Part 1 With Ari Emanuel and Mark Shapiro: AI, Live Events, and the Four-Day Work Week

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1:37Including equalizers, voles, headers. Every goal is worth more on FanDuel. So let there be goals. New customers get up to$1 ,000 and bet reset tokens when you bet$5 daily. 21 plus and present in select states. Opt-in required. Refund issue does not withdraw, but bonus bets that expire seven days after receipt. Minimum$5 wager required for five consecutive days. Max refund$200 per day. Restrictions apply, including token expiration. See full terms at Vanduul.com slash sportsbook. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESET. It is Thursday, October 9th. It's been 30 years now since Ari Emanuel and a group of talent agents from ICM defected to form Endeavor.

2:15And since then, Ari has become one of the most important figures in the entertainment business. Ari and his crew grew Endeavor to the point where it swallowed the much larger William Morris Agency, which kicked off a decade or so of buying smaller agencies, the IMG fashion and events empire, eventually the UFC and WWE. But when Ari and his partner Patrick Weitzel took Endeavor public in 2021, the market didn't really like what it saw. Many, many assets, no cohesive story to tell. And since then, it's been seemingly one corporate maneuver after another, splitting the sports group into a new company, TKO, and with the help of investor Silver Lake, taking the talent agency and other assets private as WME Group.

2:59Then just this week, Ari and his business partner, Mark Shapiro, they announced yet another new company called Mari. Yes, it's a combination of their first names, which will house a bunch of sports stuff like the Madrid Open and events assets like the Freeze Art Fair. Those were once part of Endeavor. So it's basically transferring them over to a new company that Ari will control and be off on his merry way to do what he wants. And to do so, they've raised about$2 billion from Apollo, Redbird, the Qataris, a bunch of others. And oh, on top of that, Ari just launched a podcast with a music manager friend called Rushmore about the greatest people in all aspects of culture and sports.

3:39It's so much that it got me wondering what Ari prioritizes on a day-to-day basis these days, besides, of course, calling people constantly and swearing at them on the phone. After all, he's got his fingers in so much stuff, from advising everyone from David Ellison to Tyler Perry to talent deals like the recent South Park re-up at Paramount to the seven-year,$7.7 billion deal for UFC rights at CBS, which came after Netflix picked up WWE for$5 billion over 10 years. Now he's back managing all those events assets and looking for other stuff to buy. Well past time for Ari to come on the town, so I asked him and Mark Shapiro to make some time, and they are here today.

4:17I should note that WME, the agency, they represent Puck where I work, but it doesn't represent me personally. Today, it's the second act for Ari Emanuel and what he and Mark Shapiro have planned for the new company. From The Ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Bellany, and this is The Town.

4:37Okay, we are here with Ari Emanuel and Mark Shapiro. Honestly, Ari, normally I say what the title is of the person on the show. I have no idea what your titles are. Give us your titles.

4:49Mark Shapiro:I'm the chairman and CEO of TKO. Okay. And the founder of William Morris. No, you're not the founder of William Morris. You are the founder of - William Morris Endeavor. William Morris Endeavor. Yeah. And Mari, Ari. Oh, yeah. What is this Mari company? What is your title there? Now you know I'm here, right? Now you know I'm here. Mark, tell us what Ari's title is. Ari is the principal investor and the founder of Mari and he's the one that went out and raised$2.1 billion. Okay, great. Mark, you have been on the show. Welcome back. You are a returning champion. Ari has not been on the show. Honestly, I kind of want listeners of the town to get the full Ari experience.

5:30So feel free to...

5:31Mark Shapiro:You want a couple four-letter words thrown in there every once in a while. Feel free to tell me to fuck off a couple times. Okay, no problem. Just a couple times. It's not going to be very difficult for me to do. And you're a piece of shit for wearing a fucking Dodger hat, okay? Okay, there we go. All right, let's start. You are a sports mogul now, sports media mogul. You still have your big deals you do in the talent world. I'm talking to Ari now. You're basically like, kind of like an investment banker in that sense. Why do you want to go back and own Art Fairs and a car auction company and all the things that you are doing now with this Mari company?

6:06I don't know. I'm intellectually curious.

6:10Mark Shapiro:and kind of entertainment. People would say obsessive. On a grander scale. I bought the majority of the assets, identified them with Mark and other people, the majority of the assets that we acquired. And I looked at the world and I said, I don't know anything about AI. I can invest a little bit in AI and I've invested with Elon Musk and people. And I don't know about data centers and all that other stuff. But what I do know is, and when you started looking at the data you know we're down to four-day work week probably for full employment government will require three-day work weeks that means there's gonna be a lot more free time live ai can't disintermediate and if it can't disintermediate and i know how to mark and i and the team that mark's built we know how to operate these things better than anybody we had some we we had some of the best assets i think in the world our tennis assets freeze barrett jackson our taste festivals um our participatory sports and i looked at all the data drive times on average in the united states are for work are 11 to 4 hotel bookings are up at on thursday night you just keep on looking at all the data you realize wait a second that the marketplace is shifting And so there's Live Nation, there's TKO and other kind of sports, NFL, NBA, et cetera, and NASCAR, et cetera.

