Founders · 2 min instead of 1 h 24 m · Oct 7, 2026
Egon Durban's $400 million bid to end the IMG auction
Ari Emanuel
CEO, TKO
David SenraHost · Host, Founders
Has read an entrepreneur's biography every week for Founders since 2016.
About this segment
Chernin bid $1.9 billion for IMG, and Egon pushed to offer $2.4 billion. The point was to end the bidding in one move and not to remember the extra $400 million.
From “Building an Empire with Risk, Rage & 200 Phone Calls A Day | Ari Emanuel, WME & TKO”, Oct 7, 2026. Watch the full episode
“Egon goes and says, you're not going to remember this $500 million. $400. $400 million.”
Takeaways
- Bid high enough to take the deal off the table in one move
- You won't remember the extra money, but you will remember losing
- Plans for a deal often miss where the value ends up, like college at IMG
In this episode
Full episode- 16:04How Ari saved the ESPN deal by going crazy on purpose3:17
32:36Egon Durban's $400 million bid to end the IMG auction2:14
- 34:55Stop telling yourself stories and keep making the calls1:30Up next
Transcript
Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.
- 32:38
Peter Chernin was bidding on it. We were bidding on it. And they didn't want us. They definitely didn't want us, me. Why would they not? I don't know. I don't remember. Yes, you do. I swear to God, what the fuck do I give a shit? And I learned a ton from this. I think Chernin's offer was $1.9 billion. We offered $2.3 or $2.4 billion. And this was Egon's. Egon goes and says, you're not going to remember this $500 million.
- 33:09
$400. $400 million. You're never going to remember it. And let's make an offer that they can't keep on bidding us up. Let's just take it off the table in one fell swoop. Fucking genius. Like, incredible. I've not done these deals. He's done a million of them. We did it. We got the deal. Shapiro told me before, they don't want you. I said, the more zeros win. They cannot want us. And this was Egon's play, and it was perfect.
- 33:39
We had a huge fight, though. And this is what's also crazy about deals, and you only learn afterwards. We thought this deal would not be successful because we were trying to secure the college guys running college, George Pine and the head of college, because they had this whole college business inside of IMG at the time, American Comp. And it was a pretty heated argument about if we don't get those executives, we can't do this deal because college is so important.
- 34:11
Not that college went bankrupt, but college is worth like nothing inside the IMG, was worth nothing at the end inside the IMG business. Everything was the international business and everything we've done post that. And so, you know, again, that's why all the planning about what a deal does. Who knew Fox was going to sell? You know, all this says you just got to constantly be working at stuff. If you're not working and there's going to be huge mountains you got to climb and huge failures.
- 34:43
But if you believe in the strategy, you can get through it. This is what you were saying. We had this incredible conversation before we started recording.