By Joe Flint

"I'm the juice."

That is how Hollywood talent agent and media mogul Ari Emanuel once described himself.

Case in point: He was ringside as usual this past Saturday watching an Ultimate Fighting Championship event in Miami. His seatmates were President Trump, whom he used to represent in "The Apprentice" era, Elon Musk and David Ellison, whose Skydance Media is in the process of acquiring Paramount Global but needs the approval of Trump-appointed FCC Chair Brendan Carr.

Emanuel, 64, who rose to prominence guiding stars such as Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne Johnson to the top, now wants to build a live events business by buying up sporting events and music and art festivals. He is seeking to acquire some of these businesses from the private-equity firm Silver Lake that now controls the very company he helped build, take public, split apart and take private again over the past three decades -- Endeavor Group.

So far, he is in the process of acquiring the Miami and Madrid Open tennis tournaments in a deal valued at more than $1 billion, people familiar with that pact said. Emanuel is also the chief executive of UFC's parent company, TKO, which split from Endeavor in 2023, and is the parent of World Wresting Entertainment. He remains the executive chairman of WME Group, which houses what was the Endeavor talent agency.

"Ari has a fundamental premise that with changes in technology and AI, people's time is going to be freed up and there's going to be more opportunities and demand for live event entertainment," said RedBird Capital Partners' managing partner Gerry Cardinale. RedBird and Apollo Global Management are joining Emanuel in the as-yet-unnamed venture.

A former high-school wrestler, Emanuel seldom misses a big UFC or WWE event, which also often puts him front and center in Trump's universe as both appeal to young men who are fans of the president.

Although Emanuel's proximity to the president and Musk make many in Hollywood's liberal corners cringe, he isn't politically one-sided. He donated nearly $1 million to Kamala Harris's campaign. Last year at the Aspen Ideas Festival panel Emanuel warned of "selfish leaders" who think "they alone can do it." He was criticizing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in particular, but it was an inference about Trump as well.

Many know Emanuel as the inspiration for Jeremy Piven's foul-mouthed bombastic agent character Ari Gold in the hit HBO show "Entourage," which itself was based on Emanuel's relationship with Wahlberg.

Initially, Emanuel tried to downplay any link between him and the fictional character, but after the show took off, he embraced it, never hesitating to tell people he's "the real Ari," Wahlberg said.

Emanuel still works closely with a handful of clients such as Wahlberg, Tyler Perry, Aaron Sorkin and Larry David.

Netflix Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria said that underneath the "really theatrical conversations" Ari likes to have is a depth and that he really cares about the world. "That sometimes gets lost" because "it doesn't serve the larger than life character," she said.

Beyond being a workaholic, Emanuel wakes up like clockwork every day at 4 a.m. and does an intense training session that ends with an ice bath. Somewhere in those early hours is usually a call with Wahlberg.

"We usually catch up every day about 4:30 or 5 a.m.," Wahlberg said. Conversations can range from "anything that's going on in my life" to future projects, Wahlberg said, adding, "I call him every day pounding on him `What are we doing next?'"

Then Emanuel hits the phones nonstop wooing clients, making deals in the office or on the golf course and soothing hurt egos. He often makes as many as 300 calls a day.

"He's going to kill for his clients but he always leaves something on the table for the other side, even if it's only crumbs," said Mark Shapiro, the president of both TKO and WME Group, who plans to invest in Emanuel's events company and join its board of directors.

The two have been close since 2003, when Emanuel booted a person out of his seat on a flight to Los Angeles to sit next to Shapiro, who was running content for ESPN at the time.

"A savage with a heart," Shapiro says of Emanuel.

A Chicago native, Emanuel is the youngest of three hyper-driven and competitive siblings who have all risen to the top of their respective games in medicine, entertainment and politics. Eldest brother Zeke is a renowned oncologist and bioethicist who was an architect of President Obama's Affordable Care Act. Middle brother Rahm is a former Chicago mayor who also served as chief of staff for Obama, and is seen as a potential 2028 candidate for president.

Emanuel endured teasing as a child because of his dyslexia. "It's not like you're not as smart as them, except you just can't read," Emanuel said in an interview in 2014. Despite that, he was the most outgoing of the three siblings, according to one of his brothers.

"Loud and physically fearless" is how Zeke Emanuel described Ari in his book "Brothers Emanuel: A Memoir of An American Family." The youngest of the three "plunged into life with boundless energy and courage."

Emanuel doesn't shy away from acknowledging he's a perfectionist and vain. That fixation with fitness doesn't just apply to him. He can be health-obsessed about those he works with as well, once paying a subordinate $10,000 to run the Los Angeles Marathon as part of an effort to encourage him to get into better shape.

The colleague, Christian Muirhead, accepted the challenge, finished the marathon, and is now a co-chairman of talent agency WME.

Emanuel is a picky eater. Khaldoon Al Murbarak, head of Abu Dhabi's Mubadala sovereign-wealth fund, who partnered with TKO on bringing the UFC to the United Arab Emirates, praised Emanuel for having "one of the sharpest minds in the industry" but is always a little wary when he invites his friend over to dinner.

"Some people will come to your house and say, `I don't eat cheese or I'm lactose intolerant.' Ari will send a two-page list of things he will or won't eat," Al Murbarak said.

Emanuel has burned his fair share of bridges. He and Endeavor partner Patrick Whitesell now seldom talk. People close to both say the pair had different visions for Endeavor and operating styles that became a wedge that drove them apart.

Whitesell has formed his own partnership with Silver Lake to acquire properties across sports and media. He is setting up a separate company that will house WME Sports' football representation agency.

He's also not one for sentimentality. David Lonner, a movie agent who worked with Emanuel only to bolt to another agency that was subsequently acquired by Endeavor, recalled his brief reunion.

"You and I were thorns in each other's side, I'm taking over this company now and I don't need a thorn in my side," Lonner recalled Emanuel telling him.

These days, the spin from those around Emanuel is that he has softened, particularly after the challenges of expanding Endeavor. "Fear and anger was not conducive to the size we were at," he said in the Aspen Ideas Festival.

Write to Joe Flint at Joe.Flint@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

Khaldoon Al Mubarak, head of Abu Dhabi's Mubadala sovereign-wealth fund, who partnered with TKO on bringing the UFC to the United Arab Emirates, praised Emanuel for having "one of the sharpest minds in the industry" but is always a little wary when he invites his friend over to dinner. "Hollywood's Super Networker Is Building an Entertainment Powerhouse" at 8 p.m. ET on April 18 misspelled his name as Khaldoon Al Murbarak.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 19, 2025 04:14 ET (08:14 GMT)

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