7:36Mark Shapiro:But there's nobody in the space of live events that are an aggregator on a global space. And so Mark and I started talking. I said, I'm going to go raise a bunch of money on this concept. And then if I can raise the money, I want to buy some foundational assets that we had at Endeavor that Silver Lake was selling to take down the debt. And we went out with this formula that I'm talking about, and people thought we were right and went from there. Yeah. I want to add to that, Matt. Sure. Because I think his last point is such an important one. As soon as Silver Lake told us, hey, here's the plan.

8:19We're going to go WME Group, which is going to be pure play representation. you're jumping over the fact where they said going public didn't work well yes it didn't work it didn't work let me just say something for whatever reason from my perspective we sold our

8:35Mark Shapiro:academy for a billion two we sold the production company for a billion dollars we moved ufc out and merged it with the wwe and tko has doubled in value at that at that point then caa gets a $7 billion investment from Keering. We have in the... No, they got a$7 billion valuation based on that. Wait, and we were only getting at Endeavor the value of our majority ownership of TKO. And we kept on operating, kept on operating, tried to simplify the story. We weren't getting any credit. And finally, we all looked at each other. It's like, whatever, this wasn't working. Yeah, and Mari was past that, though.

9:22That's why. I mean, Mari was, we're already post that, right? So we've already made the decision, hey, we're going private with pure play representation and TKO will be a pure play sports public. It was at that time they said, what will be left are all these events that have been collected from Mark McCormick starting them, Teddy Forrestman adding on, and then obviously Ari and me adding to that. And Ari was like, over my dead body, are you doing that? I found most of these. I acquired most of these, especially the big ones. Mark and I grew these. So I'm going to be a bidder. And they're like, look, we're not going to do you any favors, just to be clear.

9:58Like there's no tie goes to the runner here. You're going to get into the process and you have to beat everybody. So Ari went out and just did a massive race. All right. Interesting you premise this on the idea of the work week being cut down to four days a week.

10:15Mark Shapiro:I know, Matt, you were seven days a week. of course but I'm not let me just tell you something I work a lot you do yeah and you work at four in the morning which I don't work as Shapiro but I work a lot but you know other people don't and it's not all just it's not all hosing down Elon Musk on a yacht you do other things oh you had to bring that up okay keep on going no but this is premised on the idea that the work week is changing which I think is super interesting except for the fact that Most of these, not most, but a lot of these companies now are requiring five days in the office. It's not happening.

10:54It's not happening.

10:55Mark Shapiro:No, you can require it and do whatever you want to do. You just look at the data and you look at the data and it's not there. Like now, maybe if you're in manufacturing, right, you have to build something. Those people are in there. Paramount Global, Paramount Skydance is requiring five days of work. Okay, we'll see. Yeah, that's new. We'll see how that does. It's financial institutions and to Ari's point, manufacturing. that are proving the model. Everybody else is into three, four days. And we're excited to see Peace Guy and a few others, Comcast ramp it up. Yeah. There was an article three weeks ago in Wall Street Journal.

11:30Yeah, I think it was like Denmark or I don't remember. Like the government said, work week is four days.

11:37Mark Shapiro:That is happening. It's going to happen around the globe. You're going to have more efficiency with AI. It's happening. Okay. So you believe that this new company is uniquely poised to take advantage of that shift in the culture. Why haven't you guys gone after music more heavily? Do you just think that Live Nation has that monopoly? I know they don't like the M word. Michael Rapinoe and AEG have that locked in. Yeah, it's really tough to go. I mean, you could be a witness in the antitrust case against those companies because you would seem like the perfect person to challenge those two companies.

12:12and you are throwing up your hands in music. I'm not throwing up my hands.

12:17Mark Shapiro:There's plenty of work to do. We have plenty of targets and plenty of work to do as it relates. Now, I just want to point out, you know, people say, well, how are you going to manage your time? Mark and I used to manage these things inside Endeavor. It's not like, oh, it's all new. Like we used to run these businesses when it was Endeavor. We ran the agency. We ran these things. We ran UFC. Now UFC is with TKO. So it's like we have done this before And we're bringing all of our team's operators in to run them. Now, I know, but I think it's a fair question to ask you what your day is going to be like.

12:53I know you do 500 phone calls a day still, but these are real businesses and you are atop a lot of them. And I mean, do you still consider yourself even an agent anymore?

