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Since it was announced a week ago that Endeavor was seeking to acquire World Wrestling Entertainment and create a new, publicly traded entity that would serve as the parent company for both WWE and MMA powerhouse The Ultimate Fighting Championship, perhaps the most amusing email question I’ve received is the following:
“Who the hell is Ari Emanuel? Is this the guy from Entourage? How does he end up with WWE?”
So, let’s go backwards:
1 - He ended up with WWE because, as we wrote, he and his company go back over two decades with Vince McMahon and WWE. At times, Endeavor has represented WWE for television rights and other deals and they are a massive, insanely powerful entertainment company that started as a talent agency representing talents and entities before also surging in growth to acquire a number of properties, many of which will assist in potentially growing WWE going forward. I’ll address that below.
2 - He’s NOT the guy from Entourage. That’s Ari Gold. THAT Ari, played by Jeremy Piven, however is greatly based on the real Ari Emanuel and the Hollywood legend has always been that real Ari demanded Piven be the one to portray fictional Ari. The fictional Ari, however, is a pale imitation to the real Ari, who is known as one of the biggest pitbulls in Hollywood history, a man who’s thirst for success is only matched by his record for getting what he wants - and in this case, he wanted WWE and unless something unforeseen happens, he is getting it, the legacy, the history and everything else associated with it, past, present and future.
3 - So, who IS Ari Emanuel? Well, if you are a pro wrestling fan not well versed in the Hollywood world, since it was my former profession before I started writing about all this insanity full-time back in 2003, let’s tell you a tale.
Prior to founding Endeavor, Emanuel was senior agent at ICM Partners (ICM). In what was a major story at the time, he was fired by ICM when they discovered a plan for Emanuel and other agents to exit and to form Endeavor. After the firing, they did just that, setting off lawsuits and other ripples in Hollywood circles in 1995. He almost immediately began racking up massive clients, including Martin Scorsese, The Rock, Charlize Theron, Mark Wahlberg (hence the creation of Entourage!) and grew to such prominence that Endeavor eventually acquired The William Morris Agency, which was THE place to be represented for generations in the entertainment genre.
Ari Emanuel didn’t just slice himself a piece of the pie, he took over the entire damn kitchen and reshaped it in his own image. He did what Vince McMahon did to the territories, but did it to the entire Hollywood industry.
Not just content with building the biggest agency in the world, WME as it began to be known (it’s now known as Endeavor primarily) changed the game with the idea of not just representing talents but building a unique synergy by investing and acquiring different properties, including UFC, Professional Bull Riders (PBR), an advertising business, film and television production company Fifth Season, concierge company On Location (which already handles VIP ticketing and events for WWE), among other entities.
By doing all of this, Endeavor empowers their clients and businesses through their connective tissue. Have a client’s film you need promoted? Hey, here’s a UFC event! Need UFC VIP activations handled? Hey, here’s On Location! Have a country artist you need marketed to the masses? Hey, let’s plug them into PBR! By creating this “flywheel”, as Ari Emanuel is so fond of stating, he maximizes every potential scenario to promote and make the most money for those under his umbrella, clients and assets alike - and soon, if that deal goes through, WWE enters into that synergy as well in a greater way than ever before, empowered by Ari Emanuel.
Let’s not forget that with Emanuel’s team owning the company, WWE still retains Nick Khan as President and Khan has been the person who has ripped the company apart from the inside out to reshape it from a corporate perspective into what fits the needs of Hollywood first, because that’s the way the company was truly going to be legitimized and grow from being the red-headed stepchild of sports and entertainment, never fitting squarely into one or the other while being partially shunned by both.
When Khan walked into WWE and took the reins, there was a reaction in pro wrestling circles of “Who?” The reality is that while he may have been a lifelong WWE fan, Khan was already well versed in the Hollywood ecosystem. Originally a lawyer, Khan launched the sports media department for ICM (Emanuel’s old agency). Now known as ICM Stellar Sports, Khan launched that entire division, which now handles major deals worldwide for soccer, rugby, and tons of other sports.
Then, Khan jumped to CAA in 2012, at the time one of the most powerful of all agencies (so deadly and powerful, their headquarters was dubbed The Death Star), where he was representing The ENTIRE Southern Conference (as in all of the sports under the SEC banner), WWE, Top Rank Boxing and lots more sports entities, becoming one of the true influencers and tastemakers.
Khan didn’t just stir the drink in the Hollywood world, he was the entire bar that sparked the scene - and he seemed to know not just the direction of the wind, but when, where and how it would howl, and, most importantly, why. He was the one everyone nodded towards when they needed the right opinion and his consistency in that regard led him to the WWE jump, because he was the rare outsider Vince McMahon came to look upon as trustworthy.
Whether anyone cares to admit it or not, Khan forced WWE to mature and ascend upwards - and the irony is that he came to Vince McMahon’s true awareness when Khan was asked to step in and handle WWE’s TV negotiations for the FOX deal, because Emanuel was unable to handle the negotiations. That twist of fate opened the door for Khan to jump to WWE, insert many of his own trusted people from his former home at CAA and begin the transition to where we are today.
