Speaker 1: Aria Emmanuel is today one of the most important figures
Speaker 1: in the entertainment industry. In the mid nineties, he started
Speaker 1: Endeavor and built it into being a leading talent agency firm, representing,
Speaker 1: among others, Martin Scorsese. Today he's built Endeavor into being
Speaker 1: one of the leading entertainment and sports conglomerates in the world.
Speaker 1: I sat down with ar in his offices in New
Speaker 1: York to discuss the entertainment industry and as firms future
Speaker 1: in it. So, you were a talent agent for much
Speaker 1: of your professional career, but now you're running a multi national,
Speaker 1: multi billion dollars sports entertainment conglomerates. So what's it like
Speaker 1: running a multinational sports company that's public as opposed to
Speaker 1: being a talent agent. For me, it really feels natural
Speaker 1: right now. Is definitely different because it's bigger. It's everything
Speaker 1: I've ever dreamed of. I still do a lot of
Speaker 1: work with clients on the talent side, whether it be writer, director, actors, etcetera. UM,
Speaker 1: But then there's the portion of my life where you're
Speaker 1: dealing with investors. You're dealing with how to grow the
Speaker 1: business where you want to go. A great training ground
Speaker 1: has been the town agency business, because you have to
Speaker 1: build a business for your clients. You have to make
Speaker 1: sure that they're happy. And now I'm doing all that
Speaker 1: plus doing stuff for the company, but also making sure
Speaker 1: that the shareholders are happy. To deal with quarterly earnings now,
Speaker 1: and that's a bit of a pain. Sometimes people would say,
Speaker 1: I don't really find it a pain. I don't know why,
Speaker 1: and I guess. Uh. John Donahoe from Nike said to
Speaker 1: me one time, Well, when the earnings are good, it's
Speaker 1: an easy process. And they've been good for five quarters now.
Speaker 1: Um so right now, I feel good about the process.
Speaker 1: So we'll see. Maybe I don't. I'm feeling good where
Speaker 1: we sit and where the future looks, but I haven't
Speaker 1: experienced the downside of that conversation. Talk about the future
Speaker 1: of the entertainment business, Um, where do you think it's going.
Speaker 1: You think there's going to be movie theaters forever where
Speaker 1: everything will be streamed at some point. And as somebody
Speaker 1: represents talent, what are you telling talent about where they
Speaker 1: should be putting their efforts. When we started the agency march,
Speaker 1: you know what everybody said, there's gonna be no more
Speaker 1: dramas and no more television, So Here's what I would
Speaker 1: say to you is distribution is going to change and
Speaker 1: going to expand there's gonna be new technology to come
Speaker 1: into our business. When the movie doesn't happen in DVDs,
Speaker 1: I mean, it just keeps on expanding. And now you
Speaker 1: have digital, you have influencers, et cetera. The theatrical business
Speaker 1: is as important as it ever been. Is there going
Speaker 1: to be a nine point three billion dollar business. Maybe
Speaker 1: it'd be an a billion dollar business. I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: but it's not going away. And anybody that says to you,
Speaker 1: and I won't name names, that says the movie business
Speaker 1: over our fools, the movie business not over, the television
Speaker 1: business on over We have new verticals which are content
Speaker 1: on gambling, social content. It's it is just an expanding world.
Speaker 1: And so I think UM, as everybody is now on
Speaker 1: the demand side of the business, fighting over distribution and content,
Speaker 1: I've made a decision, and we've made a decision as
Speaker 1: a company to be on the supply side. And there's
Speaker 1: very few suppliers and in the end, the brands we
Speaker 1: own UM, whether it be the UFC bull Riding now,
Speaker 1: Barrett Jackson and all the other Freeze or the clients
Speaker 1: we represent that are we're helping them become brands and
Speaker 1: companies are going to be more valuable in the future
Speaker 1: than less valuable because as distribution expands and you have
Speaker 1: the supply side of that equation, and there's very few suppliers.
