Tilman Fertitta

He ran game on the game and ended up becoming truly a mogul in the literal sense of the word.

That, that, that we would, i- in the same way that we would refer to, to Warren Buffett or Tilman Fertitta.

Maybe not quite to the scale of them, but rather large, and a guy that could make or break entire careers of other people who have a body of work.

It's amazing to think.

U.S.

Ambassador to Italy, Tilman Fertitta, arrived in Trieste aboard his 77-meter yacht, Boardwalk, as part of a tour celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States.

During the visit, he praised the city's beauty, strategic port, and business opportunities before hosting a reception aboard the vessel.

You should be very proud of the Italian military as well as the sophistication of the law enforcement here in Italy.

We share ownership in the zip line.

So my neighbor over here at the Golden Nugget, um, you know, he's a very prolific owner, Tilman Fertitta.

He owns, he owns the Houston Rockets.

He owns Landry's Seafood.

Usually a couple pushes in there.

Yeah, that excludes us.

Uh, we've had a couple years, couple years where it's been up like that, but usually 55/35, somewhere in that neighborhood.

Yeah, I mean, you gotta, you gotta be good, but then you gotta get hot, you know? You just gotta, you gotta g- got, you gotta have a streak.

Absolutely.

Which is why this won't work in Houston because Fertitta doesn't want to give up dates.

I'm actually, for the first time, I'm all in on Austin getting this.

Because I think in the long term, it benefits me.

Well, look, if past is ever prologue, there's two companies that entered into fragmented sports spaces and were able over time to create some sort of ecosystem where again, the branding on the companies is significant, the best fighting the best is significant.

Those two companies, by the way, UFC, keep in mind, everyone looks at the UFC now and sometimes forget about the hard work that Dana and the Fertitta, Fertitta Brothers being across it prior to the 2016 sale, and Dana along with the UFC team and the TKO team, how they sort of took that MMA business, which at one point was pride fighting and won and a company called Elite XC and something I think called the IFC and all of these other MMA enterprises, which again, created a fragmented space and boom, they simply outworked everybody and developed a better product.

If you go 20 years plus prior to that, What was the other company that did it? WWE, WWF at the time, and obviously I was not here for that, but you had a wrestling system, certainly in the United States and internationally, that was fragmented, that had different territories, there wasn't one world champion, and yes, there's predetermined outcomes in WWE, as everybody knows, but you had a founder who came in and said, hey, we gotta actually make this a reliable system here where sponsors know that we have monthly events, monthly big events, now called our Premium Live Events, PLEs.

We have weekly shows.

And then it's like, it was obstacle after obstacle after that.

So then I train the Fertitta.

So Patrick Fertitta, the owner of the Rockets.

He was a very good client of mine.

Had my back through everything.

And then him and his wife, they started it.

And that's how Congo started.

And, you know, talking about the post-hoc, post-hoc was so important and COVID because That proved to me, because my first business meeting was with Tillman Fertitta.

who wrote a long dissertation and had the great honor of meeting Pope Leo with my wife.

and her daughter, the ambassador to Italy, Tilman Fertitta's wife.

And so I got to speak to the Pope during the Milan Olympics, and it was quite an honor.

But Pope Francis and I had been scheduled to enter, and so I was disappointed not to be able to do that, and obviously terrible that he was suffering, and then unfortunately passed away several months later because of that ailment.

It's Michael Patrick with you since we're speaking of travel and cruises and so forth.

Have you been paying any attention to Tilman Fertitta? Tilman Fertitta has a net worth of $11.1 billion.

He's one of the wealthiest people ever to be named a U.S. ambassador.

He is the U.S. ambassador to Italy.