MARI's Ari Emanuel Acquires Collect-A-Con: A Bet on the 'Fan Experience' Economy

A Small Deal, But a Revealing Strategy

MARI — a holding company founded by Ari Emanuel and Mark Shapiro less than two years ago — has just announced the acquisition of Collect-A-Con, a chain of trading card, anime, gaming, and pop culture convention events spreading across the United States. Financial terms were not disclosed. But behind what appears to be a modest deal lies the clearest strategic roadmap that Emanuel and Shapiro have unveiled since departing Endeavor's orbit: assembling live experience assets with loyal fan communities, then operating them as a long-term investment portfolio.

Collect-A-Con, founded in 2021, is expected to host 24 events in 2026 with over 500,000 attendees annually. That scale is modest compared to global entertainment titans. But the per-capita spending and dwell time at each event — typically lasting many hours — are the kind of metrics that experience investors covet. In a market where consumer attention is fragmented across TikTok, streaming, and hundreds of other apps, a format that can hold attendees 3 to 6 hours in physical space is a rare asset.

Who is MARI, and Why Are They Buying This?

To understand the Collect-A-Con deal, it must be placed within MARI's M&A sequence since its 2024 launch.

MARI was born when Endeavor Group Holdings — the empire Emanuel built through WME, IMG, UFC — completed a privatization deal worth approximately $13 billion led by Silver Lake. During the restructuring, a series of live events and lifestyle assets were spun out: tennis tournaments including the Miami Open and Madrid Open, the Frieze art fair chain, and a controlling stake in Barrett-Jackson — the legendary classic and collectible car auction house in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Since then, MARI has made three more moves:

• TodayTix — a Broadway ticketing platform, giving MARI control of a major theater ticket distribution channel in New York and London.

• Bucket Listers — a live event discovery platform with a young user database concentrated in major U.S. cities.

• Collect-A-Con — the latest piece, expanding into the fan culture segment with collecting characteristics.

The strategy becomes remarkably clear: MARI is not buying content (films, music, intellectual property), but rather buying physical gathering points for high-spending communities. Frieze attracts art collectors. Barrett-Jackson attracts car enthusiasts. Miami Open attracts luxury sports audiences. TodayTix attracts theater audiences. And Collect-A-Con attracts Gen Z and millennial fans of Pokémon, One Piece, Magic: The Gathering.

All share one characteristic: customers willingly pay premium prices to attend, and spend extended time on-site. This is an economic formula that contradicts the saturated streaming model — where Netflix, Disney+, and even Warner Bros. are struggling to retain viewers under subscription pressure.

Why the Trading Card Market Matters So Much

Collect-A-Con is not an isolated phenomenon. The global trading card market has exploded since the COVID era and shows no signs of cooling.

According to industry reports from Market Decipher and Arizton, the global collectible trading card market is estimated at approximately $13 to $15 billion in 2024, with double-digit growth forecasts through the early 2030s. Pokémon alone — the highest-grossing media franchise in human history by total revenue — has sold over 64 billion cards globally since launch. In 2023, The Pokémon Company reported trading card revenue increased 30% year-over-year.

In the U.S., this segment has three characteristics that make it attractive to institutional investors:

• First, it has matured financially. Professional grading companies like PSA and Beckett have transformed trading cards from children's toys into insurable, mortgageable, tradeable assets. A PSA 10-graded Pokémon Charizard can change hands for five-figure USD prices.
• Second, the fan community is extremely social-media-native. YouTube pack-opening channels attract tens of millions of views monthly. Logan Paul once paid $5.275 million for a Pikachu Illustrator card in 2021 — an event he himself monetized as content.

Third, offline events supplement rather than replace the online economy. This is the leverage point Collect-A-Con exploits: the "treasure hunt" experience that co-founder Matthew Weatherly describes. Customers pay admission, then continue spending on-site for cards, merchandise, food, and meet-and-greets with artists like Steve Aoki, Soulja Boy, Waka Flocka Flame.

MARI's M&A logic is therefore clear: they are not betting on the price of individual Charizards. They are betting on the infrastructure of a market undergoing institutionalization.

Emanuel and Shapiro: From Hollywood to the Experience Economy

It is noteworthy who is behind MARI. Ari Emanuel — brother of former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel — has been one of Hollywood's most powerful agents for over two decades. He built WME into the world's largest agency, then acquired IMG, then UFC, then took Endeavor public, then took Endeavor private. Mark Shapiro, former ESPN Chief Executive Officer and Endeavor President, is the operational partner who has accompanied Emanuel through these deals.

Why these two separated to launch MARI rather than remain with Endeavor post-privatization says something significant. Analysts in Los Angeles and New York interpret the move in two directions.

Direction one — specialization: Post-Silver Lake Endeavor will focus on UFC and WWE (now merged as TKO Group), namely wrestling and MMA. Lifestyle experience assets like tennis, art fairs, and classic cars belong to a different investment thesis — requiring operators who understand luxury brands, not broadcast rights dealers.

Direction two — value opportunity: After two years of high interest rates, many experiential assets are undervalued. MARI may be accumulating inventory at the bottom of the cycle, with expectations to repackage and exit via IPO or sale within 5 to 7 years when rates fall and IPO appetite recovers.