Speaker 1: UM economics improved. So during covid UM the production of
Speaker 1: TV shows and movies kind of went down to and
Speaker 1: almost nothing. So what did a firm like yours do
Speaker 1: Because you didn't have a lot of representation, you could
Speaker 1: do well in the first three or four months like
Speaker 1: most firms, cut costs, cut people, uh, put people you know,
Speaker 1: on hiatus. It was a horrible time because I'd never
Speaker 1: gone through this, and I don't think anybody has gone
Speaker 1: through this. But the funny thing is, you know, by
Speaker 1: the end UM we had started working through it. On
Speaker 1: the representation side and the events side. We did about
Speaker 1: seven d our economics. Even during covid we figured it
Speaker 1: out by the end. On the on PBR at the
Speaker 1: time in ufc uh PBR was actually the first sport
Speaker 1: back UM and the head of it, Sean kind of
Speaker 1: figured that out how to do it with testing, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And then Dana was very quickly right behind that, and
Speaker 1: Dana calls me up. He said, get me an island.
Speaker 1: I said, what he said, get me an island. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna put on fights. And he was like, we're going.
Speaker 1: Nobody's getting no, he's getting laid off. He's he's he's
Speaker 1: an incredible executive. And I said, okay, you know, I
Speaker 1: didn't know what to do. And then as you know,
Speaker 1: you know, because i've seen you in in Abu Dhabi, Um,
Speaker 1: how doone called me? And he said, because it was
Speaker 1: rumors about this, And he says, why don't you come here.
Speaker 1: We'll give you an island and we'll figure out economics.
Speaker 1: And I called up Dana and I said, here's the situation,
Speaker 1: here's the economics. He goes, we're going and we set
Speaker 1: up in Abu Dhabi. I mean it's famous now, I
Speaker 1: mean it kind of I think, really catapult the the
Speaker 1: sport in this horrible time, we set up Fight Island
Speaker 1: and the that whole engine that Dana runs and and
Speaker 1: Dana's force of nature. You know, we put we put
Speaker 1: the sport up on its feet and we we flew
Speaker 1: everybody out, tested him, and we put the fights on.
Speaker 1: It was crazy. Now you are one of three very
Speaker 1: famous brothers. You're holding for infamous or infamous. Your oldest brother,
Speaker 1: Zeke Emmanuel, is a very well known bioethicist and medical
Speaker 1: doctor and on TV a lot for his views on healthcare.
Speaker 1: Ram Emmanuel is now Ambassador Japan, previously was chief of
Speaker 1: staff to President Obama and also mayor of Chicago. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you are the youngest of the three brothers. Is
Speaker 1: that right? Or is? My father used to say, God
Speaker 1: rest this whole the picture. That's Yiddish for small. So Uh,
Speaker 1: what is it that your parents did that produced these
Speaker 1: three very talented children who are in different areas of life,
Speaker 1: but all have done quite well well. First of all,
Speaker 1: I would say, Uh, when we were growing up, one
Speaker 1: of the things I try to do with my kids
Speaker 1: and I have four children, is they let us figure
Speaker 1: stuff out. They didn't program us every hour or what
Speaker 1: we were doing. You had to fend for yourself. You
Speaker 1: had to figure things out. And the other thing that
Speaker 1: my parents did is education was crucial um. And if
Speaker 1: you didn't perform ah, then there was punishment um, meaning
Speaker 1: you'd be grounded you you know, And there was competition
Speaker 1: of who got the better grades between the kids and
Speaker 1: so with those two things, and you know, my father
Speaker 1: was a workaholic. He was a pediatrician, uh, and you
Speaker 1: kind of went around with him when he went on rounds.
Speaker 1: And on my mother's side, you know, she was a
Speaker 1: woman that went against the grain in the suburbs of Chicago,
Speaker 1: was very prominent in civil rights, which for that period
Speaker 1: of time was you know, nobody could believe that in
Speaker 1: Chicago and the suburbs. So you saw two people that
Speaker 1: were willing to go out and be themselves. Let us
Speaker 1: be ourselves, um, and then get gave us some pretty
Speaker 1: good guardrails. Have You've achieved what you've achieved despite two
Speaker 1: problems that some people would say might make it difficult.
Speaker 1: One is, when you were growing up, your dyslexic and
Speaker 1: I guess you still have some dyslexia, and you had
Speaker 1: attention deficit disorder, which um, some people have as well.
Speaker 1: Maybe some people say definitely have not gotten over that.
Speaker 1: So okay, those are things that may sometimes go together,
Speaker 1: dyslexia and attention deficits order. How did you overcome those?
