No one navigates Trump 2.0 better than Ari Emanuel
Whether it's the Paramount-Skydance merger, the Ali Act "reform", or negotiating a new deal for South Park, the UFC's boss is a major player
Donald Trump is not your typical President of the United States.
He’s mercurial and intimidating. He holds grudges. He can be impossibly petty.
Many DC insiders and lobbyists have struggled to adapt, leaving the field to MAGA insiders.
But not our boy Ari Emanuel, Executive Chairman of the WME Group (formerly Endeavor) and CEO of TKO.
No, sir, Ari Emanuel is doing just fine in Trump’s America.
As The Los Angeles Times said in December, “As Hollywood begins to grapple with how to navigate Trumpworld 2.0, few are better positioned to navigate the new administration than Emanuel.”
Somehow, Ari can back his brother Rahm’s 2028 Democratic Presidential ambitions without upsetting the notoriously touchy Trump.
That’s because Ari Emanuel’s superpower is somehow being on every side of every deal all at the same time.
Ari’s ties to Trump go back to 2010
The December 2024 Los Angeles Times piece headlined “‘I want you to be my agent.’ What to know about Trump’s ties with Hollywood power player Ari Emanuel” has a pretty definitive summary of Emanuel’s business relationship to Donald Trump:
Back in 2010, Emanuel became Trump’s agent, just months after the Hollywood power broker engineered a stunning takeover of the famed William Morris Agency. The New York real estate developer turned reality TV star was hosting “Celebrity Apprentice,” and he called Emanuel as he played golf during his company‘s annual off-site in Palm Springs.
“Ari, this is Donald Trump. Did you make that Conan deal? I want you to be my agent,” Trump told him, according to someone close to Emanuel.
The NBC show was flagging in the ratings — despite Trump insisting otherwise — and he wanted what he always craved: a better deal.
Endeavor had extracted some major concessions from NBC after the network axed Conan O’Brien as host of “The Tonight Show,” including a $32.5-million payout.
The deal caught Trump’s attention, and he wanted the man he’d taken to calling “the King of Hollywood” representing him.
…
Although Emanuel has not represented Trump since the latter announced his first candidacy, he was photographed meeting Trump at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., after the 2016 election. Emanuel has downplayed the visit to those around him.
Three years later, Emanuel’s name surfaced in a trove of some 100 documents from Trump’s transition that was leaked to the political news site Axios, indicating he had been vetted for an unspecified role in the administration. A spokesperson for Endeavor declined to comment at the time.
Trump, who has called Emanuel “a very good friend of mine,” said at the start of his first administration: “Even though he’s not political, he’s political. He gets it.”
According to the article, Emanuel and Trump reconnected in 2024 after Trump survived an assassination attempt at a campaign rally, and Ari called to see how he was doing.
Ari sure is great at maintaining relationships with the famous and influential.
Hollywood has noticed Ari’s MAGA makeover
Or at least online media property Puck has, as they said in the subheading of a piece headlined “Ari’s New Entourage”:
How does the creative community square the righteous Ari Emanuel—the feminist, Democratic megadonor, and #MeToo advocate—with the real-life, ethically flexible MAGA-era version? “That is the ultimate hypocrisy of this town,” as one source put it.
Kim Masters, the author of the piece, wrote a lengthy piece handwringing over Ari’s alleged hypocrisy, but this one paragraph gets the idea across:
Ari’s capacity for forgiveness, too, seems to shift with the tides. WME dumped Mel Gibson in 2010, and Ari even wrote an editorial calling for Gibson to be shunned after the actor’s antisemitic outburst. But then he started advocating for him after Ari decided—on what basis is unclear—that Mel had learned his lesson. (If Gibson has ever walked back his Holocaust denial, I’m not aware of it.) Ari made a point of returning a $400 million investment by Saudi Arabia after the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi, but then got back into bed with the Kingdom via Endeavor’s purchase of WWE. (Disclosure: WME represents Puck.)
I just had to bold that last parenthesis because, yeah, it’s classic that Ari’s agency represents the online publication that is trying to hold him to account.
Good luck with that, Puck.
Ari played a crucial role in getting Trump to OK the Skydance-Paramount merger
The FCC approved Skydance’s acquisition of Paramount after a fraught series of negotiations that led The New York Times to call it “one of the most tortured deals the media sector has seen in years.”
Ari Emanuel got on board early and publicly last May, backing Skydance and its young CEO, David Ellison, at what The Financial Times called “a precarious moment for Ellison’s bid.”
Skydance had been in exclusive negotiations with Paramount, but that window lapsed on Friday without an agreement. A special committee appointed by the Paramount board, which is tasked with evaluating the group’s options, can continue to weigh the bid, however. Sources close to the bid told the FT that Ellison was willing to walk away, though no immediate indications suggested he was preparing to do so.
The end of the exclusive window came just a day after Sony and private equity group Apollo submitted a $26bn offer for Paramount.
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“David has a real movie business [with] big franchises,” Emanuel said at the time. “Everybody is in business with him — Amazon, Netflix, Apple, Paramount, and Disney all have a good relationship with David.”
Emanuel said Ellison, who is 41, has “a fire in his belly” that could help turn the company around.
“I don’t want to denigrate anybody, but I think [Paramount] needs a little bit of new energy. I think he will bring that,” he said. “I think he’ll be an incredible additional partner to Shari in this situation.”
Even after Shari Redstone of Paramount accepted the Skydance offer (following an initial rejection), there were additional hurdles to clear, this time with the Trump administration.
