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Founders · 3 min instead of 1 h 24 m · Oct 7, 2026

How Ari saved the ESPN deal by going crazy on purpose

AE

Ari Emanuel

CEO, TKO

  • David SenraHost · Host, Founders

    Has read an entrepreneur's biography every week for Founders since 2016.

About this segment

With a $300 million deal in hand, Dana White demands 10 episodes on ESPN instead of 8. Ari screams at the buyer, and Bob Iger quietly grants it. It shows how a negotiator uses controlled anger when he has no fallback.

From “Building an Empire with Risk, Rage & 200 Phone Calls A Day | Ari Emanuel, WME & TKO”, Oct 7, 2026. Watch the full episode

“You've got to break stars. You're going to launch stars. You need stars to put it behind the paywall so that people buy the paywall.”
AEAri Emanuelat 17:58 · Founders17:58

Takeaways

  1. Dana White refused the deal without 10 episodes on ESPN
  2. Ari argued stars need ESPN exposure to justify the paywall
  3. Iger had already told his team to give them the 10
Watch 3:17 from 16:04

In this episode

Full episode

  1. 16:04How Ari saved the ESPN deal by going crazy on purpose3:17

  2. 32:36Egon Durban's $400 million bid to end the IMG auction2:14Up next
  3. 34:55Stop telling yourself stories and keep making the calls1:30

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

  1. 16:07

    exactly what AT&T wanted to do with TNT that's what the conversation was with AT&T if they could have closed that deal as we're pitching I'm here, Mark Shapiro's there Bob Backish is there I get a WhatsApp from Kevin Mayer that says, the price we want, you have a deal. $300 million. Yeah. I slide the phone over to Shapiro. He's pitching his heart out. I'm pitching my heart out. At this point, he was pitching.

  2. 16:35

    He looks down. He's still pitching. I'm like, meeting over. We got to go. Why not show it to these guys? Do you want to match it or what? We get into the car, because I had the deal I wanted, which was an incredible deal. Okay. It hit the number that was in our pro forma. Okay. We had four months left until it was going to be a nightmare. We get in the car. They're in the plane, Iger, Kevin, and we're negotiating.

  3. 17:04

    We're going back and forth. And over WhatsApp, we're negotiating deals. It was eight episodes on ESPN. The rest behind the wall on ESPN Plus. They were just launching the SPLs, et cetera. Cut to, we get back to the office. We call Dana. You know, we're all sweating bullets. It's not healthy. And we say, it's 80 episodes. Dana goes, no, I'm not doing that. I love him so much. And he has pushed me so hard and made me better, Dana.

  4. 17:31

    I go, what are you talking about? He goes, I'm not doing it unless we have 10. And I said to him, we have nobody else right now. He goes, I don't care. I'm like, I don't care. What are you talking about? Cut to, I had no move. No move. I get Kevin on the phone. I go crazy. This happens several times in the book. You're like, OK, I'm going to just go crazy. And so explain to people that haven't read the book yet what going crazy means.

  5. 17:55

    Well, I said, you motherfucker. I need 10 fucking episodes. I can't do this. You've got to break stars. You're going to launch stars. You need stars to put it behind the paywall so that people buy the paywall. You need it to be on ESPN so they understand the sport. And I just gave them this whole story, which was actually true. Slam. Shapiro, I think he turned as white as this chair. Right? And he's like, we have nothing.

  6. 18:26

    What are you doing? Come on. They're not going to blow this deal. They want the deal. We're making one move. If we can't get it, we'll call Dan and we'll figure it out. Cut to Bob Iger's credit, who was, you know, he started out in boxing. You know, he actually loves combat sports. Bob Iger. Was it ABC? What was he doing boxing at? It was ABC. Okay. Yeah. Way back in the day. Yeah. Yeah. And unbeknownst to Mark and I at the time, Bob kind of told us later, he says to Jimmy Potara, yeah, so Jimmy was on the plane too.

  7. 18:58

    Just give him the 10. Figure it out on the schedule. I didn't know that. Kevin calls back. We have the 10. Dana's happy. Boom. We're off to the races. And, you know, luck has it. Skipper got in trouble. And then we go in. I was going to say, we're not off to the races yet. Because then you're like, what about these nice little paper?