YouSaid · the spoken record

Ariel Emanuel

lines on the record: 55
first: 2025-10-22
most recent: 2025-10-22
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Be comfortable and the uncomfortable. Learn that and don't think that it just should just happen. You actually have to work through all the pain to make it happen if you care. And I don't, you know, people talk about, I'm not sure that that is being taught now. Your parents can't coddle you and can't give you an award for coming in second and have to ground you and do certain things for you. And then you have to pick up the mantle as an adult and keep on doing it. And your parents have to be there all the way, but not giving you the answers. So hopefully I've done that with my kids”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And if you kind of learn those things at many different levels, sometimes it comes from business, sometimes you see that you got through this or sometimes it comes from your personal life Can handle it. For me, it started, and I didn't realize this during the moments. Is dyslexic? It was not easy reading. It was embarrassing It was uncomfortable. And being able to be comfortable in the uncomfortable enables you to handle aggravation and all the other things you need in business. And even at the time, I hated myself and my inability to read, it has helped me now realizing that you have to be comfortable in the uncomfortable. And I think that's true for all business people.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How can you Well, you know, doing three minutes in that ice bath ain't easy. Meditating in a very hot sauna, you know, one of my things in my, why I do these things for my health, today I'm on a 24-hour fast. Every quarter I do a three-day fast, getting your mind, the ability for your mind to be able to handle uncomfortable also on a personal level for your health helps you in business too because it in you know kind of putting barriers around yourself of what you can and can't do. That also helps, even though it's for your health, it also helps in your business decision making and your ability to kind of be the ability to endure. The aggravation And you realize this too will pass. And it's not going to kill you, and you're going to work through it. You just have to work really hard.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And actually, enjoy the aggravation. Enjoy it because that is. What it's about. If you love what you're doing, and I still love it, and what I'm doing is expanded. Enjoy the hardship The hardship is part of the process of how can you enjoy”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can't, I try and instill this with my kids, hopefully with people that work with me. When you're running something, it's not how many punches you can throw, it's how many punches you can take. So endurance, emotional endurance is a really key factor. And failure really puts the light on that. And being able to get up off the canvas and get back in the arena is crucial. And there's all these great quotes about it. you know, the Tom Brady's where everybody doesn't. It's just, you just have to be able to get off the canvas.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I. One of the biggest failures was not going public the first time. I didn't even understand it, right? But that enabled us, and then COVID hit. And so reading all the... Points of view of what wasn't good. Admitting that we screwed it up going back into the market but with a different strategy working with Morgan Stanley and Egon and really refining it. I had Mark Shapiro and team dealt with all the issues. COVID, which was as you know for a lot of your companies, significant how you handled it doing the raise.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I work out for an hour and a half. I mean, it's just, it is over the years has gotten crazier and crazier. Do you drink anymore?”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I flew to Indianapolis on Saturday, saw our launch of our WWE Wrestle Palooza on ESPN. Then I flew to New York. Had dinner with the Emir of Qatar last night, flew back, got in at two, woke up at six. Here with you, and I'm flying back to New York on Tuesday because I have a premiere for a client flying back here on Wednesday night going to Aspen. And then back to Indianapolis on the following Tuesday. So I don't”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hopefully the former ambassador of Japan and mayor of Chicago, hopefully he runs for president. And I think he's the most qualified guy out there for the Democratic Party. And, uh, Pretty dynamic in their own specific fields.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In our respective field, I think we're all pretty clever. I wouldn't want to have an argument about healthcare against my brother, Zeke, who's Epen, as I said to you. And I definitely... Wouldn't want to have a political conversation against my brother Ram, who”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it just. Just kind of get a different sense of the world as opposed to kind of like being a bystander. My parents were never bystanders. My mom wasn't. She was in the civil rights movement. My dad was a very pretty hard advocate. He was a pediatrician about, you know, kind of kids' rights.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of it. I realize there's going to be a lot of aggravating moments. Those are what it's required to do business. If you don't accept that, which was at the beginning, I didn't understand it. Now I've accepted it. It's great. The outcome is a different conversation.