Ari Emanuel
👤 PersonAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
When I started, I represented the WWE and I represented the UFC.
When I signed the UFC, it was on Spike.
We had a whole division inside the company looking at ratings.
And all of a sudden they came and they showed me, here's this thing on Spike and here's the numbers.
And then I realized, wow, this thing's ratings are starting to move.
So I figured out, oh, it's Dana White and the Fatitas.
And I represented the WWE and they're close enough.
So I called them.
Yeah.
And eventually I got a meeting and I completely screwed up the meeting.
I was talking about the WWE.
It was just bad.
It was one of my worst signing meetings.
And I just kept at it because I knew based on their ratings and what they were getting as a license fee, a domestic license fee, it wasn't enough money.
And I knew if I got my hands on it, I could do some stuff with it just as a representative.
So eventually after doing a couple of things, he signed with me, the organization signed with me.
They were making $15 million a year from Spike.
And I think the first deal I made at Spike, I increased it to 75, something like that.
And we made a video game deal, which they'd never had.
And after 20 years, we moved it to Fox for $150 million.