13:04Mark Shapiro:Well, I had this morning, I had Simon Powell. I had Dwayne Johnson. I had a situation with Pete Berg I'm in the middle of something because he's shooting his movie now with Jonah Hill yeah I mean yes I do that business successfully I think I'm successful at it you pop in when it requires your attention or where it's a client I don't know what you mean by pop in I'm on my client's business meaning no like Dwayne Johnson Brad Slater is his day to day agent I'm not sitting there reading the next script that Dwayne Johnson is doing and saying you know I'm page 32 too. That's what I mean. But when shit hits the fan on the Moana negotiation, you make a call.

13:45Correct.

13:46Mark Shapiro:However, Simon Kyle just asked me, what do you think about this ending for my new show at Netflix? And we went through it and we had a really big conversation. And then we went over the marketing campaign and I got a call into Bella and I'm doing that. No, I think you're, Matt, I think you're spot on with that. I mean, he was doing a lot of what you're saying, even in the last iteration. He wasn't day-to-day on a lot of folks. Right now, just from certainly where I sit, he's obviously all over TKO as the chairman and CEO. At WME Group, he's where he needs to be. And Mark doesn't like that that much.

14:18Mark doesn't like that much. I love it. What does that mean? I mean, there's only so many rights negotiations to be done. I mean, what does day-to-day on TKO mean? Let's go through this. Do you know how we make money? I do. You have a$7.7 billion deal.

14:34Mark Shapiro:We make money on international deals. We make money on domestic deals. We make money on sponsorship. We make money on site fees, right? In addition to that, launch, starting our boxing business. Well, ticket sales, consumer products. I mean, there's a multiple. I thought it was mostly whatever Dana White is up at the casino that week. That's most of your profit. Well, fortunately, we don't play with that because there are days where he's down. so that doesn't factor into our balance sheet. No, I've heard he only wins. I've heard he only wins. We're doing$300 million a year just at UFC on partnerships.

15:08That's a lot of hand-to-hand combat. That's a lot of C-suite meetings. So Ari's obviously on that as well. But on the WME front, he leans in where he has to lean in. Like if he thinks he can add value or to your point, put out fires or sign somebody or chase another agent we might want to bring over, he'll do it. But he's not hourly on WME. anymore. He's raising money.

15:31Mark Shapiro:He's Mari's TKO. You want notes on the next script on page 32? You want notes? For his second season of the studio, I think we should do that. We should give him notes.

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16:19Adobe Firefly is the all-in-one creative studio with AI-powered image and video editing for today's creative process. Built for creators of every kind, Firefly helps you generate, edit, and experiment fast. Because the asks aren't getting smaller, the budgets aren't getting bigger, and the timelines, oh yeah, still tight. With all the best creative AI models in one place, Firefly brings your ideas to life. Unlock a better way to make with Adobe Firefly. Ari, how many clients consider you their primary agent? Probably 25. Okay. That's a lot.

16:58Mark Shapiro:I mean, from Joe Scarborough, Caitlin Collins, to Marty Scorsese, to Jonah Hill, to Mark, to Pete. I mean, it just goes on. Wahlberg. Yeah. Tyler Perry. I'm just thinking about it. Yeah, it's 25. Okay. When you identify someone who's out there who you don't believe is being represented well, what is your opening line to them? What is the Ari Emanuel pitch? It depends on the situation. Do you still cold call? Yeah, I just signed Noah Hawley. Great. Greater Fargo as Alien. Yeah, with Ari Greenberg and Robert Newman and Esther. Oh, that's why I saw him at your agency's Emmy party. So, you know, I didn't think they were positioning well at Disney.

17:48Mark Shapiro:And then, God forbid, a Disney situation doesn't work, which everybody hopes that it does because he has so many shows there. where we're going at the highest level for him at other studios. Okay. And you said, you called him and said, I think you're underrepresented. What's going on here? What is Joe Cohen doing for you? How about at his prior agency? They weren't even introducing him to, that he has one of the most important shows, multiple shows at Disney. I mean, he had not had a meeting with Bob Iger. It's insane. Simple. That's, I mean, that's just one-on-one. and he's one of the best writers ever.

18:26Mark Shapiro:I've been calling him since Fargo every season. It's an incredible show. Oh, you have. So you still do that. You still cold call people you like and say, when are we meeting? What are you doing? Yeah, I'm about to do it on a show I just saw that I love. He was glad-handing last weekend when we went to the Smashing Machine premiere. He was in the red carpet line, shaking hands, telling me about the good old days on how he signed people doing just that. That's really funny. What do you think of the agency business right now? There's three major players outside of music. Everyone's trimming. AI is coming.

19:03Where are the opportunities in the agency business? Well, my belief is the following. First of all, there's not three agencies.