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was hyperactive when I was a kid. I was one of the first Riddling kids. So I was actually just having this exchange with Egan Durbin this morning about. Of his portfolio companies that I'm involved with out of Silverlake. And he was saying something, and I was saying something. And I said to him, What makes us crazy? And we just had this tax exchange. I really don't know. But I'm still intellectually curious. And I love it. I have. Know, I don't, I'm not tired. I love every bit of the process now. I'm not sure I enjoyed the process before, but it was a means to get to fulfill an idea. Now I actually love the process and the aggravation”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I collect I've worked with this gentleman by the name of Jeffrey Deitsch. I collect art mainly at the beginning of my life it was all over the place and then I've focused significantly on black artists, American black artists and South African 1930 to now from Sam Gilliam, Mark Bradford, Noah Davis, Carrie James Marshall. Benny Andrews, it's a pretty nice collection. I've been doing it for now in this specific space. And anybody I didn't mention, please, nobody, Kara Walker, please don't be offended. It's a good collection. Not perfect, but I got a lot of time.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And freezes a part of that and freezes apart. And I think live is more important than it's ever been. And that's the marketplace that we're going to try and go capture.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We've acquired the tennis business, the participatory sports in collectibles freeze and Barrett Jackson, our food festivals, a bunch of assets. And we've raised. Money, about $2 billion in equity. And we've bought these assets and we're going to hopefully create like live nation is in music, we're going to create a mini version because they're a great company, but in live events Global live events business as this world kind of transforms itself with AI”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But here's what I concluded. So we took Endeavor private. We spun UFC and PBR and on location and IMG into TKO. Silver Lake, as we took Endeavor Private, was selling, they wanted it to just be a pure play representation business. We had bought over time about 700 different events. Have a thesis that Now we're down to four day work weeks, maybe three day work weeks. Europe with AI and a bunch of other stuff. COVID started it. So, if that's the case, there's going to be more free time than ever. We're social animals, human pings, and they're going to go to a sporting event. You're going to go to dinner. You're going to watch entertainment. You're going to live music. And I also think you're going to do live events.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know, I've known Dana for 30 years. I've known, you know, Nick Khan was an agent at CAA. We tried to hire him as an agent here, have a very close relationship with him. I've known AAH off and on for a long time now, very close. You just have to stay close, know what's going on in their lives. I mean, you just, you're in business with somebody, so therefore, you have to know a lot about them and care about them.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, we have multiple leaders in the Democratic dictatorship. Yeah, on the HAH runs WWE with Nick Khan, Dana runs kind of making the fights and everything, UFC, Mark and I run the business side of it with multiple people underneath us. And then there's that coordination between the people that are creating the storylines, creating the fights, and us about where we're going with it. So yeah”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know how other people do it. Running a sport is like anything else, but. We have the added Situation that you're on the WWE, they're signed contracts on the UFC, they're independent contractors. That's why it's very difficult for a media company like a Disney, a Comcast, a Warner Brothers, a Netflix to own a sport, I think. They would hurt the operator because it's a very kind of fluid situation. And that's why you need a lot of voices in that can tell you all the different things going on. Because it's not only how you run the business, it's how your superstars and athletes. Thinking about it. And that's a very dynamic situation to kind of constantly be reviewing as you're trying to run the business.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You want everybody that is running the operations for your company at every level to have a voice in it so that when the mistakes come, we can at least mitigate them a little bit and then have a path forward. And you constantly have to be reviewing this stuff as you operate your business.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's important for leadership that if you are a good leader, one is You want a lot of voices inside the mix to come to the right conclusion and not make a decision that your opinion is the right opinion. So there are many executives that we sit around constantly going back and forth about deals, you know, what we can ask for, what we shouldn't ask for, places we should be growing the business. We have calls every week on the UFC, calls every week on the WWE Jiu-Jitsu bull riding. And I think that's important for leadership to get to the right conclusion. You always know you're going to make mistakes.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where do you think the wins? No, there's a huge presentation. And then you know, because each one of them has a different strategy with the WWE and ESPN, they wanted a big launch. They needed another thing to kind of drive people into their new service. Netflix wanted to get to an advertising base. Each one of them have different reasoning for why they want an asset. And so you have to tailor your presentations to those assets. And we have a ton of people doing that for us.