you know the funny thing just before i answer that question ariel emmanuel is telling a story about his family they lived in chicago his mother grew up there his father had immigrated from israel they were not a boring family there was always change in our lives when ariel and his brothers were kids they spent summers in israel they would always do things that they would shave our heads in the summer so we would walk around when we come back from israel people didn't do that back then why did they shave your heads i still shave my head on the same day that they shaved my head i'm 62 so in two weeks my hair will be gone because that's when they shaved my head and i still do it it's insane his mother was a civil rights activist who took the kids with her on protests and was arrested several times his father was a pediatrician who sued the city of chicago for allowing the use of lead paint he also quit the american medical association because they didn't support national health care you know newly to the country stood up for what he thought was right and even if it was going against the organization that he was just starting his practice he didn't care when you look at how you approach the world how you deal with people in business especially do you think you got more from your mom your dad well here's what i get from my dad my dad he had common sense he was a hard hard worker i mean sick not sick he was in the office he was working he was fast he didn't take bullshit you know he had a lot of common sense and then my mom was just tough she didn't give a shit what people thought she was gonna stand up for what she thought and the good thing about both of them it's funny i just went to the eighth anniversary of the uprising and one of the survivors there had this whole thing about indifference and i thought about my parents and they were definitely not indifferent when i heard that the light bulb went off because they taught us in anything we do whether it be casual fun professional or social you can't be indifferent and that moment when the survivor of 94 95 talked about the 11th commandment thou shall not be indifferent that just seeped into a system without them telling us anything and i'm definitely not indifferent in anything i do you have probably heard at least one of our emmanuel's brothers maybe even both there is zeke the oncologist and medical ethicist who helped write the affordable care act and there's rom politician chief of staff to president obama senior advisor president clinton also former congressman and mayor of chicago today rom is u.s ambassador to japan where he's reportedly keeping a close eye on china he's definitely not indifferent i think he's enjoying the position and enjoying learning everything he's learning from that region which i think is a very important region for geopolitics and he is definitely not a wallflower ari is the youngest of the three brothers they were extremely competitive as kids maybe more so in development i pick my parents up from the airport and i'm driving them to the house and my father's asking me you know i'm giving him information about all the things that we're doing i think it was my mother but it might have been my father goes as i'm describing all the things that i'm doing and he goes because i was a dumb one he goes who does all that and i say to him classic you can't you know i said well it's not rom and zeke and so yeah i've gotten over that i'm no longer angry so your dad probably thought zeke was noble for becoming oh my god and rom the politician i'm like oh you know jewish family you're the philistine the definition of intelligence in our family was reading it was untold but you could tell now did you not get any bonus points for the fact that you had dyslexia and no you know the grades would come up our report cards on the fridge i was competing with zeke there was no chance dean's list he was a debater shut up the angry little brother the one with dyslexia as well as adhd the one who loved to fight the one who wasn't a reader the dumb one in his words ari emmanuel has done all right he started in the mailroom of caa the big hollywood talent agency today he is the most famous agent in the world as well as the ceo of endeavor a global sports and entertainment firm that went public in 2021 and earned emmanuel a few hundred million dollars he's considered one of the best negotiators in hollywood also one of the fiercest advocates if he's on your side and one of the most brutal opponents if not you may have seen the hit hbo series entourage emmanuel helped package that show and he inspired the most entertaining character an agent named ari gold played by jeremy here's a hundred dollars please put it in a brown paper bag along with a nice big pile and send it over there that ari had a temper he swore pretty much constantly but he also stuck to the cardinal rule of agenting no matter how brutal the negotiation you have to mend defenses and get ready for the next deal i'm kidding don't mention that review guy all right you want to hug it out no not really let's hug it out bitch today i'm freaking on this radio a one-on-one with the real ari emmanuel who may be more entertaining than ari gold really really really really really we will hear about the ultimate fighting championship megan markle the saudi arabia public investment fund and his daily consumption of live microbes emmanuel likes to present himself as an uncomplicated person but he's not his complications are driving and we'll hear about that too okay that's not happening on this podcast sorry ari but it's happening right after the pop-pop box this is freaking on this radio the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything with your host steven dubner ari emmanuel has a famously short attention stand which he blames on his adhd but it has also been suggested he uses it strategically as a way to get out of conversations that bore him he doesn't do a lot of interviews especially long ones so i flew to los angeles to meet in person that way i was told he might be more inclined to stay put i was also told he's always early so i got to the studio 30 minutes ahead of time he was right behind me as the engineer was setting up the microphones emmanuel took a work call and when that was done he started asking the engineer some questions and then when you say you go on the road what does that mean he's known to ask a lot of questions what's the cost behind that for us yeah we have the equipment up front no you already own that yeah exactly so gas are you buying this that's such a crazy thought he didn't end up buying the podcast studio but it wouldn't have been shocking if he had emmanuel is a deal-making machine that's how endeavor got to where it is today 11 000 employees in 36 countries with revenues of 5.3 billion dollars last year most of it from their sports properties live events and old-fashioned agenting they represent a lot of big names oprah winfrey dwayne the rock johnson ben affleck larry david martin sorsese and as of very recently megan markle the duchess of sussex emmanuel's first big deal was in 2009 when his relatively small endeavor agency merged with a much larger and more historic william morris agency since then he and his partners have bought all or part of the following img a sports entertainment fashion and media agency the miss universe franchise bought from donald