Ari Emanuel: TKO Will Never Be For Sale

In promotion of his new book ‘Roll The Calls’, Emanuel has spent the past number of weeks on the interview trail.

During a recent interview with The Town, Matt Belloni asked Ari to name the ideal buyer for TKO.

“TKO.”

Belloni pressed Emanuel, saying that the company will surely be for sale one day.

“No, it won’t. No. Never.”

Continuing to push for an answer, Belloni brought up other media companies like Paramount and Amazon.

“No. No, not for sale. Never.”

Emanuel then proceeded to explain why the company will never be sold.

“Why would it be? Here’s the great thing. In 2016, Egon Durban, Mark, myself, Patrick, we saw where sports was going and saw where the streamers were going. At the time, people thought that the value — [that] we were crazy to pay what we did when we bought IMG [or] crazy that we paid the two cheapest acquisitions of all time in the sports space. As my son Leo says to me, Thursday is baby Friday. With AI, probably Wednesday is going to be the baby Thursday. There’s going to be more free time than ever. If we grow at 3% GDP, we’re going to have more money than we’ve ever had with AI in my opinion, and I agree with that. Take all the bad things that could happen, you’re sitting in a situation that there’s going to be more time for people to consume entertainment or [be] social animals. Go out, go to sporting events, consume sports. Sports is the greatest reality show of all time. Owning sports assets — now people are trying to own teams — we own four leagues. It’s an incredible asset. The value is going up and to the right. Egon Durban, myself — there’s no chance that that’s happening. Zero."