Both interpretations have merit. And neither contradicts the other.

The Risk: When Fan Culture Meets Institutional Capital

There is a paradox in this deal that must be stated directly. Collect-A-Con succeeds because it has a grassroots feel — built by fans, for fans. Matthew Weatherly and his team created the atmosphere of a community fair, not a corporation.

Entertainment M&A history is filled with examples of fan communities turning their backs when they sense their beloved brand is being "corporatized" too aggressively. San Diego Comic-Con has retained its reputation, but many smaller conventions have lost their vitality after acquisition by major corporations that imposed standardized operating procedures.

MARI appears conscious of this risk. Their statement emphasized that current leadership and the Collect-A-Con brand will continue to operate the company. This is a "hands-off" model many savvy private equity firms apply to cultural assets — keeping founding teams intact while providing capital for geographic expansion.

The real question is: when the target expands from 24 domestic events to international cities, can experience quality be maintained? Venue rental costs in London, Tokyo, or Singapore are many times higher than Dallas or Orlando. ROI pressure will push ticket prices and booth fees upward — and that is when fans start complaining.

A Vietnamese-American Community Perspective

This deal is not remote business news for Vietnamese Americans. Rather, it touches three economic segments where the community is directly participating.

First segment — booth vendors. Many small Vietnamese-owned shops in Little Saigon (Orange County), San Jose, Houston, and smaller Phước Lộc Thọ communities scattered across Texas and Georgia have participated and continue to participate as retailers at Collect-A-Con-style events. From anime figure shops on Bolsa Avenue to Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh card dealers whose owners are 1.5 generation or second generation, this is the petty commerce segment where the Vietnamese community has captured significant market share over the past decade.

If MARI expands Collect-A-Con to more cities and more frequent events, these dealers gain additional revenue channels — but also face higher booth costs when the corporation sets new pricing.

Second segment — audiences and collectors. Collecting culture around trading cards, anime, and manga has very high participation rates among young Asian-American communities in general and Vietnamese-Americans in particular. It is no coincidence that anime conventions in Anaheim, San Jose, Houston consistently have higher proportions of Asian-origin attendees than population average. Collect-A-Con expansion means more local events — but could also bring higher ticket prices when the asset falls under corporate control.

Third segment — trans-Pacific merchandise flows. A significant portion of anime merchandise and figures are imported from Japan, South Korea, China, and Vietnam. Manufacturing facilities for collectibles in Bình Dương and Đồng Nai have become suppliers for many small U.S. brands. If Collect-A-Con expands into Asian markets, the potential for Vietnamese suppliers to access U.S. distribution channels through MARI would increase — though this depends heavily on Washington's tariff policy toward Vietnamese imports, currently in an uncertain state following recent adjustments.

Portfolio Comparison: Where MARI Stands

What stands out is that MARI is building a multi-generational portfolio. Barrett-Jackson serves baby boomers. Frieze and Miami Open serve affluent Gen X and millennials. Collect-A-Con and Bucket Listers attract Gen Z. This is a hedging strategy against demographic risk — no experience company wants to depend on a single age cohort as they age.

Outlook: What Collect-A-Con 2030 Could Look Like

The most reasonable forecast for the 3 to 5-year trajectory:

• Domestically, the event count could grow from 24 to 40 to 50 annually, with expansion into secondary markets like Nashville, Kansas City, Raleigh. Total annual attendance could exceed 1 million.
• Internationally, the first target markets are likely to be London, Toronto, Mexico City — where Pokémon and anime fan communities have matured but event infrastructure remains fragmented. The Asian market will be more complex due to competition with Tokyo Game Show, Comiket, and strong local events.

Integration with other MARI assets is where it gets interesting. Bucket Listers could become the primary ticketing channel for Collect-A-Con. TodayTix has payment and customer identification infrastructure. Cross-selling between different fan segments (from theater to conventions, from tennis to car auctions) generates high-value consumer behavior data — an asset that over time could prove more valuable than any single event.

Exit scenario, if MARI follows the Endeavor playbook, the exit window via IPO or strategic sale would fall around 2029 to 2031, when the portfolio is large enough to command a valuation of billions of dollars.

Conclusion: When Community Becomes an Asset

The Collect-A-Con deal, on the surface, is just another entertainment business news item. Looked at more carefully, it signals a major trend of the 2020s: fan communities are being valued, packaged, and traded as financial assets. Emanuel and Shapiro are not the first to recognize this — Live Nation has done it with live music, IMG with fashion, old Endeavor with MMA. But MARI is the first company building a purely experiential portfolio, unburdened by content rights or artist representation.

The open question is whether this model survives a consumer downturn cycle. Experiences are the first thing cut when households tighten spending. But if MARI's thesis is correct — that the most passionate fan communities (tennis, classic cars, Pokémon cards, Broadway) will be the last to quit — then this is one of the smartest bets in the post-pandemic entertainment industry.

For the Vietnamese-American community, from dealers on Bolsa Avenue to figure shop owners in Bellaire, this deal deserves monitoring. Not because Collect-A-Con will change your life next week — but because it exemplifies how American institutional capital is penetrating cultural spaces previously considered too small for major players to notice. And when capital arrives, the rules of the game change.