I don't know how much he cares about theatre, but he clearly cares about the entertainment industry as a whole. We could have woken up today to news that this was being bought by a faceless private equity portfolio or a Trump loyalist. I would much rather these assets be owned by Ari, whose job is entertainment, even with his reputation as a beancounting taskmaster.
(Politically, Ari is a moderate Dem who has greased palms of people on both sides of the aisle and has repeatedly called for Netanyahu's ouster. His brother Rahm was Obama's first chief of staff, mayor of Chicago, a Biden ambassador to Japan, and is supposedly exploring a 2028 presidential run.)
It's also encouraging to see the line in the press release that he plans to keep the existing ATG leadership team in place.
As for duplicate business entities, layoffs, and slimming-down:
- I assume TodayTix and ATG Ticketing will become one, now that MARI owns both. Which is fine by me. Both are extremely user-friendly.
- ArtHouse is small enough that it could be absorbed into a different agency, or it could separate from MARI.
- AKA is fully independent as far as I know?
- Sonia Friedman's company shouldn't be impacted at all, since ATG was a nearly-silent investor.
- ATG controls a lot of venues around the US, but they don't have the robustness of Nederlander or BAA. So we could see some sales there, or an attempted pivot to more concerts and fan events, instead of national tour stops. (Most of them already do a lot of different types of programming to keep the lights on as many nights a year as possible.)
Updated On: 8/11/26 at 11:50 AM
