The Anti‑AI Bet: Why Live Sports Will Become More Valuable As Everything Else Gets Cheaper

Ari Emanuel has spent billions acquiring live sports and entertainment assets. Now, he's betting that AI-boosted productivity gains will help demand soar, sending prices higher.

(Ari Emanuel at UFC 300 via Chris Unger/Getty Images)

In between dad duty and holiday chores this weekend, I listened to the latest episode of the Invest Like The Best podcast with Ari Emanuel. The whole episode is worth a listen — Patrick O’Shaughnessy is a phenomenal interviewer, and Ari discusses the art of dealmaking, using his phone as a weapon, and his relationship with Dana White.

But specifically, one part of the conversation caught my attention. About 20 minutes into the interview, Ari mentions his “Anti-AI” bet. The TL;DR is that Ari has spent billions of dollars acquiring live sports assets like the UFC, WWE, Professional Bull Riders (PBR), and several major tennis tournaments because he believes the value of in-person events will rise as AI transforms content creation and frees up leisure time.

“The Netherlands just went to four-day work weeks. Drive times are now 11 am to 4 pm across America. Hotel bookings on Thursdays are way up. There are a lot more data points to this, but the weekend now starts on Thursday in 2025, maybe by 2027 it will start on Wednesday. We are social animals. What are you going to do? You are going to watch a lot of content because there will be a lot more content and it will cost zero (to make). You’re going to be going to concerts, going to stand-up, sporting events, or my live events that I just bought. So the value of that has to go up because there is only so much. That’s my bet.”

It’s easy to say that Ari is just talking up his book here. After all, the man who serves as the real-life inspiration for Entourage’s Ari Gold stands to make the GDP of a small nation if his vision for the future is correct. But that doesn't mean he is wrong either.

In fact, Ari’s vision for the future is quickly becoming the consensus among the brightest minds in sports. Pretty much every major sports investor I have talked to over the last year — streaming executives, team owners, private equity investors — believes AI will meaningfully increase the value of live sports and entertainment.

This thesis rests on three interconnected pillars: 1) AI-driven productivity gains are freeing up significant leisure time, particularly for high-income, skilled workers, 2) AI is commoditizing traditional content through cost compression and oversupply, and 3) live sports represent scarce, authentic, communal experiences that can’t be replicated by AI, making them increasingly valuable in a world drowning in synthetic content.

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Part I: The AI Productivity Revolution And The Liberation Of Time

The first part of Ari’s thesis is simple: the rise of artificial intelligence will create measurable productivity gains, translating directly into more free time for workers.

While AI is still in its early stages, we are already seeing this play out in real time. A recent study from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis revealed that workers using generative AI saved an average of 5.4% of their work hours in a typical week. For a standard 40-hour workweek, this translates to 2.2 hours of time savings per week. If you expand to AI power users (think: people who use AI daily), highly skilled workers across business, finance, management, and mathematics are saving 6+ hours per week.

Some people will inevitably leverage AI-boosted productivity gains to get more work done during the week. But that is still a relatively small portion of the total workforce, particularly in international markets like the European Union. Instead, the data indicates that most workers are now leveraging AI to regain more leisure time.

• The Netherlands has effectively switched to a four-day workweek model, with the average employee now working just 32.1 hours per week (the shortest in the EU).

• Kastle Systems, a key-card operator used in thousands of U.S. office buildings, says work attendance is now 40% lower on Friday compared to Tuesday/Thursday.

• GPS mobility data firms like INRIX say the traditional 9-5 commute has shifted to a 10-4 schedule. Morning peak trips (6-9 a.m.) are down vs 2019, but midday trips are up 23% and there are now as many trips starting at noon as at 5 p.m.

• Former Marriott president Stephanie Linnartz says that while Thursday was known as “checkout night” pre-COVID (as business travelers went home), it has now become a “check-in night” as leisure travellers arrive early for the weekend.

Data aside, it’s easy to see how this plays out long term. Artificial intelligence will lead to productivity gains. With fewer hours to work each week, employees will have more leisure time. Rather than sitting at home and doing nothing, people will crave a social connection, with travel, experiences, and content all becoming more valuable.

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Part II: The Commoditization Of Traditional Content Through AI

Many people will say that content is the most obvious beneficiary of this shift. If people have more free time, they will watch more movies and TV shows, listen to more podcasts, and spend more time on YouTube and other streaming platforms.

This is undoubtedly true to some extent, but it ignores one key point: Artificial Intelligence will also obliterate the cost structure of traditional content creation, leading to an oversupply of content and the devaluation of scripted entertainment.

Movie studios and production companies are already using AI to drastically reduce costs across scriptwriting, voiceovers, animations, set design, and editing. If a one-minute video previously took 2 days to create and cost $10,000, services like Synthesia, Runway, or Sora can now do it in minutes for $20 to $100. While some AI-generated content is still detectable today, it will soon be hard to tell what’s real from what's fake.

