Patrick Whitesell had been married to ‘well-traveled’ Lauren Sanchez since 2005. They had a couple kids along the way and were moving and grooving relationship-wise into 2018.
During the marriage, on the professional side, Whitesell and his partner, Ari “Gold” Emanuel (along with Endeavor’s majority owner-Silverlake) plotted to take their talent/sports/etc agency ENDEAVOR public long enough for Silverlake to sell a bunch of stock to offset their significant investment, for Patrick (and Ari) to become instant ‘hundreds-of-millionaires’, to gaslight retail stock investors into thinking the stock price would go up meaningfully, and to then take Endeavor private again.
All things were a go as the IPO train started going down the tracks in anticipation of a 2019 announcement.
Enter the fly in the ointment: Jeff Bezos. The then-married Amazon founder and one of the world’s richest people befriended Lauren Sanchez and Whitesell…and then rumors swirled in 2018 that the Bezos-Sanchez (‘Banchez’) friendship had become more than that and Bezos filed from divorce from his wife in early 2019.
Meanwhile, Whitesell and Sanchez were on the skids by then. They were going to get divorced and Whitesell had a huge financial decision to make. What to do about the IPO?
If he went through with it as planned, Sanchez would get a shit ton of cash in assets. If Whitesell canceled it during the asset divvy, it would be a terrible look and could be seen as bad faith by a judge.
Whitesell and Emanual hatched the perfect scheme and play the role of the mice to Sanchez’s cat.
The Endeavor IPO (to go public) filing became public knowledge on March 29th 2019.
Lauren Sanchez planted her flag by filing for divorce less than one week later, thinking the IPO was coming and she would get a piece of the action before the final divorce decree was signed.
An official IPO statement was filed on May 23rd 2019…followed months later by the official launch date of the IPO identified as September 26th 2019.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Whitesell and Sanchez were fighting over assets and Sanchez was dragging her feet for the IPO to happen so she would have more leverage.
Instead, what happened next on what should have been Lauren’s magical day on September 26th 2019 was the biggest rug pull in history. Under the guise of ‘market instability’, Endeavor pulled out of the stock sale launch just hours before the launch. HOURS!!!
Sanchez ‘the cat’ had been outdueled by the mice and knew it. Without knowing when, if ever, the IPO would happen, she had to agree to whatever she could get and signed the final decree three weeks later on October 18th 2019, left holding a much lighter financial bag.
Flash forward to April 28th 2021 when Whitesell’s divorce woes were long behind him…Endeavor went public and the plan works brilliantly all the way through the agency officially going private (as scheduled) on March 24th 2025 (likely after Sanchez and Bezos had secretly married…but, we’ll find out eventually)… …and Whitesell lived happily ever after with his new wife (and the longest pre-nup document in history).