trump and since sold a sports betting tech firm called open bet the professional bull riders league the freeze art fair and in 2016 the biggie the ultimate fighting championship for ufc the huge mixed martial arts league that cost 4.2 billion dollars this year endeavor went even bigger and 9.3 billion dollars to acquire wwe the pro wrestling league that's part sport part soap opera mostly cash cow emmanuel plans to turn this fighting empire into a new publicly traded company called tko which will be majority owned and controlled by endeavor over the years there have been dozens of other acquisitions or partnerships a european basketball league ad agencies and lecture agencies and agencies representing gamers also a firm called on location that sells high-end fan experiences at the super bowl wimbledon and other sports and entertainment events for what it's worth even i have been gobbled up by the endeavor machine they own the agencies that represent the work i do in writing public speaking and podcasting anyway the conversation you're about to hear is a bit of a raging river if you had one label to slap on emmanuel the best choice might be contents under pressure but we'll start with a straightforward question how many phone calls do you make a day a lot a few hundred no but it's just a lot i mean i make a lot of calls i think all those are exaggerated i make a lot of calls i have no idea if it five or fifty one person who's spoken with you a lot on the phone said that the average duration 30 seconds that's right i'm not a person and you pick up the phone i mean i'm trying to get better at this like hey how you doing yeah i don't do that i don't do that that's bad i know it's bad they get on the phone i usually start talking to the assistant as if the person's on the phone i have to start saying hello did you read the bob odenkirk memoir by any chance no but you're in it this is one great moment where you offer him a job he's like i started to say yes but by the time i got to re was off the phone yeah and then he also said as of this writing re manual represents most of the chemicals in the periodic table i started the firm in 95 on my birthday march 29th with the concept i read a book by george gilder who became a friend like after television and he talked about infinite distribution and i thought about it and talked to him a lot and i said wow there's gonna be more distribution than ever then all of a sudden the wb happens and upn happen those were two networks at the time so it went from four networks to six cable really hadn't started it had but not to the extent and he said to me you know content's gonna be more valuable i was one of the television agents i didn't want to work for anybody and i said you know i got one of the best television clientless ever i'll put some shows on packages i'll make a lot more than what this could be and then we you know the world changed we just had cash and we just started playing and i had this idea about like what this thing could look like there's gonna have to be you know a different way to market companies and sponsorship getting ing i had thought about all that stuff that it happened is insane because why just because it played out it actually played out like you can think things you never imagine them to play out that's why when i was meditating yesterday i was like you know wait i thought when you're meditating you're supposed to like no but i started thinking about this i was like am i meditating like hopefully i get to the place where i don't think but i think i was like most of the time in life you're chasing and i just was very happy about you know my life is really good this was recently yesterday and i said be happy like look what you have does that work it did work i felt really good yesterday when you're looking over the hedge what's the next target if you could own an nfl and nba team no because why here's what i think i have no idea if i'm right maybe i'm a control freak there's no real control there i think those are ego plays and i try and make sure that it's not ego that i'm doing this for did you watch ufc before you bought it well what happened was we had this whole research department that we thought was important inside the company and people like why do you do that well one it gave us an advantage of getting shows on the air keeping them on the air by 15 to 20 percent so when we were going for renewals of tv shows our research people would be giving us the data that the networks would be having like okay here's how the show performed why did you need your own research why weren't you because i wanted some insight of what they were thinking so that my arguments about how to keep a show back on but i had ammunition as opposed to isn't it a good show and they wouldn't share that data with you then that works of course not and then i'd always get these things like what's new out there that's performing and then one of my researchers said you know there's a show on spike i'm looking at the numbers and it's picking up i said what the is that thing but i didn't know so i started watching it i loved it i then called dana and i think i called lorenzo dana is dana white the ufc president lorenzo is lorenzo fortito one of two brothers who were the ufc's primary owners they were making a tv show called the ultimate fighter it ran on spike cable network for 14 seasons these days it's on espn and espn plus so when emmanuel saw the viewership numbers for the show rising he called to set up a meeting we had a bad meeting i gave a bad meeting i think i referenced the wwe and i just gave a bad meeting right and then when you referenced that meeting we represented wwe here so we can you know they didn't like being i don't know i just dana reports that i didn't do well just fine it's not the first time but i just you know did my normal thing just kept on pounding away with phone calls and talking about what we could do and what they're not thinking about and where they should go how they should think about their deals about six to a year later dana calls me and says if you can get me a meeting with ross who was the head of boxing at hbo i'll sign with you ross was ross greenberg and dana white was saying that if emmanuel could get him a meeting with greenberg he would sign with emmanuel to negotiate the ufc's tv rights not for the ufc to be acquired that come later now at the time i mean think about i had entourage i had sex in the city i mean i was involved with like a lot there i said what that's like i have to jump over a pebble he goes if you can get me this meeting i'll sign with you i said done i called up ross i said i need to meet with dana today in an hour he goes done they meet i don't think the meeting went well but it's dana that doesn't get good whatever no dana actually gets very good meeting and then they signed with us i think their deal was at the beginning they paid spike and then spike started paying them i think it was like 15 million dollars oh that's not nothing yeah that's nothing then i think we got him in the next renegotiation i think we got him 75 and then we just started we helped them with their video game deal and just helped them and at what point then did ownership become a natural conclusion well i always wanted it but they were doing well we realized we wanted half our business to be representation half to be ownership we had this big