Hollywood power broker Ari Emanuel is betting big on the theater.

The media mogul’s live entertainment business Mari Group on Tuesday said it had agreed to buy Britain’s ATG Entertainment from private-equity firm Providence Equity Partners. The deal values ATG at around £4.5 billion including debt, equivalent to roughly $6 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

ATG owns a raft of some of the best-known theaters on Broadway and in London’s West End as well as dozens of other playhouses across the U.S., continental Europe and the U.K. Its portfolio includes Broadway’s Lyric Theatre—home to “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child”—as well as historic West End houses staging long-running hits like “Wicked” and “The Lion King.”

The theater giant has been majority owned by private-equity firm Providence since 2013. Blackstone bought a minority stake in the business in 2024.

ATG has ridden a theater resurgence as attendance numbers have climbed postpandemic. The company reported an almost 13% rise in operating profit to a record £160.9 million—the equivalent of about $217 million—in the year to the end of March 2025.

Emanuel is best known as executive chairman of Hollywood talent agency WME, and rose to prominence guiding the careers of stars including Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne Johnson. He is said to be the inspiration for Jeremy Piven’s foul-mouthed agent character Ari Gold in the hit HBO show “Entourage,” which was based on Emanuel’s relationship with Wahlberg. He is also chief executive of TKO Group, the parent company of UFC and WWE.

Emanuel founded Mari Group in 2025 with capital from RedBird Capital, Apollo and the Qatar Investment Authority. The company has since built a global live-events footprint spanning sports, art and entertainment.

Mari’s portfolio already includes the Miami Open tennis tournament, the Frieze art fair and collector-car auctioneer Barrett-Jackson. In 2025, the company acquired digital-ticketing platform TodayTix Group to integrate the ticketing technology with its push into live performance.

In a statement Tuesday, Emanuel described the ATG theaters deal as “a long-term bet on where live goes next.”