Channeling Rage, Rolling Calls & Building an Entertainment Empire | Ari Emanuel, WME & TKO

David Senra (0:02)

This is like a caged tiger.

Ari Emanuel (0:04)

No, I thought you were having a conversation, because I'd rather just have a conversation than like... Okay, go. So Dana told you the story about Philippe Dumont, Phil.

David Senra (0:15)

Let me back this up. We were just talking. The funniest story anybody's told in the podcast so far is Dana White. And he goes, let me tell you about this guy named Philippe Dumont. And he goes, his name is Phil Duman.

SPEAKER_3 (0:25)

He's from fucking Jersey.

David Senra (0:26)

And then you're like, that was a funny meeting.

Ari Emanuel (0:28)

So the UFC has taken off on Spike, right? Our term is up. This is when we had the reality show and had some fight nights. And so we call a meeting. I'm now representing them. It's Dana Lorenzo Fittita, myself, the head of Spike at the time, and Phil and I think one other person, his other co-CEO, whatever.

And we're pitching in that you got to consider it a sport. It's not a reality show, et cetera. He goes, I knew this was bad. He goes, we made you. If you leave, we'll get somebody else and we'll replace you. And Dana and Lorenzo, I just saw, like, knowing them at that point for about three years, they were just like ready to explode. And it was really getting heated. And you don't insult somebody from what they created, as if you can just recreate Dana White. Impossible. And what Lorenzo put into their heart and soul that they put into it.

So the meeting ends. And I call them, like, what are you doing? Like, this is an easy ask we asked for. It was like we're doubling it. It is a sport. It was like their highest rated thing.

I represented the WW. We had moved it back to USA coming off of that. That's when the lawsuit happened with Barry Diller. When we moved it off USA and he didn't get mad, but he was boiling. And I know Dana Lee Boyles. It's like, oh, you want to get competitive with me on a sport that I know and what we've done. You think somebody can replace me? And that's what the offensive thing was. This guy had no idea what he was doing. He couldn't start anything. He destroyed that company, destroyed it. He let everything go that was of value and just bought bad stock and bought it back from, I think, $80 all the way down. He made a lot of money. So, yeah, we just moved, made the deal at Fox. Incredible deal at the time. The funny thing is, after we made the Fox deal, and that deal was coming up, and then the world, which is in the book, the world blew up. We thought Fox had to make the deal just because they own these things, the RSN, the local station group, and how much play the UFC had on it, and what it was doing for the network. They were going to have to make it. Look, you know, Rupert then sells that business to Disney. There's no need economically. They're on pause until that deal goes through.

President Trump slows down the AT&T deal, so that went away.

Comcast didn't want it. They had all the sports they wanted.

David Senra (3:09)

You're talking about now, this is after you bought the UFC.

Ari Emanuel (3:11)

This is like four years after we moved to the UFC.

David Senra (3:14)

Let's give some background. You signed Dana, but then later on, you and Egon Durban buy the UFC for $4.2 billion. And everybody's telling you, it's like, oh, these guys, they're fucking idiots. They don't know what they're doing. They're overpaid. And then in the book, you talk about the story of trying to sell the rights after the Fox thing.

Ari Emanuel (3:32)

We buy IMG.

This is a 2.4 billion. And the thing about my life is I love puzzles. And my phone is a way to kind of put the pieces in place. I'm going to go way back if you don't mind. Let's go. So I start this company, Rain, with Joe Ravitch and Jeff Sein, this merchant bank. I'm raising money for them. I fly to Abu Dhabi. I get $100 million out of my friends in UAE. I read this article from Mark Andreessen. This is going to be way back.

He comes to see me, we're just creating serendipity, what you do in your life and people that are successful, I think they do. They just have relationships and they figure out how they fit into your life in a good way. I asked him in that first meeting I meet him, one, what he does, but two, I'd like him to put money into Rain. We're raising a fund in the merchant bank. He says, I'll do it. I'll do it with this guy, Egon Durban and Nikesh, who was working at the time at Google.