Trump sued Paramount, claiming that 60 Minutes had done him wrong by editing a Kamala Harris interview or some shit, and eight months of torture for Shari Restone ensued.
Naturally, Ari Emanuel was in the thick of things:
When they talk about Paramount’s vulnerabilities, this is what they mean:
The family’s shaky finances were a catalyst for the sale. Redstone has borrowed heavily to meet debt obligations, including a $186-million term loan from Larry Ellison last year.
Yes, that Larry Ellison, Oracle co-founder, gazillionaire, and father of Skydance’s David Ellison.
Mergers are harder than ever under Trump
Lest you think that the Skydance-Paramount merger getting approved was an easy layup, The Financial Times reported that mergers and acquisitions are way down under Trump:
Since Trump’s return to power, dealmaking has collapsed in the US, partly because of policy upheaval in areas such as tariffs but also because of the uncertainty and politicisation of getting transactions approved. Roughly 10,900 deals were announced in the three months to June 30, according to LSEG data. That was the lowest quarterly total since early 2015, excluding the pandemic-affected second quarter of 2022.
Rather than being based on pure market analysis, dealmakers say merger reviews have increasingly started to reflect partisan agendas on issues ranging from “America First” nationalism to the eradication of diversity, equity and inclusion policies. “I have been working on multiple deals where I have people inside the White House telling me what I can and can’t do,” said a top dealmaker involved in transactions unrelated to the government. “It’s a level of intrusion I have never experienced before.”
I hope David Ellison and his even richer dad, Larry, appreciate everything Ari Emanuel did to help get the Paramount acquisition over the finish line.
Ari kept South Park on Paramount, even as they turned on Trump
One of many wrinkles in the Skydance-Paramount deal involved Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the superstar South Park creators, whose proposed streaming deal with Paramount+ was “too rich,” according to The Los Angeles Times.
That same article quoted that:
Ari Emanuel, whose firm WME represents Parker and Stone, defended Paramount and Skydance’s handling of the situation on Friday by phone.
“Nobody has rejected anything. They are just doing their analysis,” Emanuel told The Times in a brief interview. “We’ve got offers from other distributors. Everybody wants this show.”
I bolded the bit about WME representing Parker and Stone because this is the most explicit instance I’ve found of Ari Emanuel being on both sides of the deal, for, as The Wall Street Journal reported last year, “Endeavor’s WME talent agency has previously represented Skydance in content deals.”
Naturally, this put Ari in the perfect position to bring the two sides together, and he did, per Bloomberg, although Parker and Stone managed to insert a twist to the story by tweaking Trump in the first new South Park episode of the year:
Skydance had altered its approach, making made a preliminary offer for the overall deal of $150 million a year. That wasn’t a raise, even though the streaming money was going up.
During the week of July 14, lawyers for Parker and Stone drafted a letter threatening legal action against Skydance. Ellison, along with (his deputy Jeff) Shell and agent Ari Emanuel, called Stone and (attorney Kevin) Morris to resolve the dispute. Skydance offered to pay Parker and Stone $200 million a year.
The parties spent last weekend in negotiations. Parker and Stone wanted to put the show on HBO Max and Paramount+. Warner Bros. increased its offer again by a few million dollars a year, while Parker and Stone offered to reduce their payday by more than $60 million to help bridge the gap. It wasn’t enough.
In the end, Ellison signed off on a deal for Paramount+ to take the exclusive streaming rights for $300 million a year. Ellison also upped his offer on the overall deal to $250 million a year. The two creators, already rich beyond their wildest dreams, would be paid $1.25 billion for the next five years.
Days after resolving his dispute with Parker and Stone, Ellison finally closed his deal for Paramount. But not before Parker and Stone had one more surprise.
The new season of South Park debuted Wednesday, mocking Trump and Paramount. Parker and Stone shared the episode in advance with the three CEOs of Paramount, who then notified Ellison and Paramount Chair Shari Redstone that the episode would antagonize the president.
Trump tried to downplay the episode, saying the show hasn’t been relevant in more than 20 years. Just days earlier, Nielsen released a report indicating that South Park had been one of the 20 most popular acquired titles in the first half of the year.
While showing an episode to the CEO in advance is unusual for South Park, Redstone and Ellison voiced no objections. The creators are hoping they can now get back to what they do best: making people laugh without any interference.
Note that Ari reportedly came on the call with Ellison and his deputy, Jeff Shell, rather than with Matt Stone and his attorney.
Under Trump, antitrust is more treacherous than ever
Ari’s going to be playing at the top of his game if he intends to keep scoring wins in the Trump 2.0 era.
Not only is TKO pushing a revision to the Ali Act, but it’s also facing two active antitrust suits in a Nevada courtroom.
As we’ve seen with Elon Musk’s break with Trump, no one is ever on entirely solid ground with The Donald.
Just ask Trump’s antitrust enforcer, Gail Slater, who found herself getting bigfooted over a $14 billion merger, and when she tried to tell “companies not to try to engage with the administration via Trump-aligned lobbyists and consultants,” her enemies in the administration fired two of her top deputies.
As Matt Stoller wrote about the conflict:
At some level, what we’re really dealing with overall is corruption on a society-destroying scale. It's understandable for everyone to be cynical about corruption right now, but readers should remember that it's not like an ever-worsening degree of corruption is inevitable.
An ever-worsening degree of corruption may not be inevitable, but as long as Ari Emanuel sits on both sides of the table for mega-deal after mega-deal, I won’t be betting against TKO anytime soon.
Nate Wilcox founded Bloody Elbow in 2007 and sold it in 2024. He is the publisher of The MMA Draw.