kind of offside thinking about the world and where it was going and what we should be doing and what the representation gives us insight to and what we could do because of how big the company was now and all the different assets we had in our architecture that if we had ownership we could extract more value and so we want to be in the sports business there's not a lot of sports you can own and frank and lorenzo wanted to sell at the first go around we didn't do it they wanted a big number what was the number they wanted was 4 billion oh which is ultimately what they got but then the second time it came up we were ready and then you know a bunch of other stuff happened that were handicaps but we got through them i mean brexit happened the banking system at every beat it was a nightmare but you just gotta plot through these things and take the pain someone who was involved in that sale he said that whatever information someone had and thought they had a lot that you would like triple you had it from every element you had it from the bankers the financiers you had it from inside ufc etc etc so assuming that's true how do you do that well that thing sitting on the desk my phone is my maybe superpower i am not afraid to call people i'm not afraid to ask a lot of questions i'm not afraid to get a lot of information i mean it's funny i was i don't know where i was my son noah was around me he was just sitting in the corner doing something and i was doing my normal thing i was starting my process of calls and that thing i do and after about a half hour now he goes that was crazy i guess i had flown through a lot of calls and talking to people that led to this whole web maybe because i've been doing it for so long and it doesn't seem unusual it doesn't seem unusual and for him noticing it i'm like i don't think about it so i think to non-business people to me this whole idea of value creation sounds like some buzzy phrase we don't really get what it means so i asked a friend of mine who's in the business in your business to explain why you've been so good and the example he gave was a few times now you've bought companies you'll see chief example where most people say holy cow that's way too much to pay and then within just a couple years they're worth much much more apparently by either great negotiating and contracts or alchemy of some kind i'm gonna assume it's not alchemy so can you describe how you made that happen in a way that a lay person can understand so when we were looking at it we said okay what are the things that you could own that you could extract greater value for either in cost savings in what we call architecture i mean through the system that we built or in licensing negotiations and there's only a couple and we want to be in live because we understand the power of live and so when we look at that and yes we bought it for over 20 times but if we made the new deal and we had it mapped out and the timing was good the deal was about to expire yes right it was about a year and a half if we did that then the multiple that we paid was 10 times which would be the cheapest multiple for sports right ever now that's a big bet so if you're talking about poker we push all the chips in and then once we pushed them in what happened donald trump said to at&t you can't buy warner brothers okay this needs a little explaining first of all emmanuel used to represent trump but no longer does and he no longer did by 2016 when trump was elected president emmanuel was trying to get a deal for the right to show ufc fights on cable the three most obvious buyers were tnt owned by time warner espn owned by disney and fox but at the time this was happening in 2017 the parent companies of those channels weren't in a position to make a big deal time warner was fighting the trump justice department for the right to merge with at&t and disney was negotiating with fox to buy a huge package of their movie and tv assets and so all the buyers were out for a period of time and my clock was ticking on my rights so i was uncomfortable you must have been not sleeping well well i got really sick actually did you my thyroid went crazy i went down to like a crazy weight because i had hyperthyroidism from stress holy cow yeah recreate a phone call you would have made at that moment to try to break the logjam like who are you calling i'll call everybody were you calling trump no no i didn't do that there was nothing there was so we thought we had a deal with amazon that didn't happen that was upsetting we went back to paramount and wanted to do a deal on spike our regional place comcast said no and we were not a lot did you think it might oh i was really nervous i mean not sleeping nervous sick nervous and then the espn disney deal goes through kevin mayor we make a deal with because that's espn he was head of scrap planning at disney and they were about to launch direct to consumers espn plus and so it's funny i think dana talked about this on the podcast the former head of espn john skipper was not a fan of the ufc he thought it was tacky for that he thought it was beneath him he then gets fired for personal just personal reasons whatever in case you're curious john skipper resigned from espn 2017 after someone he bought cocaine from tried to extort him doesn't matter and then it goes to kevin mayor who realized the value of ufc and pay-per-view and direct to consumer did you pitch him on ppv pay-per-view or did he pitch you so we pitched him on fight nights and then after the first fight night which was in brooklyn went crazy great we then came in and bob eiger got it said we want the pay-per-views because you can charge for the pay-per-views you can even make it bigger on plus and you could do this whole matrix kevin him got it so i don't know anything about agenting or negotiating but i would think if you only had one legitimate buyer which is what it sounds like right everybody else was a no how were you able to get so much from espn why didn't they drive a bargain i think they got a bargain when's that term up i think we're going to start probably next year so what do you predict the next year will look like compared to the previous really really really really really really really really really really really really okay that's not happening on this podcast i don't know i'm a farm boy after the break how covid almost killed endeavor and why endeavor doesn't own formula one i'm steven duffner this is freaking on radio we'll be right back the covid 19 shutdown was plainly bad for business in many sectors a firm like endeavor was particularly vulnerable since it relies on live sports and entertainment the ufc was one of the first events to come back at a location in the united arab emirates that they called fight island dana white's a genius hey get me an island we make all the calls and we do the thing and he willed it and this was a crazy we had to get planes and testing and isolate the island the logistics were insane and dana just muscled up and did it and that permitted us to i think a whole new generation and changed our sport you think the nfl and nba would have even played that season if fight island hadn't happened i don't know you have to remember we were all talking i was talking to vince i was talking roger i was talking adam silver manuals talking about vince mcmahon commissioner of wwe roger goodell commissioner of the nfl and nba commissioner adam silver and formula one did a great job because what they did is they created that tv show in a time when everybody was sitting home watching stuff and then everybody became a fan through that show the tv show he's talking about is the netflix series drive to survive by the way emmanuel once tried to buy formula one this was about seven years ago shortly after endeavor had bought the ufc and at that point in time cdcfp firm in the uk owned formula one and i had been working cdc for two years three years to buy formula and all of a sudden it comes up they want to sell so we have a meeting brexit had just happened we haven't done anything yet with the ufc and people thought you overpaid at that point yeah and i wanted to buy formula one right away yeah was not at the time they didn't have a tv show a bunch of stuff had not been in place which they've done an incredible job he understandably because you know i think it was 10 billion dollars said no i understand why because we just bought this we had not even accomplished anything the timing was wrong you haven't bought ufc you don't form the one now perhaps perhaps so that was one that got away that i wish it wouldn't have did you think covid might kill endeavor it was bad i'd never had to fire that many people the team that really kind of organized it i have one of the greatest presidents of all time mark zero he's an incredible executive mark ran espn mark ran espn six flags he's very soulful and then jason and andrew slammer our cfos they put a plan together and we executed against it plus keeping ufc on you know we did about i might be wrong here but i think about 70 percent of our revenue in year in 2020 in the covid year we had our espn deal we then started making deals for writers so we stored all the cash we didn't let anything out we let people go which was horrible or furloughed them did you think for a time though that you know there was three months i was like you know i mean it was bad and we were just counting cash like how do we make sure the cash can last so i just want to ask if you don't mind like i noticed you don't do a lot of interviews and i have to say it's disappointing because i mean i'm not just low in smoke but i've admired you for a long time and we did that's embarrassing you should be embarrassed because why are you not i mean you know i look at people and maybe because i'm older now and i don't know i mean not that i don't respect people there's not many people worth admiring yeah admire that's a weird word i mean i think you know i respect elon i mean there's a bunch of executives i respect and think they're really great admire's a weird word for me i don't know why elon as you may have figured is elon musk whose properties include tesla spacex and twitter i have a couple questions about elon since you brought him up so first of all he was on your board and then not what was that about we have a gambling b2b business we just acquired about a year ago open that so when you do that you have to go state by state and get licensed and so does the board so you know him giving up all of his documents to all these people he just called me up and says i'm not doing that can i said listen i get it no problem i love you endeavor though did invest in twitter yes he took it over so why'd you do that if you're gonna bet on somebody i would bet on that man on anything he does because why what is it about him i admire him no some people play chess and some people say oh he plays multiple levels of chess he plays this online game that is like i don't even know what it was called he showed me over the summer it was crazy how complicated and like it's more complicated than go and you're sitting there saying like if you're gonna bet on somebody and he is also not indifferent and he's curious and he's passionate in this space you're gonna bet on that dude all the time all right i have to ask you one more elon musk question there's this famous picture paparazzi photo right can we just not ask this question well i really want to ask about your fitness though oh okay last summer musk and emmanuel vacation together on yacht in greece the paparazzi photo that went viral showed emmanuel spraying musk down with a hose both of them shirtless you're there with a six maybe eight pack right and he looks like kind of like a cad or something he looks great right now he's lost a lot of weight well i'm just curious state briefly your fitness and nutrition regime for people how long does this podcast last i mean it's so stupid what i do it's gotten more and more complex but i'll give you this morning i woke up i think 4 45 i take either depending on the thai helmets or uk helmets which are live microbes from my gut i then get a cup of coffee i drink one cup of coffee no cream no sugar no cream no sugar i go into the gym at home at home i have a gym at home i do a dynamic warm-up which is about 45 minutes by yourself by myself no longer any trainers today i did bike hypoxia training i sprint on the bike for a minute at a very high level take it down to a very low level put a mask on that takes me up to 22 000 feet for three minutes i do that for 25 minutes then today i did a weight program chest try shoulders legs and stomach then i went in i did a sauna i meditated for i think today was 17 minutes got a nice bath for four minutes steam got out take my vitamins and then usually fridays i don't eat i'll have dinner thursday night won't eat until friday night so to most people that would be an extreme regimen let's say right it's like my phone calls i don't feel it's extreme anymore i know but the degree to which you go some people could interpret it as like a control thing like you want to know it's a vain thing oh yeah of course there's a portion of it that's vain because i cannot stand not being in shape i can't stand it actually it does take sacrifice and work it does i'm willing to do that and i'm consistent if nothing else in my life i think it's one of the things that has permitted me to be successful i am consistently consistent not just with this with everything so if you were going to give life advice some of them would be don't be indifference the other ones be curious the other one is be comfortable in the uncomfortable another one would be show up meaning half of my success like that phone call i took beforehand is do i want to take that meeting no but i want to get to this i'm gonna take that meeting what was that meeting there's a company that i want to buy and then and then um try and be as consistent as you possibly can there's also something you once wrote six lessons you live by it one of them was the only constant in business is change get comfortable with it yeah it's about being comfortable and uncomfortable over time i've just been realizing that i can handle a lot of discomfort these things are not comfortable not eating for a day so it's training training your mind to be comfortable to get through stuff to have stamina being a leader is not about how many punches you can throw it's how many punches you can take trying to buy a company is about how you can last through the brutality of it because it's brutal right they want certain things you want certain things you're going at it and just hanging tough yeah you just have to be comfortable and uncomfortable where do you think that comes from you know i was never comfortable