Ari Emanuel: the tenacious super agent disrupting Hollywood

Back in 1997, when Ari Emanuel was just two years into building a talent business that would disrupt the US entertainment industry, he persuaded Vince McMahon, the professional wrestling impresario, to make time for a breakfast meeting.

At the time, the WWE founder “didn’t have to do that; everybody was chasing him”, Emanuel recalls. But McMahon was sold on the tenacious young Emanuel, and hired him to be his agent.

This week, Emanuel sealed a $21bn deal to acquire the WWE from McMahon and combine it with the mixed martial arts business UFC to create a combat-entertainment juggernaut. It is the latest bold transaction for Emanuel, who has worked his way up from the mailroom at the CAA talent agency to become one of the most powerful people in Hollywood.

“Years later, I get to be [McMahon’s] partner. For a kid from Chicago, my father was an immigrant, it’s pretty unbelievable actually,” Emanuel, 62, told the Financial Times in an interview about the deal on Monday.

When Emanuel co-founded the talent agency Endeavor in 1995, he worked out of a small office above a hamburger restaurant in South Beverly Hills. But he had big aspirations to take on the establishment that dominated the entertainment industry.

An aggressive dealmaker, he merged Endeavor with rival William Morris, acquired sports media group IMG and Ultimate Fighting Championship, along with about 20 more transactions.

The deals expanded Endeavor into an entertainment giant with 11,000 employees across the world, and a client roster that included heavyweights Oprah Winfrey and Martin Scorsese. They also propelled Emanuel into the ranks of Hollywood’s ruling executives along with Disney’s Bob Iger and Warner Bros Discovery’s David Zaslav.

As a child Emanuel was diagnosed with dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and displayed a hyperactivity that translated into a talent for dealmaking. He was constantly scheming, selling slices of his mother’s homemade cheesecake from his lunchbox to the highest bidder at school. Emanuel also started a lawn-mowing business, paying his friends $3 to do the physical labour, charging customers $5 and pocketing the difference.

“Ari really could not help but be annoying”, wrote his older brother Ezekiel, who is an oncologist and was an adviser to the Obama and Biden administrations, in a 2013 memoir. “He was always awake by five am. Jittery and anxious, he could not stay in bed, and he would prowl around the house looking for something to occupy his mind.”

Nowadays, the Endeavor chief is known for relentless ambition and a foul-mouthed temper that inspired the frenetic Ari Gold character in the HBO series Entourage. People who have worked with him describe him as indefatigable, endlessly knocking on doors and calling people.

“He’s now referred to as a Hollywood mogul. Not an agent, a Hollywood mogul. He almost willed that into reality,” said a media executive.

Emanuel’s WWE deal is a colossal bet that live events and sports will continue to capture the wallets of viewers and broadcasters. “It’s very rare, when a global iconic brand becomes available,” he said. “And when it does, you have to say yes.”

The company’s share price fell about 6 per cent after the deal was announced on Monday. But Emanuel has a history of outlasting his doubters.

In 2019 he attempted to take Endeavor public, but pulled the plug after failing to reach the valuation he sought. The rare failure fuelled chatter that the audacious Hollywood agent was not cut out to run a public company.

Less than two years later, Endeavor bolstered its initial public offering by buying out UFC’s minority owners and got the float done. Emanuel was awarded shares that translated into a $308mn pay package for 2021.

Emanuel is also known for a health obsession that includes a strict vegan diet, rising before sunrise, and daily ice baths for “mental fortitude”. A photograph last summer of the svelte Emanuel with Elon Musk, while both were on a yacht wearing swimsuits, was a “helpful motivation to lose weight”, the Tesla chief executive has said.

A third Emanuel brother has racked up an equally impressive resume, but in politics rather than entertainment. Rahm served as ex-president Barack Obama’s White House chief of staff and mayor of Chicago and is now US ambassador to Japan.

Ari occasionally wades into hot topics, writing an FT editorial that called out rapper Kanye West for antisemitic comments. In 2018, Endeavor returned $400mn to Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund following the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. “You have to have some morals,” Emanuel told the New Yorker magazine.

The latest deal brings Emanuel back into the Saudi orbit. WWE has a 10-year deal with Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority to bring events to the country.

And McMahon is a controversial figure. The gruff-voiced executive retired last year after allegations of sexual misconduct. A board investigation found McMahon had agreed to millions of dollars in settlements that should have been recorded as expenses. The 77-year-old then returned in January as executive chair.

When asked by the FT if he had any concerns about partnering with McMahon, Emanuel said: “Not one.”

“Take all the craziness away . . . I believe in due process. There was an investigation. There was no wrongdoing found,” he said. “So we move on.”