Man, that was real. That was a real intro, buddy.
We are here. You know, the reason why I was so excited to hear that you had agreed to come here is that I've listened to you give interviews sometimes live on stage and you mix it up. You stir it up, Mark. You know, you're not like some wallflower. I like to give it to you straight.
Well, let's start here. You were front court, front and center for the most seismic sporting event in the last 50 years of New York sports history. Maybe since the Reggie game, maybe. You were courtside for game four, the crazy 29-point Knicks comeback. Tell me what that experience was like because we're going to get into what makes sports this live experience so indelible. You had every emotion under the gamut there.
Yeah. Look, I'm from Chicago originally, and I grew up a lovable loser. Yeah, Chicago Cubs fan. And in 2016, after 100 plus years, I got my dream come true with my son. My oldest son was with me and saw the Cubs win the World Series. To have a rinse and repeat of that was insane. And I'm not obviously I didn't grow up in New York. I go to a lot of Knicks games and I'm a fan of all those players and their stories. How could you not be? But there's nothing like an event of that magnitude at Madison Square Garden. I mean, the true mecca of arenas and stadiums for that matter. So to see that place light up like that was just extraordinary.
I don't want you to rat anybody out, but please feel free.
Who left? Did people leave?
This was not an NBA finals with LeBron and the Miami Heat.
29 points. Larry walked out.
Larry David wasn't walking out like
All right. Larry David, who WME represents a client, wanted to walk out very badly. Now, he's a lifelong Knicks fan to be clear. Yeah. And he was in a lot of pain. And I think he muttered a couple, "Get me out of here. Get me out of here." He wouldn't get out of his seat. He wouldn't break even half a smile. He was incredibly inconsolable. But I will tell you, I walked over to him at one point and said, "Larry, I was here earlier in the playoffs." Yeah, when the Knicks were down 22 to the Cavs, which is one of the greatest comebacks and he goes, "This isn't the Cavs." So, it was something to see. And then he was crying when they won. I mean, he and Johnny Mack next to each other. They were just elated.
You saw new sides of people's personalities that night. I think it was just kind of remarkable. This world you occupy now with TKO. I want to ask you, you are coming off a pretty mega weekend in Las Vegas where you reintroduced a major star in MMA with Conor McGregor and it didn't go very well. I mean, Conor reinjured himself. He had been out of the sport for about five years and he reinjured I believe it's an ACL. I don't know if that's confirmed.
But it sort of underlined what makes sports great is you really just don't know, right? It sucked that night, but this stuff is not scripted. And what is it like to experience that on the other side of it where you just got to feel it's just a bummer all around?
No. Look, but by the way, isn't that what's great about sports? I mean, it's not always the cheers and the exhilaration and the celebration. A lot of times it's just as visceral. It's because it's a sad story, right? It's a depression. It's a we lost, we didn't get our revenge. I mean, in that game, the 29-point game, one of the reasons the Knicks turned that around is the first half, they couldn't stop complaining about the call and neither could the Garden. I actually thought something bad was going to happen. I told Adam Silver this, I know he was here earlier, like some fan was going to jump off and hit a ref or something. Oh gosh, it was that bad. And apparently or reportedly at halftime, Mike Brown told his team, "Stop complaining about the calls and play basketball." And that's what needed to happen. But that's what sports makes you feel. And I would just say in an era where we have political division and constant stress and information overload, sports is really a shared cultural language. Yeah.
Where we can connect, we can mentally escape, we have a sense of belonging, and if you do it right, it really sustains emotional well-being. So, it's a great place to be right now. This is so interesting to hear you talk about this because at the same time we have this totally divergent economy based around artificial intelligence and it's developing ways in which we're going to outsource human connection to machines. Do you think that in some ways what you're doing is kind of counterprogramming all of that? Look, I think and this brings in the William Morris part of my job because you're feeling it in all walks of life and all businesses. You're feeling it in Hollywood and you have different players that are nervous. Writers, actors, am I going to be replaced?
