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In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen

Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment

In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen

Norges Bank Investment Management

In Good Company, Business, Norges Bank, Nicolai Tangen

4.8186 Ratings

🗓️ 22 October 2025

⏱️ 45 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week, Nicolai Tangen sits down with one of the most influential people in global entertainment and sports, Ariel Emanuel, CEO of TKO. From building the talent agency Endeavor into a giant representing Hollywood's biggest names, to bold moves like acquiring UFC, WWE, and expanding into live events and art fairs, Emanuel has redefined what it means to be an agent and an owner. His legendary career even inspired the character Ari Gold in the popular HBO show Entourage. In this conversation, Ariel reflects on his relentless early days in the mailroom, how he negotiates billion-dollar deals, why he believes pressure is a privilege, and what it takes to thrive in industries that never stop changing. They cover everything from Hollywood myths and combat sports to leadership, politics, art collecting, and the discipline behind ice baths and early morning workouts.

 

In Good Company is hosted by Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management. New full episodes every Wednesday, and don't miss our Highlight episodes every Friday. 

 

The production team for this episode includes Isabelle Karlsson and PLAN-B's Niklas Figenschau Johansen, Sebastian Langvik-Hansen and Pål Huuse. Background research was conducted by Oscar Hjelde.

 


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hi everyone, I'm Nicola Tangan, the CEO of the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, and today I'm in really good company with Super Agent and Media Mogul Ariel Emmanuel.

0:10.1

He's represented some of the biggest names in Hollywood and is now the owner of companies such as UFC and WWE.

0:16.4

Ari, warm welcome.

0:17.7

Hi, hi, how are you doing?

0:19.2

So how long has this been since you started doing this and why?

0:22.4

It's like three years.

0:23.3

You think it's going to be an interview you to me.

0:25.0

I'm going to interview you.

0:26.5

Let's see how it goes.

0:36.1

So, all right, when I was researching this, I was just astonished about how many things you do.

0:40.6

So just in brief, what do you do?

0:43.9

You know, I started out almost over 30 years ago representing writers, writer, director, actors,

0:53.4

then had a vision for where entertainment was going,

0:57.0

started, you know, merged, quote unquote, with William Morris, and then bought IMG,

1:05.0

and then realized half my life was representation, Half my life was ownership.

1:13.2

Almost like, I mean, I don't know what you're, I know that you're one of the largest investors in the world of every single country and every single company.

1:22.0

But we realized when we were in the representation business of entertainment and entertainment takes from podcasts to owning sports, events, music, writer,

1:33.0

direct, everything, we could look at companies that we represented or people or things,

1:38.6

and then we could move them the thought process to an ownership position

1:42.6

because we could extract greater value because we were global.

1:46.6

And if a company was localized but had a global possibility, we could extract a great deal of value.

1:54.7

And as we're negotiating deals between IMG negotiating all sports rights on an international basis,

...

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