But AI isn’t just impacting video content. The four hours of freelance work at $175/article to write a 1,500-word blog post is being replaced by a $10-$15/month subscription to any major AI platform. An hour-long podcast on a specific topic can now be generated in minutes. Advertising agencies that charge $10,000 monthly retainers will cease to exist, replaced by in-house marketing teams armed with the latest AI tools. And every piece of content will soon extend beyond international barriers, as AI tools can quickly translate content into any language you want.

With AI costs plummeting 280x over the last 18 months — from $20.00 to just $0.07 per million tokens — this shift isn’t going to take 10-20 years to play out. It’s an exponential curve that democratizes content creation to unprecedented levels. The direct result is that near-zero production costs will lead to an explosion of content supply that far exceeds the human capacity to consume it.

• Spotify already has 100 million songs available today

• Hollywood is producing 800+ films annually

• Over 2 million podcasts exist worldwide

• YouTube adds 500 hours of video content every minute

• Netflix releases 500-750 new originals every year

Add in creator-focused platforms like Instagram and TikTok, which now average over 200 million video uploads per day, and it’s easy to see how cost reductions from AI could lead to an oversupply of content. However, supply alone isn’t necessarily an issue; the bigger problem is that media demand is also plateauing for the first time.

The average time spent watching online TV/streaming (1 hour and 22 minutes per day) has fallen 10 minutes from its 2022 peak. That’s because cheaper content generation prioritizes volume over quality, flooding the market to create a “paradox of choice.”

With more content available on more platforms, viewers are facing decision paralysis. Original content struggles to break through. Marketing costs have risen to achieve visibility in oversaturated markets. And with most subscribers consuming only a small fraction of the available content, vast (and expensive) libraries go largely unwatched.

As a result, consumers are increasingly seeking unscripted content that feels real, while entertainment companies allocate more capital to scarce assets, like live sports.

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Part III: The Unique Value Proposition Of Live Sports And Entertainment

Live sports are the perfect anti-AI bet because their characteristics not only make them immune to AI disruption but also make them more valuable because of it. While TV shows and movies prey on psychological behavior by deploying similar narrative structures (think: Hero’s Journey, Freytag’s Pyramid, etc.), live sports are genuinely unscripted. Outcomes are uncertain, and this unpredictability is core to their appeal.

Live sports represent one of the few remaining “appointment viewing” experiences, where audiences make a point of watching live at the time of broadcast. The fact that each game or event happens only once at a specific time creates a level of urgency and FOMO that drives immediate consumption and premium prices. Participating (even as spectators) in live events fosters stronger feelings of social connection, community, and belonging, qualities that are becoming increasingly scarce in a world run by AI.

Basic economic principles tell us that scarce goods with strong demand command premium prices, and there is no better example of this than live sports. Temporal scarcity due to scheduling constraints is part of the equation, but you also have to consider that in-person attendance is limited to a finite capacity and that only a tiny fraction of the population possesses world-class athletic ability. Superstar athletes cannot be replicated or AI-generated, and with peak performance windows typically limited to ages 20-35, the characters and storylines in sports are constantly changing.

As traditional content becomes abundant (approaching near-zero marginal cost through AI), the relative value of scarce assets like live sports must increase correspondingly. We are already seeing this play out with media rights: the NFL now generates $10 billion in media rights value annually for just 285 games, and spending on U.S. sports rights has jumped from $13.8 billion in 2015 to $30.5 billion in 2025.

But if Ari Emanuel believed that only sports media rights would increase as part of his anti-AI bet, he would have stopped after creating TKO, a holding company for the UFC and WWE. Instead, Ari has also acquired art shows, culinary festivals, ticketing companies, and holiday attractions like Hyde Park Winter Wonderland. Ari isn’t just betting that sports media rights will increase due to AI disruption; he believes anti-social AI outcomes will lead consumers to crave experiences over traditional content.

It sounds crazy today, but we will soon reach a point where social connection through live events is recognized as a public health priority. Research from Harvard’s School of Public Health indicates that social connection through live events helps reduce the risk of heart disease, anxiety, depression, and dementia, with the report also stating that loneliness and social isolation increase the risk of premature death by 26-29%.

Combining health-related benefits with an oversupply of mediocre content due to AI-related cost compression would have a profound effect on the value of live sports and experiences. Media rights will rise as sports become the last remaining source of unpredictability in an oversaturated content market. Ticket sales will go through the roof as venue capacity limits are reached amid increased demand. Luxury hospitality packages will sell for even higher prices, as AI penetration provides highly skilled, high-income workers with more leisure time than their low-impact counterparts.

Plus, luxury hospitality experiences provide fans with unique content of their own, creating a content production flywheel that relies on live sports and entertainment.

We are still early in this shift, but the signals are impossible to ignore. AI is accelerating faster than anyone expected, and the downstream effects on leisure time, content, and human behavior are already reshaping the sports and entertainment landscape. That’s why the world’s smartest investors are piling into live events — not because it’s a convenient narrative, but because the data is turning in their favor. And if the past year is any indication, Ari’s anti-AI bet won’t look contrarian for much longer.

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