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no Like when we presented the WWE or the UFC, when we're taking our rights out from market, we have a whole research team that does, here's our demo. Like on Netflix or on Amazon or on Apple, here's who you're not touching, here's the people that want to sign up for your place. And if you get them, here's how much we believe. We do a huge 100-page decks about the value creation by being in business with our assets. Like the NFLs does, the NBA does, et cetera. Yeah, I mean, that was, you don't go into these things like.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, you have to have a to keep it young, you have to have a really thought out social strategy. With your fighters, with your sport, to keep the demo young. And I think we have some of the youngest demos in the business, but across our platforms, you then have to be on your distributors domestically, internationally, about their marketing strategy. And then you have to kind of, with your sponsors, you have to do integrations with them appropriately for your sports as the events come up. And if you do all three of those properly. Then you can have a pretty successful business. And we're in enviable position. We have very young sports. And they're consumable on this thing. You can have a knockout. Boom.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, first of all, I'm not thinking about that right now. I mean, we have to execute on everything we have now. We have to get jiu-jitsu up on its feet. We're going to continue to execute slowly our boxing strategy. There's a lot on our plate. We've just finished the majority of the broadcast deals domestically, internationally. Things come up every year. So we still got integration with the WWE and UFC savings that we have to get to. I got a big plate. So I appreciate me wanting to kind of keep on going. But if I just do what I'm doing, it's going to be a great business.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, when we so before the TKO merger. We had been working on CVC in the UK. They had owned it at the time. To buy it because they were, you know, it had run its cycle. Egon, we had just bought three months before the UFC. And it was a $9, $10 billion chunk. Had not gone into our execution of the broadcast strategy yet, and we had we were starting to cut costs and do all the things that we were doing. And I just think it was. You got to remember also, you know, you had Brexit, so we had a banking issue, we didn't have a relationship with you, so we could get infinite money. And I think it was just a little bit kind of thought through, hard to kind of get, you know, I think looking back and we both looked at each other, we're probably going to regret this. Regardless, we've done very well.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, the funny thing is, Again, we have Nick Khan and Dana White and Hunter Count. We have a great team led by Dana and Nick Khan. We have a good partner in the Saudis. And you see how big, I mean, I think on the event we had two weekends ago, I think there was 25 million consecutive streams on Netflix. I don't remember how many globally. It was a significant number. Boxing has been around for hundreds of years. I mean, UFC has been around for over 30, but there's an understanding of it. If we can bring it back to the glory days and Dana and Nick can create the stars behind it, it can be as big as any of our other assets.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, we had an event two weekends ago at Allegiance Stadium where the Raiders play. And there were 70,000 people in the arena. Had one of the great on Netflix, one of the great boxing events ever. Actually, in a legion, I think the records are with WWE and our boxing match for live events. It was crazy. It was incredible. We are in the middle of kind of seeing if we can work with the administration and Congress about kind of having an addendum to the Aliak, which I think is better for the boxers health-wise, money-wise, et cetera, creating an opportunity like we have with the UFC. And if everything works out, boxing is an area that we're looking at. We're also in jujitsu. So we'll cover the full spectrum of combat sports.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One sports entertainment and this past weekend, I don't know when this again, when this is going to air, we had our launch for Russell Palooza in Indianapolis with ESPN. And ESPN realizes when you go to one of these live events or you watch it, it's sports entertainment And it is definitely competitive. It is entertainment. But the fan base is incredible. It's, again, like the UFC, it's global and it's a blast. To see.