MARI Acquires IMG’s Arts, Entertainment & Action Sports Events from Endeavor

Ari Emanuel’s MARI announced a major acquisition in early November 2025: the purchase of two significant portions of IMG previously owned by Endeavor—specifically the Arts & Entertainment events portfolio and its Action Sports division. Key event brands transferred include Hyde Park Winter Wonderland (annual footfall ~3 million), the Taste Festival series (e.g. Taste of London), the U.S. Open of Surfing, and the Nike Melbourne Marathon. These add substantially to MARI’s mass-participation, live-consumer event offerings.

This acquisition is part of a deliberate roll-up strategy by Emanuel, consolidating live-events, lifestyle and culture under the MARI umbrella. Earlier moves by MARI include acquiring Frieze (art fairs), Barrett-Jackson (auto auctions), a tennis portfolio encompassing the Miami and Madrid Opens, and TodayTix Group (ticketing platform). These deals are backed by large institutional investors (Apollo, RedBird, Qatar Investment Authority, etc.) and are being executed rapidly since Endeavor’s privatization in March 2025.

While deal values are undisclosed in this specific transaction, earlier ones provide some context: Frieze was bought for about $200 million. MARI supposedly operates with ~$2 billion in equity commitments from investors. The absence of disclosed financials for this IMG deal creates uncertainty around margins, leverage, and valuation multiples.

From a strategic perspective, several implications arise:

• Scale & geographic breadth: MARI’s footprint now spans multiple continents and event verticals—art fairs, fitness and endurance, festivals, culinary experiences—allowing for cross-promotion, sponsorship scalability, and diversified revenue streams.
• Risk diversification: By encompassing both cultural/lifestyle events and action sports/mass participation, MARI hedges against slumps in any single category. Seasonal properties like Hyde Park Winter Wonderland complement action sports events which have different cycles.
• Operational integration challenges: Managing a diverse portfolio of live events globally involves logistics, local regulation, talent/licensing rights, event safety, and complexity in revenue models (ticketing, sponsorship, concessions). MARI will need strong infrastructure and possibly face capex and working capital demands. The TodayTix acquisition suggests MARI is investing in technology and audience direct-to-consumer platforms to support these operations.
• Monetization and margin pressure: These are live experiences with variable costs (weather, regulation, staffing), and while event scale helps, competition in the festivals, sports, and culinary event spaces is intense. Establishing profitable per-event margins at scale will be critical. Sponsorship and brand partnerships are likely linchpins.
• Regulation and reputation risk: Global events face regulation around crowd safety, environmental impact, local government approvals, and sometimes political scrutiny. The reputation stakes for high-visibility properties are large.

Open questions to watch closely:

• What were the financial terms of the acquisition—purchase price, assumed liabilities, ongoing operational cost burdens?
• How will MARI integrate and consolidate back-office, legal/licensing, tech infrastructures across newly acquired properties?
• What will the mix of revenue streams be (ticketing vs sponsorship vs licensing vs merchandising) and which properties will drive most profits?
• How will MARI allocate capital and manage cash flow across events that have differing seasonal but potentially lumpy revenues?
• What is the competitive response from other event operators/festivals, and will there be regulatory pushback in regions concerning monopolistic scale in live events?

In sum, this acquisition moves MARI closer to a diversified global live-experience conglomerate. Execution risk is high, but so is the potential reward if scale, brand, and market timing align.