Speaker 1: And they still challenges for you. When I was growing up,
Speaker 1: I had, you know, my mother, and she made sure
Speaker 1: that I was going to graduate high school. I was
Speaker 1: going to go to college and I was going to
Speaker 1: learn how to read. And the good thing about it
Speaker 1: is UM. I think it's a superpower. Now. Back then
Speaker 1: I hated it. I mean I remember crying every day
Speaker 1: when I had to go to the reading teacher for
Speaker 1: three hours and sit in there like front window. And
Speaker 1: it was horrible with my A d h D and UM.
Speaker 1: But now, because of the diversity of my business, the
Speaker 1: A d H D and enables me to kind of
Speaker 1: move around and focus a lot on specific businesses and
Speaker 1: and the dyslexia for whatever reason, and I think money
Speaker 1: people have different points of view on dyslexia. It does
Speaker 1: enable me to kind of think in a different way.
Speaker 1: One of the things that happens when you're dyslexic also
Speaker 1: you utilize a lot of people around you to help
Speaker 1: you learn. And in business that has translated to making
Speaker 1: sure that you trust a lot of people. I'm not
Speaker 1: afraid to risk because I was made, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of I went through a lot of tough times reading
Speaker 1: UM and embarrassment, so nothing now kind of shakes me up.
Speaker 1: And and then when you're running a company, if you
Speaker 1: empower a lot of people to help you get to
Speaker 1: the end goal, which is what you have to do.
Speaker 1: When you're dyslexic, you're more successful. And so I mean
Speaker 1: those are now attributes and powerful things in my life.
Speaker 1: Before they were very difficult. How did you have when
Speaker 1: I go to my Callister College, a very good school,
Speaker 1: but not as well known as some other schools, you know.
Speaker 1: I applied to Amhurst, which my brother Zeke went to.
Speaker 1: I didn't get in. I got deferred from Bowden. Callister
Speaker 1: accepted me. But later, if you graduated, you became a
Speaker 1: professional racquetball player. For a while. I played racquetball for
Speaker 1: about a year and a half. Yeah, is that an
Speaker 1: easy way to make money? No? I was going to
Speaker 1: go to business school, try to get to the Northwestern
Speaker 1: and I realized, you know, I don't really want to
Speaker 1: do that. And I turned to my father, who would
Speaker 1: go on to school in in Europe, and he said,
Speaker 1: he gave this is what's so great about my my
Speaker 1: my father when when he was alive, he said, here's
Speaker 1: a credit card, here's some cash, no plan. Two days later,
Speaker 1: I was in Paris. He called me up about eight
Speaker 1: months later to a year later, I don't actually remember,
Speaker 1: and he said it's time to come home, and I
Speaker 1: came home, packed up my car in Minnesota, moved to
Speaker 1: New York, and a friend of mine at the time,
Speaker 1: I was working in the mail room of William Morris,
Speaker 1: and he explained to me what William Morris was, because
Speaker 1: I didn't know there was agents or what that Pantillias
Speaker 1: being a major talent agent, so that the one we
Speaker 1: also bought. Kind of funny. And then I went to
Speaker 1: work in New York and got a job working for
Speaker 1: this gentleman and older, kind of well established agent by
Speaker 1: the name of Robbie Lance. And finally he turned to me,
Speaker 1: and he was such a wonderful man, Robbie Lance, and
Speaker 1: he said to me, Um, you know I'm a four
Speaker 1: I'm not going to promote anybody. You should go to
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. You'll make a lot of money and you'll
Speaker 1: be an agent there because I'm not going to promote anybody.
Speaker 1: And so he got me an interview at C A A.
Speaker 1: And Ray Kurtzman said to me, which he can't say now,
Speaker 1: he goes, you're too old to go into the mail room.
Speaker 1: So I did what I normally do. I peppered him
Speaker 1: with calls. I mean I think I called him like
Speaker 1: three times a day every day for two weeks. And
Speaker 1: he turned to me at the time, and he was
Speaker 1: another great man, and he said on a Thursday, and
Speaker 1: he said, if you can be out here on Monday,
Speaker 1: you have a job in the mail room. I got
Speaker 1: out there. I bought a La Car, used car for
Speaker 1: thousands five or something, and I was in the mail
Speaker 1: room and everybody was younger, and I was off to
Speaker 1: the races. Well, explain this to me very often. I've
Speaker 1: read that people work in the mail room. I think
Speaker 1: David Geffen started the mail room, Barry Diller started the
Speaker 1: mail room. What actually happens in a mail room at
Speaker 1: one of these talent agency firms that enables you to
Speaker 1: rise up. You would make copies of scripts, and um,
Speaker 1: you drive the scripts around two clients or two studio heads,
Speaker 1: and you know, you deliver paperwork everywhere. You'd get lunches,
Speaker 1: and then you'd become an assistant, and then you'd become
Speaker 1: an agent if you were good enough, and that process
Speaker 1: of you know, learning the town and et cetera to
Speaker 1: be an each and you have to have clients, I
Speaker 1: assume yes. So to get clients, do you have to
Speaker 1: go to lunches and dinners or how do you get clients?
Speaker 1: We don't have any clients. Well, um, I was at eight.
Speaker 1: I was promoted in a television department because I had
Speaker 1: worked for the head of business affairs and then one
Speaker 1: of the lead agents there, and also this gentleman named
Speaker 1: Bill Haber, and I was in the office as their
Speaker 1: assistant every day for seven days, you know, Monday through Sunday, um,
Speaker 1: doing whatever it took. And they were great teachers, you know,
Speaker 1: both Bruce Ynicker and Bill Haber. They promoted me. And
Speaker 1: then you would go out to the studios and go
Speaker 1: to sets where people were shooting and writers were writing,
Speaker 1: and I was a writer's television agent, and you would
Speaker 1: read stuff that came over the transform and you would
Speaker 1: try to sign him and um, I've even though I'm dyslexic,
Speaker 1: I read a lot, went to watch a lot of
Speaker 1: TV shows, saw what I liked, and signed a lot
Speaker 1: of clients that were quote unquote talented, and I think
Speaker 1: they are talented and they're still talented. And built my business.
Speaker 1: How long before you say, you know what, I should
Speaker 1: have my own company. Um, So I had been what
Speaker 1: by the time I had started endeavor. I think I
Speaker 1: had been an agent for about four and alfter five
Speaker 1: years um and I was looking at the world. I
Speaker 1: read this book by George Gilder called Life After Television,
Speaker 1: and it talked about infinite distribution and that distribution in
Speaker 1: our business was going to expand with cloud computing, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And I brought him in to speak that I see
Speaker 1: him and nobody really understood. And I talked to him
Speaker 1: after reading the book, and uh, I said, you know
Speaker 1: it's going to go from four networks to six. I'm
Speaker 1: in the television business. The way you make money at
Speaker 1: the time and television you put TV packages on the air.
Speaker 1: I've got a great client list. Why would I put
Speaker 1: a package on the air where you can make a
Speaker 1: lot of money for your clients and for yourself and
Speaker 1: give it to them for what I thought was a
Speaker 1: okay salary. Again, my father almost had a heart attack
Speaker 1: because they were offering me a lot of money to stay.
Speaker 1: My contract was up, and I can you know with
Speaker 1: three other gentlemen, we said, you know, I said I
Speaker 1: could with my with my clients. If we do this,
Speaker 1: we can make a lot of money because I know
Speaker 1: what I can put on the air because I've been
Speaker 1: doing it now for long. Where'd you get the name Endeavor?
Speaker 1: So the four of us were sitting around trying to
Speaker 1: think of a name, Rocks, rivers, whatever, and one of
Speaker 1: the partners, UH said, well, we should think about NASA.
Speaker 1: They have great names. So the first name we thought
Speaker 1: of was the Discovery and then we realized it crashed,
Speaker 1: so that was out. And then he just says, what
Speaker 1: about Endeavor, which was and we all realized that was
Speaker 1: a great kind of image of what we wanted to
Speaker 1: create for clients. And so did you start Endeavor? Actually
Speaker 1: on my birthday? March went very well from the beginning
Speaker 1: because you had clients, but you bought William Morris correct
Speaker 1: or you emerged with them quote unquote merge, but they
Speaker 1: were twice as big as you and you became the CEO.
Speaker 1: How did that happen? About four years before that, we
Speaker 1: went to see another kind of mentor a person who
Speaker 1: has completely been unbelievable in helping my life, Professor Ditton,
Speaker 1: who became the chairman of Harvard Business School, and we
Speaker 1: asked him to kind of let's go over and I've
Speaker 1: never been to Busines School like game theory of what
Speaker 1: we should do to grow and kind of consolidated business
Speaker 1: with the thesis that distribution is going to change the environment.
Speaker 1: And we laid out over two days on a white
Speaker 1: board that we should go after William Morris and try
Speaker 1: and merge by whatever. So you emerge accompt any. You
Speaker 1: become the socio and then you started. I was Patrick White,
Speaker 1: my partner who start partner, and I became the CEOs.
Speaker 1: Now you are starting to buy companies. So you bought
Speaker 1: i MG, which is a entertainment there's a sports representation business, right,
Speaker 1: it's a sports production events company, all right. You bought that,
Speaker 1: and then later you bought you That's where you and
Speaker 1: I met, right, that's right, and you and then bought UFC.
Speaker 1: Later well, we then bought um PBR. We brought Drove
Speaker 1: A five prior to that. We then bought the UFC
Speaker 1: and bought some other stuff. You bought UFC, and you
Speaker 1: did it with the help of silver Lake, a well
Speaker 1: known private equity firm, and um the CEO there help
Speaker 1: you get this done. Yeah, I mean, what what happened
Speaker 1: was I was lining up people to go by i MG.
Speaker 1: You and I had that conversation and he came in.
Speaker 1: He said, listen, let me invest in William Morris's endeavor
Speaker 1: and then let's go after img UM and kind of
Speaker 1: create this global platform and go from there. I said
Speaker 1: to him, private equity is not going to be able
Speaker 1: to do that. He said, well, give me three weeks
Speaker 1: to show me your numbers and I'll come back and
Speaker 1: if I can make a deal, I can make a deal.
Speaker 1: And he and I known each other actually through Mark Andreas,
Speaker 1: and he came up. We made a great deal, great
Speaker 1: for him, great for us. Uh. We then got I
Speaker 1: MG and then we realized that that was everything we
Speaker 1: had done was incredible, global, unbelievable kind of building blocks.
Speaker 1: And we realized that was in the representation business, the
Speaker 1: service business, and that we if we put something that
Speaker 1: we owned on top of it, that we could get
Speaker 1: the full leverage of the platform and own something. And
Speaker 1: I had represented the UFC for a number of years
Speaker 1: New Dana, New Frank and Lorenzo, and then they were
Speaker 1: going to sell it. And then we we had proven
Speaker 1: also to Egan that we could buy a business and
Speaker 1: own it and operated with Professor Simble writing and then
Speaker 1: we we we we were it was us against some
Speaker 1: Chinese investors at the time we secured the rights, and
Speaker 1: here we are. For many people. You're a role model
Speaker 1: and many people would like to have your lifestyle and
Speaker 1: your life. What would you like to have as your
Speaker 1: legacy fifty years from now? What do you want people
Speaker 1: to say about Ari Emmanuel? I think legacy is um
Speaker 1: is such a fallacy. You study presidents. Presidents have a legacy.
Speaker 1: I think maybe sports stars have a legacy. Some actors
Speaker 1: have a legacy. Very rarely do business people. Maybe inventors
Speaker 1: that are business people. Steve Jobs will probably have one,
Speaker 1: Elon Musk will have one, Einstein will have one. But
Speaker 1: business people, I'm not this This notion of a legacy
Speaker 1: and I did I have gotten in trouble about this
Speaker 1: is a complete eat an utter, wanting to live forever
Speaker 1: fallacy that exists in business minds. I suppose somebody is
Speaker 1: watching and says, I want to be ariaman you when
Speaker 1: I grow up. What should somebody do to get into
Speaker 1: the talent agency business or the business you're in, which
Speaker 1: is representing people building companies in the sports and entertainment world. Well,
Speaker 1: it's hopefully what I've taught my kids. You gotta be
Speaker 1: intellectually curious. You've gotta be um. You gotta show up.
Speaker 1: And you know this like I know this. I got
Speaker 1: on a lot of planes. You just, even though that
Speaker 1: voice in your head is saying, oh God, I'm so tired,
Speaker 1: I don't want to do this. You gotta show up.
