we do this, we can make a lot of money because I know what I can put on the air because I've been doing it now for long. Where'd you get the name Endeavor?

So the four of us were sitting around trying to think of a name, Rocks, rivers, whatever, and one of the partners, UH said, well, we should think about NASA. They have great names. So the first name we thought of was the Discovery and then we realized it crashed, so that was out. And then he just says, what about Endeavor, which was and we all realized that was a great kind of image of what we wanted to create for clients. And so did you start Endeavor? Actually

on my birthday? March went very well from the beginning because you had clients, but you bought William Morris correct or you emerged with them quote unquote merge, but they were twice as big as you and you became the CEO.

How did that happen? About four years before that, we went to see another kind of mentor a person who has completely been unbelievable in helping my life, Professor Ditton, who became the chairman of Harvard Business School, and we asked him to kind of let's go over and I've never been to Busines School like game theory of what we should do to grow and kind of consolidated business with the thesis that distribution is going to change the environment.

And we laid out over two days on a white board that we should go after William Morris and try and merge by whatever. So you emerge accompt any. You become the socio and then you started. I was Patrick White, my partner who start partner, and I became the CEOs. Now you are starting to buy companies. So you bought i MG, which is a entertainment there's a sports representation business, right,

it's a sports production events company, all right. You bought that, and then later you bought you That's where you and I met, right, that's right, and you and then bought UFC. Later well, we then bought um PBR. We brought Drove A five prior to that. We then bought the UFC and bought some other stuff. You bought UFC, and you did it with the help of silver Lake, a well known private equity firm, and um the CEO there help

you get this done. Yeah, I mean, what what happened was I was lining up people to go by i MG. You and I had that conversation and he came in. He said, listen, let me invest in William Morris's endeavor and then let's go after img UM and kind of create this global platform and go from there. I said to him, private equity is not going to be able to do that. He said, well, give me three weeks to show me your numbers and I'll come back and if I can make a deal, I can make a deal.

And he and I known each other actually through Mark Andreas, and he came up. We made a great deal, great for him, great for us. Uh. We then got I MG and then we realized that that was everything we had done was incredible, global, unbelievable kind of building blocks. And we realized that was in the representation business, the service business, and that we if we put something that we owned on top of it, that we could get

the full leverage of the platform and own something. And I had represented the UFC for a number of years New Dana, New Frank and Lorenzo, and then they were going to sell it. And then we we had proven also to Egan that we could buy a business and own it and operated with Professor Simble writing and then we we we we were it was us against some Chinese investors at the time we secured the rights, and

here we are. For many people. You're a role model and many people would like to have your lifestyle and your life. What would you like to have as your legacy fifty years from now? What do you want people to say about Ari Emmanuel? I think legacy is um is such a fallacy. You study presidents. Presidents have a legacy. I think maybe sports stars have a legacy. Some actors have a legacy. Very rarely do business people. Maybe inventors that are business people. Steve Jobs will probably have one,

Elon Musk will have one, Einstein will have one. But business people, I'm not this This notion of a legacy and I did I have gotten in trouble about this is a complete eat an utter, wanting to live forever fallacy that exists in business minds. I suppose somebody is watching and says, I want to be ariaman you when I grow up. What should somebody do to get into the talent agency business or the business you're in, which

is representing people building companies in the sports and entertainment world. Well, it's hopefully what I've taught my kids. You gotta be intellectually curious. You've gotta be um. You gotta show up. And you know this like I know this. I got on a lot of planes. You just, even though that voice in your head is saying, oh God, I'm so tired, I don't want to do this. You gotta show up. You've gotta be um, charmingly, relentless. You have to build

emotional endurance because there's no straight line of success. It's kind of all over place, and you have to just be able to work through those things. Um. And then I think one of the things that I do every week is I try to create serendipity. So ariy Emmanuel is a well known person in the entertainment world, but there was another figure named ari Gold, Yeah, who was a fictional character that many people thought was named after you. Did you like that? Did you not like that? And

what is it like when you're more famous than your clients. Well, here's what I would say. At the time of the show and market Wahlberg is a client of mine, and I helped put that show together. I didn't like it at the beginning because it depicted me. There was some things that were for sure not true, and then there were some things that I hated seeing that were true, I'm not that same person anymore. But later on, especially after COVID, a lot of people kept on seeing it.

It's it's for sure opened a lot of doors and it And at the time at the end, my brother was in the White House, the show was on the air. I mean, I got a lot of you know, people would pick up my phone. Call anybody today that won't return your phone calls. I there's nobody in the world. I get a lot of people on the phone when I need to. So the entertainment world today, you're pretty much at the top of the totem pole. You know everybody. You have one of the best companies under you. You're

the CEO of it. How many more years would you like to do this? Well, here's what I'd say to you, is, um, if I'm not happy, if I'm not still intellectually stimulated, if I'm not feeling like I get up every morning and I get up right and early every morning, I want to do what I do every day and and kind of do it and I'm bored of it, I will not be doing it. But today you're pretty happy, and you're not bored. Today, I'm really happy I built

everything that I want to build it. There's more things I want to do, and there's more dreams I have. And you're famous for being a fitness expert or this is the Men's Health version of this interview. Yes, I can learn. I can learn something. So when did you decide to become so fit? And were you always just I was I've always been this way. You get up and then you go right there the gym. I have a certain beginning routine of as you know, vitamins and certain things I do. In the morning, I go to

the gym. It's about an hour and forty five minutes two hours in my house, I have a sauna and I have a nice bath. I then do a sauna and I meditate. But what about eating, I mean you eat, You're very careful what you you're not eating vegan? Um actually tweaked that a little bit because I do have to being sixty one. I do eat a little bit of meat now. Once a quarter I do an extended fast, which is probably anywhere from seventy to sixty to seventy

two hours. And then every week I do want a daily fast and then I eat in a in a six to four our window every other day, and has anybody told you this is a little unusual to do this, Well, you could. You can imagine there's other craziness inside this which I will not go into. You can imagine the conversations. So about five years ago, my brother Zeke, who's famous for saying that he wants to die at said, you'll

live an hour longer. I said, if I live an hour longer, then you never know what's going to happen in that hour. It's not about living. It's only about being healthy, both emotionally and physically, for the for as long as you live. Thanks for listening to hear more of my interviews. You can subscribe and download my podcast on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen.