He has juststepped asideas one of the most influential talent agents of his generation, having shepherded the careers of everyone from Ben Affleck to Matthew McConaughey to Angelina Jolie, but Patrick Whitesell is in no mood to get wistful.

My lifes work has been building this company, so in that regard yes, its an end of an era moment. But Im looking at this more as my third act, Whitesell tellsThe Hollywood Reporterin his first on-the-record interview sinceSilver Lakes $25 billiondeal to take Endeavor private closed,which resulted in Whitesell exiting the agency to run two different ventures an NFL sports management company that he spun off from WME and a sports, media, entertainment investmentplatform backed by a$250 million investment fromSilver Lake private equity. The real inflection point of my career wasthesuccessful merger with William Morris, he said referring to the 2009 merger betweenEndeavor and the William Morris Agencywhich createdWilliam Morris Endeavor (WME) Entertainment and catapulted Whitesell and co-CEO Ari Emanuel into the stratosphere of the industrys most powerful operators. That really was the launching pad for us to do everything else as a company. And I thought, well, Id like to do that again, not exactly in the same way, but in a different way.

In talking to Whitesell, you get the sense that even at the age of 60 and with a net worth in the hundreds of millions he received a $100 million cash payment, and will roll over about $266 million in equity after the close of the take-private deal hes hungry to build an empire of his own and to do so far from the shadow and purview of his now erstwhile partner Emanuel.

Whitesell was happy to discuss his new ventures, the dramatic and at times painful transformation of the entertainment industry which made him fabulously wealthy and the ascent of sports as the dominant cultural product of our time. But the one topic that he declined to discuss were the rampant rumors swirling about the deterioration of his relationship with Emanuel and how that may have contributed to his departure.

Patrick Whitesell and Ari Emanuel during a 2006 Pre-Oscars party. J. Vespa/WireImage Patrick and Ari had one of those timeless runs. Theirs was one of the great industry marriages and its over. And make no mistake its a divorce, said a top manager who knows both men personally and was addressing one of the worst kept secrets in town.Whitesell joined the Endeavor Talent Agency as a partner in 2001 when he jumped from CAA and ever since then has been the yin to Emanuels yang.Despite being on polar ends of the Meyers-Brigg personality spectrum,the pairsettled into a high functioning and lucrative partnership for almost two decades. But in recent years relations between the two men have soured.

Multiple sources tell THR that the discord between the two men wasnt rooted in any one rupture, but rather a series of disputes which compounded during Emanuels tenure running Endeavor as a publicly traded company. One of those disputes centered on the decision to bring inLloyd Braunto run the agency in 2019, which Whitesell did not support according to several sources.To their credit, added the manager theyve acted like two responsible adults who have children, and they figured out how to separate without much bloodshed.

What inadvertently helped cool tensions was the decision bySilver Lake co-CEO Egon Durban toacquire a 7.5 percent ownership stake in Las Vegas Raiders in November. That deal requiredEndeavor to divest itself of the WME Sports football representation department which is made up of eleven agents and around a hundred athlete and coaching clients and which Whitesell was more than happy to scoop up and spin off into a separate company. The football business was not something that was on my radar or something that I was anticipating. And when that came along, I got really excited about that for a bunch of different reasons, he said.

Few could fault Whitesell for seeking a fresh start with a focus on sports and live events. Whether it was the pivot to streaming, the COVID pandemic or the dual strikes,the entertainment industry has been facing an economic slowdown that has resulted in tens of thousands of layoffs. The flush-with-cash industry that Whitesell and his peer group helped shape starting in the 1990s bears little resemblance to the one that exists today. The days when big shows like E.R. and Friends dominated, that space has gone away. But whats that done to appointment television? Everybody talks about how live experiences are everything and the NFL in that regard is the biggest sports property in the world by far, says Whitesell,who will be self-financing the company with an eye towards setting up an equity pool for his agents and employees.I just think theres a huge opportunity to help these athletes and our clients build out businesses beyond football.

Part of the reason that Whitesell is self-financing the WME Football venture is to avoid triggering any of the ownership regulations that the NFL and its biggest union imposes.None of the$250 million that Silver Lake has committed to Whitesells investment platform can go towards his sports management company. The two ventures must remain independent of one another.Last year, the NFL loosened its ownership rules toallow private equity to own as much as 10 percent of a teamand by divesting of WMEs football clients, Silver Lake has met the requirements to allow Durban to maintain his ownership stake without running afoul of the leagues ownership rules.

But theunionthat representsplayers,the NFL Players Association, has its own criteria when it comes to conflict of interest, and it has yet to weigh in on the spinoff of WME Football. Whitesell still owns a large amount of Endeavor stock and a source with knowledge of the NFLPA agency regulations suggested that that could pose a problem for the union.(A spokesperson for NFLPA declined to comment beyond saying that the union was aware of the new arrangement and was looking into it.)Asked about any potential problems down the road with the NFL or the players association Whitesell says, Theres nothing Im anticipating that well do that will run afoul of the NFL. Nothing.

As for his investment platform, Whitesell islooking to make minority investments in a range of industries. He didnt rule out potentially investing in a management company but said that would not be a priority. I know people are rolling up management companies right now. There are other people doing it but thats not what Im setting out to do, hesays. Due to his ownership stake in Endeavor, the one restriction hes abiding by is that if he invests in a production company, he will not exceed the state-mandated 20 percent ownership cap that agencies are required to say under.Beyond that, he says,there are no restrictions.

It was Endeavor, led by Emanuel, that ushered in the era of private equity taking stakes in legacy entertainment companies. Starting around 2011 Endeavor went on a buying spree acquiring everything fromthe Professional Bull Ridersto the Frieze Art Fair. Whitesell was there for all of it and the hits and the misses were a litmus of leadership and culture, he says.For example, when Endeavor purchased theglobal sports and media companyIMG in 2013 there was a leadership vacuum at the top due to the recent death of its chairman and CEO Ted Forstmann.We walked into a situation where there was a lot of work at the top to make sure that we put the right people in the right roles. And a lot of that was taking some people that were there and putting them in different roles and bringing people from the outside. So that was a lot of work to get that one together, he said. Compare that to Endeavors acquisition of the UFC in 2016. We were very fortunate because of the work (the Fertitta brothers and Dana White) had done. We bought a great company that had a great culture and was thriving and its continued to thrive. Dana and many others are still there at the helm, he said. So ideally you would want to find more companies that are set up like that from the get-go.