{"id":186742,"date":"2025-10-09T00:26:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T00:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/186742\/"},"modified":"2025-10-09T00:26:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T00:26:09","slug":"ari-emanuel-launches-new-company-mari-with-tennis-tournaments-frieze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/186742\/","title":{"rendered":"Ari Emanuel Launches New Company MARI with Tennis Tournaments, Frieze"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAri Emanuel<\/a> has officially launched his new holding company, which will house many of the assets that used to be a part of Endeavor Group Holdings.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe new company is called MARI, and will house a number of significant tennis<\/a> tournaments, including the\u00a0Miami Open presented by Ita\u00fa and Mutua Madrid Open, as well as the Mubadala Abu Dhabi Open, Mubadala Citi DC Open, SP Open, and a number of other exhibition tennis events.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt also includes Frieze, the arts organization that Emanuel agreed to buy <\/a>earlier this year, as well as a majority stake in Barrett-Jackson, the automotive auction house and lifestyle brand. The deals closed Wednesday in conjunction with MARI\u2019s launch.<\/p>\n

\n\tEmanuel\u2019s WME and TKO partner Mark Shapiro will be a principal investor and board member of MARI, with Matt Cohn working as Managing Partner\u202fand\u202fBen\u00a0Enowitz\u00a0joining as CFO. Barrett-Jackson founder and CEO Craig Jackson will also remain in his role.<\/p>\n

\n\tEmanuel, of course, is also CEO of TKO and executive chairman of WME Group (he is also a freshly-minted podcast host<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\n\tThe investors in the venture include a veritable who\u2019s who of names and companies in the private equity and venture capital sectors, including Apollo,\u00a0RedBird\u00a0Capital Partners,\u202fQatar Investment Authority,\u202fHSG, IMI\u00a0media group,\u00a0Ares\u00a0Management\u00a0funds,\u202fDr. Patrick Soon-Shiong,\u00a0a16z Growth,\u00a0Nancy Zhang, FORTA Advisors,\u00a0Main Street Advisors,\u202fCauseway Media Partners,\u00a0Gannet Capital, Eric Schmidt,\u00a0FMZ Ventures, Sideline Group, Curated Wealth Partners,\u00a0Gaurav Kapadia,\u00a0Bulat\u00a0Utemuratov,\u00a0\u00a0and Sanjay Govil. It also includes athletes like NBA stars Luka Don\u010di\u0107, Anthony Edwards\u00a0and WNBA star Sabrina Ionescu.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor the Miami Open acquisition specifically, the ownership group behind the Miami Dolphins, Hard Rock Stadium and Miami Grand Prix are also joining the consortium. The Miami Open currently takes place at the Hard Rock complex.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLive events and experiences have never been more powerful,\u201d said Emanuel in a statement. \u201cAs people increasingly value experiences over things\u2014and as hybrid work and AI give us more time to enjoy them\u2014sports<\/a>, art,\u00a0lifestyle,\u00a0and entertainment are becoming even more essential. At MARI,\u00a0we\u2019re\u00a0building on the global impact of Frieze and the success of the Madrid and Miami Opens to create new ways for audiences to come together and share their passions.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tMARI launches after Endeavor went private in a $25 billion deal with Silver Lake earlier this year, with most of the talent agency assets (minus some of its sports representation business) renamed as WME Group. IMG, On Location and PBR were sold to TKO Group Holdings, which shares ownership with WME but is run as a public company, and the remaining assets were sold off piecemeal, though many were acquired by Emanuel, as was the case with the tennis and Frieze events.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe are excited to be a key partner to Ariel Emanuel, Mark Shapiro, and their team as they build out a portfolio of experiential assets in the sports and live events industries\u2014two key areas where our firm sees strong, continued growth. Apollo Sports Capital will work closely with the\u00a0MARI\u00a0team\u00a0to help unlock value across the existing asset base, as well as explore\u00a0additional\u00a0opportunities in live events and experiences,\u201d added Apollo partner Rob\u00a0Givone.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cRedBird\u00a0has\u00a0enjoyed a multi-decade partnership with Ari and Mark, and we are excited to join them again in creating MARI,\u201d added\u00a0Gerry Cardinale, founder and managing partner of\u00a0RedBird\u00a0Capital. \u201cAnchored by the iconic Miami and Madrid Tennis Opens and Frieze, MARI is well positioned from inception to capitalize on the secular growth and convergence of premium intellectual property across sports and live event Entertainment\u2014areas where\u00a0RedBird\u00a0brings domain leadership and business building expertise.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAkin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP acted as legal adviser and Goldman Sachs & Co. and\u00a0LionTree\u00a0Advisors LLC acted as financial advisors to\u00a0MARI\u00a0in connection with the transactions.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ari Emanuel has officially launched his new holding company, which will house many of the assets that used…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":186743,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[82254,101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-186742","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-ari-emanuel","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-tennis","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}