Speaker 1: You've gotta be um, charmingly, relentless. You have to build
Speaker 1: emotional endurance because there's no straight line of success. It's
Speaker 1: kind of all over place, and you have to just
Speaker 1: be able to work through those things. Um. And then
Speaker 1: I think one of the things that I do every
Speaker 1: week is I try to create serendipity. So ariy Emmanuel
Speaker 1: is a well known person in the entertainment world, but
Speaker 1: there was another figure named ari Gold, Yeah, who was
Speaker 1: a fictional character that many people thought was named after you.
Speaker 1: Did you like that? Did you not like that? And
Speaker 1: what is it like when you're more famous than your clients. Well,
Speaker 1: here's what I would say. At the time of the
Speaker 1: show and market Wahlberg is a client of mine, and
Speaker 1: I helped put that show together. I didn't like it
Speaker 1: at the beginning because it depicted me. There was some
Speaker 1: things that were for sure not true, and then there
Speaker 1: were some things that I hated seeing that were true,
Speaker 1: I'm not that same person anymore. But later on, especially
Speaker 1: after COVID, a lot of people kept on seeing it.
Speaker 1: It's it's for sure opened a lot of doors and
Speaker 1: it And at the time at the end, my brother
Speaker 1: was in the White House, the show was on the air.
Speaker 1: I mean, I got a lot of you know, people
Speaker 1: would pick up my phone. Call anybody today that won't
Speaker 1: return your phone calls. I there's nobody in the world.
Speaker 1: I get a lot of people on the phone when
Speaker 1: I need to. So the entertainment world today, you're pretty
Speaker 1: much at the top of the totem pole. You know everybody.
Speaker 1: You have one of the best companies under you. You're
Speaker 1: the CEO of it. How many more years would you
Speaker 1: like to do this? Well, here's what I'd say to you, is, um,
Speaker 1: if I'm not happy, if I'm not still intellectually stimulated,
Speaker 1: if I'm not feeling like I get up every morning
Speaker 1: and I get up right and early every morning, I
Speaker 1: want to do what I do every day and and
Speaker 1: kind of do it and I'm bored of it, I
Speaker 1: will not be doing it. But today you're pretty happy,
Speaker 1: and you're not bored. Today, I'm really happy I built
Speaker 1: everything that I want to build it. There's more things
Speaker 1: I want to do, and there's more dreams I have.
Speaker 1: And you're famous for being a fitness expert or this
Speaker 1: is the Men's Health version of this interview. Yes, I
Speaker 1: can learn. I can learn something. So when did you
Speaker 1: decide to become so fit? And were you always just
Speaker 1: I was I've always been this way. You get up
Speaker 1: and then you go right there the gym. I have
Speaker 1: a certain beginning routine of as you know, vitamins and
Speaker 1: certain things I do. In the morning, I go to
Speaker 1: the gym. It's about an hour and forty five minutes
Speaker 1: two hours in my house, I have a sauna and
Speaker 1: I have a nice bath. I then do a sauna
Speaker 1: and I meditate. But what about eating, I mean you eat,
Speaker 1: You're very careful what you you're not eating vegan? Um
Speaker 1: actually tweaked that a little bit because I do have
Speaker 1: to being sixty one. I do eat a little bit
Speaker 1: of meat now. Once a quarter I do an extended fast,
Speaker 1: which is probably anywhere from seventy to sixty to seventy
Speaker 1: two hours. And then every week I do want a
Speaker 1: daily fast and then I eat in a in a
Speaker 1: six to four our window every other day, and has
Speaker 1: anybody told you this is a little unusual to do this, Well,
Speaker 1: you could. You can imagine there's other craziness inside this
Speaker 1: which I will not go into. You can imagine the conversations.
Speaker 1: So about five years ago, my brother Zeke, who's famous
Speaker 1: for saying that he wants to die at said, you'll
Speaker 1: live an hour longer. I said, if I live an
Speaker 1: hour longer, then you never know what's going to happen
Speaker 1: in that hour. It's not about living. It's only about
Speaker 1: being healthy, both emotionally and physically, for the for as
Speaker 1: long as you live. Thanks for listening to hear more
Speaker 1: of my interviews. You can subscribe and download my podcast
Speaker 1: on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen.