You are reading an exclusive WrapPRO article for free. Want to level up your entertainment career? Go here for more information.
Endeavor Executive Chairman Patrick Whitesell is set to leave the company he co-created and led with Ari Emanuel, taking with him the football division of WME Sports, which he is buying from Endeavor and will run along with a $250 million media investment platform, TheWrap has learned.
Meanwhile, as Endeavor is expected to finalize going from public to private company status by the private equity giant Silver Lake on Monday, Emanuel is looking to step aside as CEO.
Whitesell is expected to leave his role as executive chairman and the board of directors. Emanuel is expected to change his leadership role but remain on the board. Mark Shapiro serves as president and COO of Endeavor, and Christian Muirhead and Richard Weitz have been serving as co-chairman of the agency business, which will be the main focus of the company.
Endeavor declined to comment for this story. An individual with knowledge of the matter said that Emanuel would be “stepping up not stepping away.”
Endeavor needs to divest itself of football representation to be in compliance with NFL ownership rules regarding team ownership. Silver Lake CEO and Endeavor board chairman Egon Durban is a private investor in the Las Vegas Raiders.
Endeavor announced about one year ago that Whitesell would launch a media company backed by a $250 million investment from Silver Lake that will focus on investing in sports and media-related ventures. An individual close to Whitesell confirmed that the platform has been funded, but the fund has not announced any investments to date, nor does it have a name.
Whitesell’s move comes as the $20 billion-plus NFL last August loosened what had been very tight, long-held restrictions on team ownership rules by allowing private equity for the first time to own up to 10% of NFL teams. WME Sports represents NFL players including Joe Burrow, Justin Jefferson and Nick Bosa. As part of a deal with the NFL reported by Sports Business Journal, WME is separating its on-field football representation from WME Sports to be compliant with the NFL’s conflict-of-interest rules.
Whitesell is expected to take with him the team at WME football. Whitesell will remain a significant Endeavor shareholder and continue to advise his high-profile actor clients, which include Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Denzel Washington, along with their WME teams.
The imminent privatization of Endeavor is a watershed moment for Emanuel and Whitesell’s relationship, a partnership that in many ways reshaped the ambitions of Hollywood talent agencies. They co-led the merger of Endeavor with the William Morris Agency in 2009, creating WME.
They ran WME as co-CEOs for several years, through acquisitions and multiple name changes, but Emanuel has eclipsed his one-time colleague and emerged as one of the most powerful figures in entertainment.
The shift also comes at a moment of change for other Hollywood agencies, as the longtime CEO of UTA Jeremy Zimmer stepped down this week after 13 years.
The past several years have been a tumultuous period of growth and retrenchment at Endeavor, which went public by IPO in 2021, but never managed to convince Wall Street that it was a proper brand or an entertainment company with a clear path of growth. Emanuel led Endeavor as a public company, and presided over significant acquisitions including IMG, the sports entertainment ventures UFC and WWE, which he rolled into TKO Holdings.
Endeavor reported revenues for 2024 of $7.1 billion, up from $5.5 billion in the year before. The core talent representation side of the business, comprising WME, reported revenues of $1.7 billion, up 9% from 2023.
Last year the shareholder that has backed Emanuel, Silver Lake, moved to take Endeavor private. Lately Endeavor has been busy divesting various holdings, including selling IMG, On Location, and Professional Bull Riders to publicly traded TKO, with the aim to re-focus Endeavor back on talent representation. TKO is majority-owned by Endeavor.
While Emanuel has enriched himself – and Whitesell – enormously in his transactions with Silver Lake, the two are known to be estranged. For years, Emanuel was the foul-mouthed, frontal assault id of the agency, while Iowa native Whitesell played the role of the taming influence, or so it seemed.
That dynamic has been gone for many years, say those who know them both.
“Patrick feels like Ari has become more demonic” since Endeavor and TKO became public, said a top executive from a rival agency. But, the insider added: “Patrick has made so much money as a result of his relationship with Ari,” one agency insider explained. “He gets to walk away and have people say: I’m a good guy.
Emanuel is also the CEO of TKO. Nick Khan became the president of WWE post-merger and Dana White — close confidante of President Trump — has since served as CEO of the UFC.
Silver Lake had no comment for this story. Whitesell did not comment.