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Conversation never happened. We kept on selling off pieces. Sold off our academy, we sold off our production company. They just never got. And so we looked around after a significant time and other representative businesses were getting valuations of $7 billion, and this doesn't make sense. The pure play was the right thing for the UFC and the WWE in bull riding. We first started out with just UFC and WWE. Vince, under circumstances, had to leave, we then realized here's the remaining portion of what sports is, which is distribution, production, premium ticketing on location, and we rolled in our last sport PBR. And that is a pure play sports entity in TKO and the rest is the representation business. And that's actually private”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Early years is that I also represented Vince in the WWE for a long, long time at Endeavor. And then we didn't go public To be like in, I want to say 19, I had approached Vince with my partner at Silver Lake, Egon Durbin to kind of pull the UFC out and merge it with the WWE and create one entity. And we would, like we have now be private with Endeavor. Vince, because we were just getting into COVID, I think it was in 2000, I don't remember, 2020, 2021, something like that. Vince didn't want to do it. We then retook Endeavor out with all of the first time we went out, we only had 51% of the UFC. We had negotiated a deal that KKR and Silverlake would roll their portion of it in. We went public. The market never really understood what I was trying to express, that we cover every aspect of entertainment from sports to social to books. That conglomerate...”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say the following. I hope not. Going to this Charlie Kirk situation. I hope that. This is a kind of watershed moment where people realize this is a very bad path for the United States and for the world. I think it's all over the world. There's a very combative situation in politics. But, you know. Hope nobody gets choked out in politics. I just hope we kind of kind of realign our thinking. I mean, I think as Bill Maher said, it's very important. To talk to everybody. And I agree with that. Because you have to understand them and you have to be able to express your opinion so that there can be a middle ground. It's like any negotiation, as I said to you. You can't take everything off the table. They have to win some, you have to win some”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that you have to actually talk to my partner, Dana White. I represented the president for seven, nine years in his days on NBC. He had an incredible relationship with Dana when the UFC started. He was the first one in Atlantic City to put the UFC on when nobody would do it and they were calling it cockfighting. And they've maintained an incredible relationship. When the president was running for the second time, Dana helped him out with his strategy in social and was very helpful. And has been helpful for the president. for a long time.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, one is. A sport that happens over one day, six hours. The demographics are four quadrants. I mean, it's global and the fights are 15 minutes or 25 minutes. They're action-packed. They're great for social. We're in every country in the world with our fighters. It was the dominant player in that sport. And so, and I just thought it had bigger and bigger upside because people want big events on a weekly basis. You know, it turned out to be true.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It rang true. And we just let, I mean, I have one of the great partners. In Dana White, who could continue to do what he needed to do, and I would do the business side with Mark Shapiro. And if we had that combination, it was going to be a lethal combination.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was just looking at the numbers and looking where sports was going to go and where I thought the distribution model was going and the requirement for SVOD and AVOD. I did my calculation that Fox had to have the product based on where they were going with their business from the RSNs and et cetera. I didn't realize that they were going to sell that ruper. It was going to sell. But I did realize where... Know the marketplace was going with regard to streaming. Sports has always been a huge driver in that space. There's not a lot of sports And I thought between international distribution, sponsorship, site fees, all the things that we did, production where we had global production facility in London and five different locations, we could take a lot of costs out and add a lot of value”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What we had bought before that PBR. We had proven that we could buy a company in the sports area and resurrect it. Think Silverlake would say as they thought about it. We negotiate every deal with networks on behalf of packages, etc. We do at that time we did internationally all the sports rights. We knew how to handle UFC internationally in the value. We represented them and it already negotiated a lot of the broadcast deals by owning it. Running it properly, we could get 90% of the value as opposed to 10% of the value.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm a lot nicer now You know. I don't have to constantly be fighting battles. The employees are doing a lot of the heavy lifting that I used to do by myself and with others. And yeah, taking on a lot of the battles that I don't have to take on makes life a little bit easier. And also my clients have reached a stature that's a lot easier to move their careers around. I have, I think, and you'll have to just ask the buyers, I've lived by my reputation and how I negotiate.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My early days, it was sad to say too spot on, but I've mellowed. So, yeah, I mean, in the early days of, remember when I started the business, you had four No, you had four big agencies against us, and you weren't, there was no price differential that could distinguish you. It was all the same price. So, you know, I was difficult.