reading or in a class i remember because we just passover i'm jewish passover just happened so i remember the anxiety i used to have of being the youngest kid having to read the four questions oh i mean it was hell it was actually hell i would be so nervous and not happy really not happy and it still gives me when passover and i hear passover it gives me such anxiety your association with passover is is that you know i got through it i got through class not being able to read how often do you talk to zeke once a week five times a week that's also known as every day to most people well seven seven yeah i talked around probably saying uh-huh and what are the conversations we talk about either a book a situation that happened in the world my mother siblings for sure there's always a sunday call right the sunday has to happen because my father once said something wrong with your fingers i said dad you know your fingers also work the phone lines go chicago la not only la chicago what does your mother and what did your father think of your line of business compared to the brothers my father like wanted me to go get my business degree at northwestern and that i was making i think the base was two hundred dollars minimum and then 15 cents a mile when i went into the sea mail room he lost his mind he goes you can always keep you piece of people they can figure it out and i was like dad i think there's something big out there he didn't get it and what does zeke think of your success i don't know i think he's happy for me but as you like you take him to a super bowl now and again stuff like that's not that's not that's not him but when he wants to go to SNL or tennis matches or whatever you want i mean yeah i mean he gets what about rom what does rom think of your success i don't know i don't really when you're the little brother even though you're 62 now you're always a little brother here's funny i don't know if you saw zeke came out with a book the brothers book yeah and we did an interview at microsoft ceo conference you know i'm not a wallflower rom's not a wallflower zeke's not a wallflower so we go up to the interviews all three of us and immediately we turn into the siblings it's zeke in the lead rom fighting for it me shutting up it was hysterical one thing you can't hear in a radio interview when emmanuel talks about himself and his brothers he occasionally flicks his middle finger at them i should have asked whether it was intentional or involuntary either way you get the idea that there's no fight that emmanuel will back down from this too goes back to childhood i love boxing i mean i grew up on boxing friday night fight was incredible after the break we'll find out just how comfortable in the uncomfortable emmanuel can get this is very difficult i wish it had not happened i'm steven dubner this is freaking on this radio we'll be right back if you want to get a sense of how efficient ari emmanuel is as a deal maker efficient perhaps at the point of exploitive consider how he works both sides of the aisle when it comes to supply and demand look at the sports properties that he and endeavor have bought like the ufc and wwe these are individual sports without labor unions where the athletes collectively get a relatively low share of overall revenues a handful of stars make big money but in the ufc the athletes collectively receive just 15 or 20 percent of revenues and that figures probably even lower in wwe compare that to a league like the nfl or nba where the athletes do have a union and collectively receive about half of league revenues in those leagues endeavor represents the athletes in this year's nfl draft for instance they represented three first round picks in the upcoming nba draft they represent four players who are projected to be lottery picks in other words if a given sports ecosystem has high labor costs endeavor is likely to represent labor if a different ecosystem has low labor costs endeavor is likely to opt for ownership considering how much emmanuel likes boxing and the fact that his new business created from the merger of wrestling and ultimate fighting will be named tko you might think endeavor would try to get into boxing as well and ufc president dana white recently said he is looking to launch a boxing promotion of some kind, but that might be tricky because of what's known as the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Pact. That's a federal law designed to protect fighters from being exploited by and underpaid by boxing promoters. This is one of the eternal conflicts in any economic system, the share of revenue that goes to labor. And that conflict can get exacerbated as there's more consolidation.
That's what I wanted to talk to Ari Emanuel about next, although, as you'll hear, the conversation wandered a bit. Consolidation is happening in every industry all over the world. Private equity, I think, very quietly has changed the global economy, the U.S. economy, in many ways that are not good, especially in healthcare.
In your industry... I think consolidation in one area is really bad for our economy. Right now, which area is that? The food area.
Why do you say that? Because I think what they're making us eat is making us sick. Whether it be the antibiotics, whether it be all the, you know, corn's so bad for you. I don't want to get any...
Thank God I'm not on social media. How they're feeding America and the world is disgusting. And that's going to be our biggest global problem. And that consolidation is the one...
The rest of it... What about in healthcare, though? Does that not concern you? No.
Because why? It just doesn't. I don't think about it. A friend of mine said, how do you fix the third act in the first act?
So if we can fix the food problem, the healthcare problem, which is probably the second act, and the third act gets fixed. So we've got to get to the first act. And the first act is what we put in the system and exercise and all that other stuff. And so let's fix the first act.
The first act is the food. And if we do that, I think a lot of problems get solved when you think about the equation of health. Healthcare and that food situation, I think there's only four major players, maybe five. Is your brother Zeke as...
Oh, I don't actually ask him. I don't care what you think. When I talk about all my craziness that I do for my health on eating and helmets and all that stuff, I only ask... No, actually, he's coming around to it.
Like, he's starting to do... He fast. I heard him say something very admiring about your level of knowledge about the microbiome. Yeah.
I always ask him when I'm about to do something crazy with, you know, hacking myself. I said, okay, just give it to me. Can it hurt me? If he says no, I do it.
Give me an example. Well, I take live microbes. And I said, Zeke, can it hurt me? And, you know, Zeke did his work around it.
And he goes, no, I don't think so. I said, okay. I just did it. Boom.
Right? And I drink them. And he's now like, wait a second. This f***er might be right.
And I've been doing this now for 12 years. Conversation now turned to artificial intelligence. When we spoke, the Writers Guild of America was threatening to strike, a threat they've since followed through on. One key concern was that content producers would start using AI to write scripts, and script writing still represents a significant piece of Endeavor's business.
