Over much of the past three decades ive been an investor. And then i made the highest call of mankind and i got involved in private equity. Then i started interviewing. I learned in my interviews how the leaders make it to the top. I ask him how much he wanted and he said to 50 and i did not negotiate. I did no due diligence. David Ariel Emanuel is one of the most important figures in the entertainment history. In the mid1990s, he started endeavor and it represents among others, martin scorsese. Today he his built endeavor into one of the leading sports conglomerates of the world. I sat down to discuss the future of the industry with him. You were a talent agent for much of your career and now you are running a multinational multibilliondollar Sports Entertainment conglomerate. What is it like running a multinational Sports Company that is public. As opposed to a town agent . Ariel it is natural but it is different. Its bigger than everything i ever dreamed of. I still do a lot of work with clients on the talent side, whether it be writers, directors, etc. Then there is the portion where you are dealing with investors and how to grow the business, where you want to go. A great Training Ground has been found because you have to build a business for your client. You have to make sure they are happy and now, i am doing all about us doing stuff for the company and making sure the shareholders are happy. David you have Quarterly Earnings now. That is a pain some people would say. Ariel i do not really find it a pain. I dont know why. I guess john donahoe from nike said to me, when the earnings are good it is an easy process. And they have been good for five quarters now. Right now i feel good about the process. We will see may be, i dont know where the future looks, but i have not experience the downside of that conversation. David talk about the future of the entertainment business. Where do you think it is going . Do you think there will be movie theaters forever or everything will be streamed at some point . As someone who represents talent and are you telling talent about where they should put their efforts. Ariel when we started in 1995 everybody said there will be no more dramas or television. Here is what i would say. Distribution will change and it will expand. There will be new technology coming to our business. From movies to dvds, it keeps on expanding and that we have digital and influencers and so on. The theatrical business is as port as it has ever been. It made not be as much a been income earning business, but it is not going away. Anybody that says to you, i will not name names that the movie business is over are fools. The movie business is not over , television is not over. We have new vertical the content on gambling, social content. It is just an expanding world. I think as everybody is now on the demand side of the business fighting over distribution and content. I have made a decision and we have made a decision as a company to be on the supply side. There are very few suppliers. In the end, the brands we own whether it be the ufc, all the others and the clients we represent we help them become brands and companies they will be more valuable in the future than less valuable because as distribution expands, you have a supply side of the equation. There are very few suppliers. Economics improves. David during covid, the production of tv shows and movies kind of went down to almost nothing. What did a firm like yours do because you did not have a lot of representation you could do . Ariel in the first three months most firms cut costs and cut people, and we put people on hiatus. It was a horrible time. The funny thing is, by the end we had started working through it on the representation side. We did about 75 of our economics even during covid. We figured it out on pvr at the time and usc pvr was actually the first sport back. And we figure that out without with testing and so on. And dano was quickly behind that. Dana calls me up and said get me an island. Im going to put on fights. He was like we are going. No one is getting laid off. He is an incredible executive. I said, ok, i didnt know what to do. That as you know, because i have seen you in other dowdy. How dune called me and he said, there was rumors about this and he says why dont you come here . We will give you an island and we will figure out economics. I called up dana and said here is the situation and the economics. He goes we are going. We set up in abu dhabi and it is famous now. It really catapulted the sport in this horrible time. We set up fight island. In that quote edge and and that whole engine that dana runs, danas force of nature we put the sport up on its feet and we flew everybody out and tested him. With that the fights on. It was crazy. David you are one of three very famous brothers. Your oldest brother is a wellknown medical doctor on tv a lot for his views on health care. Rahm emanuel is now our ambassador to japan and previously chief of staff to president obama and mayor of chicago. You are the youngest of three brothers, is that right . And as my father would say the picture. David that is a yiddish for small. What is it that your parents did that produced three talented children that are in different areas of life but the have all done well. Ariel first of all, i would say when we were growing up one of the things i try to do with my kids, i have four children, they let us figure stuff out. They did not program as every hour with what we were doing. You had to fend for yourself and figure things out and the other thing apparent did was education was crucial. If you did not perform then there was punishment. You would be grounded, you know, and there was competition. Of who got the better grade between kids. With those two things, and my father was a workaholic, he was a pediatrician. You kind of we went around with him when he went on rallies. Im a mothers side, she was a woman that went against the grain in the summers of chicago and was very prominent in civil rights which in that period of time nobody believe that in chicago. So you saw two people that were willing to go out and be themselves, let us be