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Meaning you can't kill us. We're going to be around in this business forever. As much as people have tried to disintermediate agents, when I think I started in the business, we were just in the television business and a little bit of motion picture business. Now we're in Instagram people podcasts. We're in so many different areas. And the agency business has constantly adapted and kind of transformed itself in what is required to be a good agent and representation. You got to have marketing in there. You got to have books in there. You got to have license and merchandise and in there. And you just constantly are adapting your skill set, the agency at large to actually perform the best for the clients. And I don't think a lot of agencies have done that. That's why they haven't survived.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To a negotiation. Sometimes there's only one buyer you've struck out. You have to get a deal done and you close. Sometimes there's multiple buyers and you drag it out as long as you can to get the highest price. So you just have to recognize the environment and the situation you're in. I think everybody does the same thing. You know, you have to be honorable. You have to keep your word. Whatever you're negotiating, it's not your last deal if you're talented. And so your word, your negotiation with that person is actually important because that reputation kind of precedes you and follows you.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One is you've got to keep the negotiation within the, you know, you don't go out of the, you don't negotiate in public. You respect your negotiator. You're tough and you know, but you negotiate inside the room. So you don't kind of, and every negotiation is different. There's not one negotiation. There's not one principle”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was this old lawyer at Warner Brothers, my first deal. And he told me, and I said to him in the middle of the negotiation, the head of CA, Bill Haber, gave me a property to negotiate for him, an underlying right. And I told him in the middle of the negotiation, I said, this is not fair. And he was the senior lawyer at Warner Brothers. And he told me to drive over to Warner Brothers. And I did. And I walk in and I said, Mr. Stolen, that's hi. I'm Aria Manuel. He said, son, fair is where we end up. And he said, leave my office. And so, you know, in all these negotiations, I just always say to the people, fair is where we're going to end up. I might not be completely happy. You might not be completely happy, but it is the right number.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've won. Why is that? Well, I'm just, you know, I'm not going to roll over because somebody thinks somebody's more powerful or whatever. I'm not sure I'm the toughest negotiator. I just have a point of view on something and I'll stick to my guns. I know when, first of all, I don't have to, I don't, I think when I negotiate, I don't have to have all the chips off the table. But I do have to I think there's this line.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have to just be, you actually have to be their partner, not the representative. You actually have to be their business partner and think about the world and where the possibilities Know you know it's bad things happen. You have to have an agent, I believe, that is willing, and I hope we've taught this, to have endurance. And take the failures and kind of think through all the different possibilities and bring teams together to help you think through things. I think we've done that here. Not always great, but usually pretty good. And I think that's the requirement for whether it be a music client, a social media client, a book, an author, an actor, a director, everything.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You have to be full service. And what we've attempted to do by all the companies we've bought and put together is be a full service agency, whether it be licensing, marketing, books, all actors, how you put things together for a director, an actor, a writer happens inside our doors now more than it does at the Sony's, at the Netflix, at the Paramounts. And what's the key?”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In this day and age, because there's so much distribution, and there's depending on the client, like all clients are different, music clients are different than actors, actors are different than directors. But if you're talking about a writer creator in the television space, you have multiple players going on, how you tell them what properties to buy, to write, or create on their own, and then packaging them together. You're putting together kind of a package to go out to the marketplace. It used to be that the studios would be the composer of the content. It's now moved to the agent. And I always say to the people here, Ideas matter more than ever right now as an agent because you have to”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, if I believe, like when I saw the UFC, that there was more value that could be created, if I'm looking at a client that I don't think is being handled properly, I will just pound on that issue until they realize, because eventually they're going to realize I'm right. I believe. I start the conversation usually with something like, are you happy? And then, and I know where I believe after analyzing where the trigger points are. And then I just pound away.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To get them to sign with me, I think. Was probably Larry David way back in the day. I don't know, it was unrelenting. I felt really bad for him. And I kind of said it to him, I think. I said, I feel bad for you. Here's what's going to happen. I don't embarrass easily.”
2025-10-22 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source