Ari Emanuel on His Reasons Why He Will Never Sell TKO

A recent episode of The Town with Matt Belloni podcast featured TKO CEO Ari Emanuel as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Emanuel’s thoughts about who would be the ideal buyer for his TKO Group company in the future.

“TKO.”

In response to comments from host Belloni about the idea that the TKO would surely be for sale one day, Emanuel responded back stating:

“No, it won’t. No. Never.”

In response to host Belloni’s comments bringing up other media companies like Paramount Skydance and Amazon, Emanuel responded back reiterating that he has no desire to ever sell TKO.

“No. No, not for sale. Never.”

Emanuel also gave his thoughts about his reasons why TKO will never be sold to another company while he is around.

“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.”

TKO Group is the current parent company of WWE and UFC.

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com