ourselves, and then it gave us some pretty good guardrails. David have you achieved what you achieved despite two problems that some might say were difficult. One was when you were growing up you were dyslexic and you still have some dyslexia. And you have attention Deficit Disorder which some people have as well. Ariel some people say have definitely not gotten over that. [laughter] david how do you overcome those . Are there still challenges for you . Ariel when i was growing up, i had my mother and she made sure that i was going to graduate high school, i was going to go to college, and i was going to learn how to read. The good thing about it is, i think it is a superpower now, back then i hated it. I remember crying every day where i had to go and sit in the front window every day with my adhd teacher. But now, because of the diversity of my business the adhd enables me to move around and focus a lot on specific businesses. Dyslexia for whatever reason many people have different points of view on dyslexia it does enable me to think in a different way. One of the things that happens when youre dyslexic is you utilize a lot of people around you to help you learn. In business, that is translated to making sure that you trust a lot of people. I am not afraid of a risk because i was made i went through a lot of tough times reading and embarrassment. Nothing now kind of shakes me up. When you are running a company, when you empower a lot of people to get to the end goal which is what you have to do when you are dyslexic, you are more successful. Those are now attributes and powerful things in my life. David how did you end up going to Mcallister School which is good but not as wellknown as some other schools. Ariel i applied to amherst but i did not get in. I got deferred from bowden and mcallister accepted me. David later after you graduated you became a professional racquetball player for a while . Ariel ive played racquetball for a year and a half. David is that an easy way to make money . Ariel no, i was goin to go to Business School go to northwestern. And i realized i did not want to do that. I turned to my father who went to school in europe, and this is what is so great about my father when he was alive, he said here is a credit card and here is some cash. No plan, two days later i was in paris. He called me up about eight months to one year later and he said it is time to come home. And i came home and packed up my are car in minnesota and moved to new york. A friend of mine at the time was working in the mailroom with William Morris. He explained to me what William Morris was and i did not know the agent or what that is. David it was a major Talent Agency. Ariel and then i went to work in new york and got a job working for this gentleman, an older kind of wellestablished agent by the name of robbie lance. He finally turned to me and he was such a wonderful man. He said to me i am 84, im not going to promote anybody. You should go to los angeles and you will make a lot of money and new will be an agent they. Because i am not going to promote anybody. He got me an interview, and he said to me, he cannot say now, you are too old. So i did what i normally do, i peppered him with calls. I think i called him like three times a day every day for two weeks. He turned to me at the time and he was a great man. He said on thursday if you can be out here monday, we will put you in the mailroom. I got out there, i bought a used car for 1500 or something and i was in the mailroom and everybody was younger. I was off to the races. David explain this to me i have often read that many people work in the mailroom, what actually happens in the mailroom with the Talent Agency firms that enables you to rise up . Ariel you would make copies of scripts, you would drive the scripts around to clients or studio heads. And you deliver paperwork everywhere. You get lunches and then you become an assistant and then you become an agent if youre good enough. That process of learning the town and etc. David to be an agent you have to have clients i assume. They get clients, do you have to go to lunches and dinners . How do you get clients when you do not have any clients . Ariel i was promoted in a Television Department because i had worked for the head of business affairs. They had one of the lead agents there and a gentleman named bill haber. I was in the office as their assistant every day for seven days monday through sunday. Doing whatever it took. They were Great Teachers and they promoted me. And you would go to the studios and sets where people were shooting and writers were writing and i was the writer television agent. And then you would read it stuff that came over and tried to sign them. And even though i am dyslexic, i read a lot. Watched a lot of tv shows, saw what i liked and signed a lot of clients that i thought were talented and i think they are still talented and built my business. David how long before you say i should have my own company . Ariel i had been by the time i started endeavor i had been an agent for about 4. 55 years. I was looking at the world and i read this book by George Gilder called life after television and it talked about infinite distribution. That distribution in our business was going to expand with cloud computing. I brought him in to speak at icm and nobody really understood. I talked to him after reading the book and i said you know, its going to go from four networks to six. I amped in the i am in the television business. The way you make money at the time in television you put tv packages on the air. I have a great client list. When i put a package on the air where you can make a lot of money for your clients and yourself and then give it to them for what i thought was an ok salary. Again, my father almost had a heart attack. They offered me a lot to stay when my contract was up. And i can, you know with three other gentlemen we said i said, with my clients, if we do this, we can make a lot of money because i know what i can put on the air because ive been doing it now. David where did you get the name endeavor . Ariel the four of us were trying to sit around think of a name. Rocks, rivers, whatever. One