Which means that now, WWE gets the power of Emanuel and the insightfulness of Khan, who has pretty much three steps ahead of everyone in his vision of where the sports world is going in terms of rights fees the last few years and they get them in a time period where live sports programming has never been more important to a dwindling cable and growing streaming audience - and a time period where both Raw and Smackdown are coming up for new rights deals. It’s not a spoiler to predict that thanks to Endeavor, Emanuel and Khan, WWE will get the greatest rights fees in their history this time around, again, and there’s a big reason for that.
No matter what anyone thinks of Vince McMahon right now, in Hollywood or beyond, there’s two adults in the room to keep the steering wheel steady for the WWE machine. Once this deal goes through, Vince is going to have to respect and acquiesce to the wishes of Emanuel especially. Vince will no longer be the apex predator in his own company. It’s going to be Emanuel.
One aspect of this deal that needs to be pointed out is that with WWE and UFC under the same ownership, they can now each be used to leverage the other. Want to book UFC in your venue? Hey, how about a WWE date? Want to carry WWE in your territory for streaming? How about a package deal and getting UFC as well? Want to do an exclusive deal for UFC fighter signing? How about some WWE talents as well?
UFC and WWE were two polar opposites of the live event business - one steeped in violent sport and the other entrenched in over the top family friendly presentation - and now they will soon be one entity, one massive superstructure that all else is compared to, all feeding into each other and everything else Endeavor has to offer.
Once again, Nick Khan is inside a Death Star, this time one built for combat sports alongside Ari Emanuel. Once again, it’s something that, should it all come together before 2024, will be seemingly impenetrable from the outside, but in building this Empire, WWE’s own Emperor Palpatine will no longer be at the top of the food chain.
Instead, Emanuel adds yet another massive asset to his own Infinity Gauntlet while Nick Khan presides over a company he has completely terraformed into his own image. Sure, Vince McMahon will be Executive Chairman and Paul Levesque will handle creative, but this is going to be something built to be larger than just professional wrestling. WWE will have the minority of the seat on the new company’s Board of Directors for a reason - they are diving into much deeper waters than they’ve ever descended into before, and they won’t be captaining the new ship.
Back in 2018, Endeavor’s Marc Shapiro told the Hollywood Reporter, “I think that the theory that live entertainment and live sports rights have a ceiling is something media companies want to believe. They want to believe that it’s getting under control, that the leagues are going to get a comeuppance and things are going to level off. It’s not happening. Live sports and live entertainment are more important than ever before. Other television fare just doesn’t offer the same engagement.”
The new Puppet Masters, Ari Emanuel and Nick Khan, are WWE’s Dynamic Duo going forward. They get to control that engagement, where it goes and how much money it can generate going forward - while also tag teaming it with every possibility that comes from the infinite amount of doors Emanuel and Khan can collectively open. Doors that WWE could never, ever hope to open on their own.
Vince McMahon used to joke about how no one truly understood that WWE was about “making movies”, as he said in 1999’s Beyond the Mat. Little did he realize that the power brokers behind those who make the movies would soon be the power brokers that control not just his future, but all of WWE.
The McMahon family will live eternal as the ones who created and shepherded WWE, but once this deal goes through, WWE as we know it will never exist the same again, just as Marvel Comics was never the same after it entered the Disney ecosystem or WarnerMedia remained what it was once after being acquired by Discovery.
Redundancies will lead to exits. Old traditions will end. The past will truly be the past, but the future will see a streamlined WWE, supercharged to monetize every single thing you can and can’t imagine, all empowered by the one-two punch of Nick Khan and Ari Emanuel, two Hollywood heavyweights who did the thing no one else could ever hope ever do - make Vince McMahon blink and choose to disempower himself. McMahon will be far more rich, more rich than most of us can ever hope to be, but at the end of the day, WWE will answer to a much higher power. This time, McMahon won’t be able to pull the hood off and claim it was him all along - because it will be Emanuel and Khan who shape the company narrative, deals and very essence in the days and years to come.
The second the WWE deal commences, be prepared for a true next generation - WWE as a Hollywood asset. Good or bad, it’s coming and the roots of that moment all stretch back to the second Emanuel shook up Hollywood back in the mid-1990s and the second Khan took the call in his CAA offices to rep WWE in their FOX deal. Those two decisions changed the lives of everyone who ever cared about WWE - and will again and again in the years to come.
WWE is, more than ever, part of the Hollywood system now, because two of Hollywood’s ultimate power brokers will soon own and control it.
The red-headed stepchild is dead.
Who could have guessed Vince McMahon’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was a prologue of what was to come, not the epilogue to his life’s journey?
So, what happens when someone with an instatiable quest for success and power and someone endowed with the best instincts in the sports world are now united in making WWE the biggest beast it can ever be?
We will soon see.
Mike Johnson worked in Hollywood circles from 1997 through 2003, when he began writing about professional wrestling full-time. He can be reached at MikeJohnsonPWInsider@gmail.com.
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