My opinion about AI is the following. My son Leo's at Michigan, and he's in computer science. He and I were having this conversation, and I'm telling him programming's gonna go away. And he says, Dad, here's my opinion about it.
Computer versus computer and chess. Draw. Computer versus computer and human. Computer-human win.
And if you talk to George Gilder, he would say technology is only added to employment. Elon would say something else. It is gonna be a very important development tool. Do I think it can create like Jim Brooks can?
No. Could it help Jim Brooks? Yeah. Jim Brooks is James L.
Brooks, a legendary writer and producer known for creating The Simpsons, the Mary Tyler Moore show, and many others. Do I think there's protections we have to put in place for music and books writing? Yeah, I do. But, yeah, that's just change and normal.
The one thing that we're doing is we're looking at the world. Okay, can you AI live entertainment? No. Can't.
Elon said to me at one point, it was very funny. It made me nervous. He says, Ari, do you have dogs? I said, yeah, I have four dogs.
He goes, well, here's what AI is to you. You're the dog. Like, you know, that's crazy. Dogs have great life, right?
I guess. Well, all that means to me is we're gonna have a lot more free time, and experience, the experience economy is gonna be very important. But you say you can't AI live entertainment, but let's expand it to, you know, virtual reality, augmented reality, et cetera, et cetera. I would do that.
That's entertainment. And I would think that in your business that would be a massive upside, right? Yes, that's what I'm saying. You're gonna have a live, and then you're gonna have, there's a whole other audience that wants to do other things.
We'll figure that out. I would love to be center court at Wimbledon without having to leave my room. That's a nice application, presumably. Why would?
I'd love to see what it feels like to get hit in the octagon. We're in the middle of a bunch of that stuff right now, looking at it and seeing what we can do. It was not done yet, but we're working with a lot of people to figure that out, because I agree with you. How do you like being CEO of a public company?
What's the difference? What's the difference? I mean, everybody said, oh, you're not gonna like it. I don't know, you're just working phones and doing your job and telling your story.
You think the stock should be worth more than it is? Oh, yeah. Yeah, so what's the problem? I read this morning you signed Megan Markle.
Congratulations. I think Megan Markle moved your stock more than WWE. I think it takes time for people to realize the value. I think one of the things that's gonna happen, we split off, and we're gonna have a new company, TKO, and then we just sold our IMG Academy.
Yeah, why'd you sell? Well, somebody knocked on our door and said, we're gonna pay you X amount. It was one and a quarter billion? Yeah, for something that the street gave me zero for.
So I think now the street has got to start, I hope, or this is gonna be my pitch to the street, I should say. Hey, maybe there's more value inside this thing you're not valuing once the UFC's out that you should start paying attention to. And I think they're gonna have to pay attention to it now, because UFC's not in it. Once UFC's out, the revenues in the remaining company endeavor are very good.
Well, I can't talk about it. No, no, I'm not asking the number. I want to know where they come from. They come from the betting business, the gambling business.
They come from on location our events. On location is a business we bought in conjunction with the NFL. The NFL owned it. They did these high-end experiences at the Super Bowl.
And we thought with all our events, we could do high-end experiences at all of our events. Plus, we could go after other high-end experiences, like the Olympics, which we just signed, and create these unbelievable experiences around. These are fan experiences. Fan experiences, yeah.
Like, at the O.C., you sit next to Dana White, you get into the ring, you stand on the stage with the weigh-ins. Same thing with the Super Bowl. Same thing we're creating with the Olympics. Then there's IMG.
We represent 150 sports. We do the production. Great business. And then there's all the representation business at William Morris.
And so those three remaining buckets are, I think, very valuable in today's world, where there's a lot of sports betting. There's a lot of people that want experiences from live entertainment. The representation business has been around for over 150 years, and it ain't going away, and it's a great business. You're not gonna like this question, but someone wondered to me whether you have taken your eye off the representation business to the point where, you know, a Brian Lord from CAA or any other number of big-time agents may start eating your lunch.
Well, I think what they should just do is call Tyler Perry, call Adam Kay, call Larry David, call Dwayne Johnson, call Mark. Are you worried about not being the biggest dog? No. We're the biggest dog by a lot.
We still represent a lot of clients. Anytime they need us, we're there. You still like agenting? Love it.
But when we bring things to the table, any of the people at the company, unlike UTA or CA, they have this whole other world they can pull from, which is what's needed at an agency. Now, the problem when you're at one of those other places is a client gets hot, Kevin, you're going to Brian Lord, starts calling them around your back. That's dope. That's bad culture.
Remember, they were the biggest agent. Mike Owens gave them everything. They had, for lack of a better metaphor, Tiffany. You know what they did with it?
And I think Walmart's a great company, but let's just say they made it Walmart and they didn't leave. Like, you're not empowering people? Like, what kind of life are you? That's horrible.
Maybe you did like that question. I thought you wouldn't like it. You actually liked it quite a bit. I would pay the salaries of Brian Lord, Kevin, to stay in the job.
I would. I would pay their salaries. It's the greatest competition of all time. We asked CAA, the Creative Artists Agency, for comments on Emmanuel's assessment.
They passed. Before we ran out of time, I wanted to ask Emmanuel about professional golf. He's an avid golfer and an ally of the PGA Tour, whose business model has recently been threatened by a startup called the Live Tour, which is funded by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. This presents Emmanuel with two separate conflicts, one economic, the other political, or even moral.
The economic conflict has to do with, again, athlete compensation. Phil Mickelson, one of the PGA Tour's biggest stars, left the Tour for a massive contract with Live after complaining for years that the PGA Tour not only underpaid its players, but wouldn't share the revenue data. Several other big names followed him, including Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau. Mickelson's claim was seemingly justified when the PGA Tour suddenly came up with many millions of extra dollars to sweeten the deal for the golfers who stayed.
The PGA Tour commissioner is Jay Monaghan, and the Live Tour commissioner is former world number one golfer Greg Norman. That's the economic issue you will hear Emmanuel talk about in a minute. The political issue has to do with the funding of the Live Tour, an issue we addressed in an earlier episode of called What is Sportswashing and Does It Work? The main criticism here is that Saudi Arabia is using golf sponsorship to paper over its record on things like the state-sanctioned murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
The problem for our Emmanuel is that Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, had been a major investor in Endeavor. All right, I want to know, I want to know about the Saudi public investment fund and that whole story, but let's start with Live Golf. What do you think of Live Golf? You know, I think Jay's done a good thing.
Jay Monaghan, PGA Tour commissioner. He responded to the competition. He responded properly, and I think they pointed out a flaw in the system. They, the Saudis and Live and Greg, you know, we got a call.
We got a call, like, from DeChambeau and Phil. Hey, do you want to finance this? Wait, finance this with the Saudis instead of? No, no, no, instead of.
I said Egon, yeah. I said we would put up, I mean, the Endeavor would put up a billion dollars. Egon is Egon Durbin, the chair of Endeavor's board and founding principal of Silver Lake, the private equity firm of this Endeavor's largest shareholder. Emmanuel calls Durbin the greatest partner I've ever had.
Egon then called somebody at the PGA, and, you know, we're all connected in golf, and they said, please don't do it, so we stopped, right? I'm friends with Jay. We have a lot of business with Jay. I don't want to hurt Jay, but I just thought, you know, I'm always looking for the next sport, the next thing we can do.
So we pulled out. I said to Jay, Jay, we're pulling out, but you have got to figure out an economic solution, because you're going to get, it's going to force you. And he did. To his credit, I think Jay did an incredible job.
I think Rory helped, and Tiger helped, and a bunch of guys helped. Do you have a moral position on Live being funded by the Saudi Public Investment Fund? No. Does sports watching, does that accusation concern you?
I haven't really thought about it. I have enough on my plate. They're doing what they're doing. But you did have, as an investment partner, Mohamed Binzal, MBS, yes?
Yes. Okay, so tell me how that money came to you, and then why you gave it back. I was somewhere for the UFC, making a deal, either in China or in Russia. I got a call from one of my investors in Abu Dhabi.
He says, what are you doing? I said, I'm making this deal. And he goes, can you fly to Abu Dhabi? I said, of course.
So, seven-hour flights. I flew to Abu Dhabi. We met. He said, I want you to go to Saudi Arabia.
Meet with MBS. I said, okay. He goes, he's going to be, you know, taking over, and he wants entertainment. He's changing what they're doing, and he gave me a whole speech.
I said, fine, I'll fly to Saudi. I flew to Saudi. You met with him? I met with MBS.
What was that meaning like? He's incredible. I mean, he is as charming as could be. He had this whole vision, bringing entertainment, movies back, and he wanted to spend $30 billion in entertainment.
Well, I can do math. $30 billion, I mean, it's money. And I thought his vision was incredible. So we negotiated.
It took about nine months of negotiation for them to invest. I think it was $400 million. And then, you know, I think a bad thing happened. But let's be very clear about something.
I'm not defending what they did. You know, I've had a brother that's been in two white houses. Every country does bad things. They just don't do an embassy, right or wrong.
We killed an American citizen who was a terrorist with no trial from a drone during the Obama administration, actually. Right? He was American. He was a terrorist.
No trial. Emmanuel is referring to the 2011 drone strike in Yemen that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaeda leader born in New Mexico. That wasn't in an embassy, but that was... So every country...
I just... That was, you know, evident. It was very difficult. I wish it had not happened for a lot of reasons.
Did you talk to him during that period? I don't really remember. I think I talked to Yasser, who runs the PIF. But what was the mechanism?
Did you literally write a check back with interest? It was a long negotiation. Yeah, we wrote a check back with interest, yeah. Does that preclude you from doing business with him or them again?
No, but we wrote a check. Listen, I know everybody thinks things are black and white. And I have a tendency to do that, too. Right?
And we live in this period of time where, you know, there was a period of time where it was even worse. And I struggle with this. And we do business there. I mean, people drive cars, but, well, I mean, like, let's get through a bunch of stuff here.
So governments do bad things. Let's just say that. And then work through all our own emotional ethics. But why was that the case that made you write a check for $400 million?
I don't know. I just, you know, I don't really, I don't really know. So when you're talking about meditating yesterday and being happy, you're kind of... Yeah, satisfied.
That's a bad word. I'm never satisfied. But I want to recognize that I am blessed. Okay.
There's a Harvard psychologist named Dan Gilbert who studies, you know, Stumbling on Happiness was a book years ago. He said he came to the conclusion that his life had been so, like you said, blessed, fortunate, great experiences, of course, a lot of hard work and hardship, blah, blah, blah. But that he felt full, like you eat a good meal. Now, when you eat a good meal...
Remember, I starve. Good point. So the metaphor goes off the rails already. But also, when you eat a good meal, you're going to get hungry again in a few hours.
But he has this notion of feeling like, I've become full in my life. I feel satisfied, essentially. And I don't need or want anymore to chase the things that I've been chasing. I'm curious what you feel about that concept.
Well, I'm full when I'm chasing. Here's what I would say to you. I hope I know this. You know, I constantly talk to myself about this.
No, no, no. I'm a serial entrepreneur. I think all these things, whether it's setting up a movie for Jim Brooks or Adam Kaye, these are the most recent ones, or buying a company or working through the issues of a company, brings me joy. Do you think about the value that the work brings?
You know, does it make the world a better place? I'm in the middle right now of, you know, I've set up a bunch of movies and TV shows. Some of them are just fun, and I think that's important for people. Some of them have meaning in all of our different groups, whether they book departments, podcasts, lectures, entertainment.
You know, the new Marty Scorsese movie, that's about a moment in time when the Indians were taken advantage of by white settlers. Oh, the long moment, we should say. Yeah, or I've got a new Adam Kaye movie about lobbyists. So you can have influence.
You know, you don't have to be indifferent. This is something that's important. But I think because of entertainment and whatever people put on it, you can have influence. And at times when I think something's wrong, I do that personally and for the company and, you know, what we get behind and et cetera.
Now, I always, because I'm now 62 and I'm healthy, I think I'm healthy, emotionally and physically, I say to myself, okay, how much longer do you want to do this? And I look at people, not in envy, but like, would that make me happy and there's people that aren't working anymore? I do ask this question a lot. as you get older, right?
Hopefully I don't act like I'm 62. I still get up in the morning, get my ass out of bed at 4.45, 5 o'clock, want to get in the office by 7.30, 8 o'clock, make the call. I mean, I'm having a meeting, getting out of plane to England, then going to Madrid, then coming back, then back to New York, then coming back, then going to Cannes, then I'm going to Tokyo. Yeah, and I enjoy it.
So when I don't enjoy it, when I won't show up is when I know I'm not in it. And when I'm not in it, I will not be in it. I'll be out. And Mark Shapiro will be running the company, and it'll be an incredible company, but it reminds me of some old-fashioned council of elders.
And I'm just curious how you think about being that kind of person to others and seeking out that kind of decency in people. Because the world, I mean, especially the world of entertainment and sports, politics, these all have big pockets of indecency. You know, there's a lot of, no, you're making a funny face. You know, business is tough.
Yes, in any business, there are some duplicitous people. Politics, finance, entertainment, medicine. Please don't say that entertainment is like the only, you know, bullshit. So I want to be with people that I think live by their word as much as one can.
Of course, you've never seen the world exactly the way they're seeing the world. But I want to surround myself with people that I like, that I think have standards that I live by. And once you're in my web, for me, you're in my web. I'll defend.
Yeah, I will. To the death. Yeah. You still like to fight.
Love it. I love it. When we sat down to talk, I didn't know what to expect from Ari Emanuel. For one thing, I've been warned multiple times by multiple people that he doesn't like interviews, that he gets bored easily and he might just get up and leave after 20 minutes.
The conversation you just heard was an edit of a conversation that lasted around an hour and 45 minutes, but I had no way of knowing at the outset. In fact, right as we were sitting down, before the mics were rolling, he waved me closer, like, come here, come here. And based on everything I'd been reading about him, my first thought was, what's he gonna do, slap me? I know he likes to fight, so I don't know.
I didn't move closer. He waved again. I still didn't move. His waving got more animated.
Finally, I leaned in. It turns out he just wanted to pull the loose thread off my jacket. He wanted to clean me up. It made me think of that old folk tale about the mouse who pulls a thorn from the paw of a lion.
But wait a minute, he's supposed to be the lion. His name, Ariel, means Lion of God. I would love to hear them. Our email is radio at freakonomics.com.
Meanwhile, next time on the show, what comes to mind when someone brings up a slippery slope? Oh, you think euthanasia's a good idea, but, like, wait till they're executing the grandmas. Why are slippery slope arguments invoked? If the industry's making the slippery slope argument, it means they've run out of substantive arguments.
And the slippery slope itself is said to be slippery. Our decisions today are shaped in considerable part of our decisions yesterday, and they will in turn shape our decisions tomorrow. Let's slide down the slippery slope together. That's next time on the show.
Until then, take care of yourself, and if you can, someone else too. Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. You can find our entire archive on any podcast app or at freakonomics.com where we also publish transcripts and show notes. This episode was produced by Alina Kallman and mixed by Greg Ribbon with help from Jeremy Johnston and Daniel Moritz Rapson.
Our staff also includes Julie Kamper, Zach Lipinski, Morgan Levy, Ryan Kelly, Catherine Monture, Rebecca Lee Douglas, Eleanor Osborne, Jasmine Klinger, Daria Klenert, Emma Terrell, Lear Bowditch, and Elsa Hernandez. Our executive team is Neil Carruth, Gabriel Roth, and me, Stephen Dubner. Our theme song is Mr. Fortune by the Hitchhikers.
All the other music was composed by Luis Guerra. As always, thanks for listening. If he didn't hit the pin on 15 and then say in the interview, yes, I realized that I was three feet two kilometers, whatever he said, then he would have lost that stroke, he would have won that Masters, it had been over. Let's do a golf podcast.
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