of the partners said we did think about nasa, they have great names. The first name we thought of was discovery then we realized that it crashed. So that was out. Then, he just says what about endeavor . And we all realize that was a great image of what we wanted to create for clients. David what year did you start endeavor . Ariel actually on my birthday, march 29, 1995. David it went well from the beginning because you had clients and then you merged with morris. That was twice as big as you and you became the ceo. How did that happen . Ariel for years before that we went to see another mentor person and that they were unbelievable and helping my life. Professor who became the chairman of harvard Business School. We ask him to lets go over endeavor. This whole game theory of what we should do and kind of consolidate the business with the thesis that distribution will change the environment. We laid out over two days on a whiteboard that we should go by go after William Morris and merge endeavor. Patrick, my partner, and i became the ceo. David now you are starting to buy companies. You bought img which is an entertainment sports representation business. Right . Ariel it is a sports production event company. David you bought that and then later you bought ariel that is where you and i met. David thats right. Then you bought ufc later. Ariel we bought pbr, and then we bought ufc and some other stuff. David you bought ufc and did it with the help of silverlake a wellknown private equity firm. The ceo there helped you get this done . Ariel yeah, what happened was i was lining up people to go by buy img and we had that conversation. He came in and said listen let me invest in wayne Morris William burris and then lets go after img. And then create a Global Platform and go from there. I said to him, private equity is not going to be able to do that. He said give me three weeks and show me your numbers and i will come back and if i can make a deal then i will. He and i knew each other through marketing. He came up and we made a great deal great for him and us. We then got img. Then we realized that was that everything we had done was incredible global unbelievable kind of building blocks. Week realized that we realized we realized that was a representation business the Service Business and that if we put something that we owned on top of it that we could get the full leverage of the platform and own something. I represented ufc for a number of years, new dana and frank lorenzo, they were selling it and then we had proven also to them that we could buy a business and own it and operate it with professional bull riding. And then we were it was us against some chinese investors at the time. We secured the rights and here we are. David for anybody today that will not return your phone calls, i am sure there is nobody in the world. Ariel i get a lot of people on the phone when i need to. David Ariel Emanuel is well known. But there is a person who is a fictional character that many people thought was named after you. Did you like that or not . What is it like when you are more famous than your clients . Ariel i would say at the time of the show, Mark Wahlberg was a client of mine. I helped put the show together, i did not like it at the beginning because it depicted there were some things that were for sure not true and there were some things that i hated seeing that were true. I am not that same person anymore, but later on, especially after covid a lot of people kept, seeing it. It for sure open a lot of doors. At the time, at the end, my brother was in the white house, the show was on the air. I mean, i got a lot of you know people would pick up my phone call. David is there anybody today that will not return your phone calls . I assume there is nobody in the world. Ariel i get a lot of people it on the phone when i need to. David you are at the top of the totem pole. You have one of the best companies under you and you are the ceo of it. How many more years would you like to do this . Ariel here is what i would say is if i am not happy, if i am not still intellectually stimulated, if i am not feeling like i get up every morning and i get up bright and early every morning. Wanting to do what i do every day and kind of do it, and i am bored of it, i will not be doing it. David but today you are pretty happy and not bored . Ariel today i am really happy and i built everything at wanted that i wanted to build. Theres more things i want to do and more dreams i have. David you are famous for being a fitness expert or i guess ariel this is the mens Health Version of his interview. David yes. Ariel [laughter] david i could learn something. When did you decide to be so fit . Were you always this way . Ariel ive always been this way. I have a routine of vitamin than vitamins and certain things that do in the morning. And then i go to the gym it is about an hour 45 minutes or two hours. In my house i have a sauna and then an ice bath and then i do a sauna and i meditate. David what about eating, you are very careful about what you are eating in assume youre not eating hot dogs. Ariel i was big and and i tweaked it a little bit because being 61 i do eat a little bit of meat now. Once a quarter i do an extended fast which is probably anywhere from 6072 hours. And then every week i do a daily fast and then i eat in a 64 hour window every other day. David has anybody told you that this is a little unusual to do this . Ariel you can imagine there is other craziness inside of is that i will not go into. But you can imagine the conversations, about five years ago my brother who is famous for saying he wants to die at 75 said you will live an hour longer. I say if i live an hour longer than you never know what will happen in that hour. It is not all about living it is not only about being healthy emotionally and physically but for that to continue as long as you live. Wow, you get to watch all your favorite stuff. Its to die for. And its all right here. Streaming was never this easy, you know. This is the way. You really went all out didnt you . Um, its called commitment. Could you turn down the volume . Here, you can try. Get