These are existential worries. These aren't like, oh, I haven't had a hit in a couple years. There are a lot of businesses that you simply cannot replace a human being. You can't replace soul. That's really what it is. And I will tell you that this really pertains to live events in sports because at the end of the day, you have a 4-day work week. You have AI that's going to
Wait, wait, wait. 4-day work week. Is everybody on that?
That's not at our company, but let's call it what it is globally. And that's by the way, it's less in terms of when they come into the office, right? COVID has changed everything and the bottom line and maybe the pendulum needed to swing a little bit, but it has swung too far and we're all working on it. But what it will do is it will increase discretionary time. And in increasing discretionary time that will increase solo digital consumption, individual consumption. And you know what that does after a while? That will strengthen the demand for physical aggregation. People, audiences, fans, consumers, they will crave physical aggregation. And there's no substitute for live events. Sports is at the epicenter.
Yeah. I mean, we already saw this quite a bit, haven't we? With the incredible boom in concerts coming out of the pandemic and the pent-up demand that was there for these shared communal experiences. Just on that issue, what do you think about the hot topic of pricing, ticket pricing? Concerts have gone from, you and I probably went to a few MLY cruise shows for 25 bucks, right?
You too, though. I went to a lot of YouTube.
Okay. So, probably didn't cost you more than 50 bucks for a U2 ticket and now it's much more of a destination type event. It's a travel event for many people who go to another city to see this. Is that market sustainable? I mean, obviously there was this pent-up demand for it. Do you see that leveling off at all?
It's superstars. And if the event, the players in the event, the story behind the event has enough demand.
I think it's kind of absurd the whole World Cup thing. I have to be honest with you.
No, no, I don't. Actually, if you don't like it, don't go. You can't afford it, don't go. Watch it on your TV. It's for free and it will be a very good experience. It's not the same as being there, but we, as you know, we own On Location inside of TKO. So, we are the official hospitality and experiential world for quite a while.
Yeah. And we package all of these experiences. And I can just tell you, I was talking to Jay Williams, ESPN and the former Duke basketball guard who we also represent, full disclosure, but who I know was here today, and he was behind stage and he said, "Look, I went out and bought tickets for my wife and myself for Sunday."
I'm going through On Location because it's something I don't want to miss. Sure, that's what it is. If you want to wait for the Odyssey till it's home and free on whatever streaming platform it's going to be, you can wait. But if you want to be first, if you want to be water cooler talk, if you want to be the one that doesn't have FOMO, you're going to pay and you're going to pay a premium.
But Mark, I'm in the media. We want to complain about everything. Okay? Give me a break here. I mean, we were sitting out.
I thought we were talking about six weeks out. You know, everybody was sitting there. You're absolutely right. Complaining about the ticket prices, predicting swaths of empty seats.
Hotels. Yeah. And obviously that has not borne out. There have been some empty seats here and there, but by and large these stadiums have been packed, very noisy, very passionate. Did FIFA kind of crack something a little bit here?
Look, they crushed it. You have to give Gianni a lot of credit on that front and his team Matias and just up and down the line. They know what they have and they brought it into the US and of course Mexico and Canada into these fantastic stadiums with all these accoutrements and a terrific time zone for the US obviously which drives chatter. Let's not forget that. And they got lucky also. You always have to have a little luck that the right teams, England, US, Mexico, Argentina, these teams won, they advanced, and it's absolute lightning about it. And I'll tell you, I'm a part owner of LAFC and MLS, and they just nailed it so much that it's going to ultimately bleed into more success for Major League Soccer. I mean, great production, great talent, great storylines, great venues, and the fans ate it up, and it was so diverse. Yeah. I went to four games. I'm going to go on Sunday. But walking in, I mean, the US is a melting pot. And these social clips of "hey, the US isn't so bad" and "look at I can get a gallon of milk." Just really good for us.
And I will say as somebody who's gone to a bunch of games too, kids, lots of kids, lots of families, which is not something you see at lots of sporting events often, and not a lot of blowouts in the games that matter. I mean, the England game yesterday was sensational. I wanted England at the end of the day. Yeah. And I was saddened by it and I called my wife to check in and she couldn't talk to me because she was so upset and you know Messi's done it again. But great. That's what it brings out. That's what sports brings out. That kind of flair and it brings out argument and argument sells.
I want to bring you back to the UFC to talk about an event that you had a very unprecedented event about a month ago now. UFC Freedom 250 which was the UFC event which took place on the south lawn of the White House. I was there. You were there. You had a better seat than I did. The word that I keep thinking is just surreal. I'd never seen anything like this. I mean, it really was this giant apparatus that was built in what, a month, on the White House lawn, and they pulled it off with a giant helicopter circling above us and all this crazy stuff.
Never hit us. Never. Not even a drop of rain. They told us the greatest meteorologists in the world,
from the military and the White House sat in a trailer for three days and predicted. And when I say they said it's going to rain at 2:16 tomorrow, it rained at 2:16. And they told us it's not going to rain the day before, it's not going to rain the day after, but it's going to rain non-stop in your 5-hour event. So, we were on the phone with David Ellison and Paramount. Are we moving it? Are we delaying it? And we got hit and we got hit with nothing. Look, you called it. Here's what I will tell you. Everyone was so concerned about policy and right and left and politics and are you a supporter of the president? Are you not? It was none of that. It was a total spectacle. And by the way, it was about as patriotic as anything I've ever seen. If you saw the stories and the features there.
Sure. And you had the armed service members around.
We celebrated 250th anniversary. We had almost 1,200 members of the military there who are the most raucous in the crowd. And you just kept looking like to the White House like really in disbelief. Is that really our backdrop?
I felt the crowd was a little quiet at first because they weren't sure if they could scream on the White House lawn and then by the end of it it felt like a fight.
The F-16s fly over and the B2. I mean, I really, you know, and it was just and we have a lot of truthfully a lot of talent at WME that we invited and like, well, I don't want to get into and we couldn't sell them on. It's not that. And if you watched it, you had some FOMO. You wanted to be there. There's no substitute for being there. And that's what also what sports brings.
Take the clock back though to the first time you heard either it was Dana or Ari or someone say like, "Hey, we're thinking about doing a fight at the White House." Like, what went through your head? Were you like, "Oh, rock on. Let's do it."
Ari and I were sitting next to each other at one of our UFC big numbered events. Yeah. And the president was there. And by the way, to his credit, he never gets up. I don't know how he can't go. I have to go to the bathroom right now. Okay. Like he goes six hours and doesn't get up. Doesn't move.
Mark, we're looking for a TikTok snackable content and you just right there.
It's very shareable. Please, it'll go viral just like the Stevens. Look, I'll tell you this. It was there. It was just kind of racing and everybody just wanted to get a feel for it.
And oh, I'm sorry. And what happened at the event was that he leaned over to us and said, "The president wants to do this at the White House." And you're just, what are you talking about? Like, croquet. He wants to do lawn tennis, lawn bowling. What? What do you mean? No, no. He wants to, he's a huge fan of the UFC. He wants to help us curate the talent, the actual fights, and he wants to celebrate 250 with an event at the White House. And immediately you're just thinking about, be honest with you, the business and the brand and the White House stage. Immediately you're like, if he's serious, we're all over that. Before you ever talk about cost or how you get it done or infrastructure or mechanics, you just immediately see this is going to be a stage like you've never had. And we said, tell him if he's serious, we'll follow up next week. Do you think it's a one and done or do you think it's
done? No. No. We're never doing that again. Never.
But why do you say that if it was such a smash? Just it was a smash because it was a one and done.
It's listen, it's at the end of the day, it's still one massive event. We did it. Just like the Sphere. We've done it. We made our mark, right? I don't think there's going up from there. We were first mover. It was super innovative. Massive global audience by the way. And news outlets covering it. Wall Street Journal is covering it not just for sports, they're covering it for news and for business. So, kind of been there, done that, and it takes a lot to pull off. We got lucky with the weather. Let's not try and press our luck and it's expensive.
