If WME/IMG Co-CEO Patrick Whitesell was playing in a sandbox he would be the kid with all the toys. The Hollywood agency bought the global business last year, and on Wednesday, Whitesell issued his first public report card on Year 1.
“We’re really pleased with where we are,” he said. “We’re almost exactly a year into this and we looked at the first year and we had three or four objectives, to get in and get really smart about the various businesses that IMG is in, and to really understand them, and form a strategy on how we want to grow them. Secondly, was to look at the people who were running those and add on where we felt like either the resources weren’t there, or we wanted to add a new layer to it. The first year was really about getting that core strategy together, getting the people to understand where we wanted to grow and then, lastly, add some of the resources as we go into this next year and start talking about the synergies between WME and IMG."
The year was not without challenges, Whitesell said during a featured interview at the IMG World Congress of Sports moderated by CNBC media and entertainment reporter Julia Boorstin. Not the least of which was getting his hands around what is a vast int'l enterprise.
“We’ve gone from five offices at WME to 200 offices,” he said. “And a lot of the businesses on the surface seem very different.”
And WME took over a company that was reeling from the death of CEO Forstmann Little in '11. Whitesell said WME bosses were “concerned” about the culture of the company.
“When your CEO gets sick and you’re going through that it’s tough on any company to work in,” he said. “Obviously, when he passed away then you are a company run by an estate and a trustee, and really you’re a company for sale for two years. That’s an incredibly difficult environment to work in, and what amazed us about IMG is that in spite of all that headwind, they were doing really well. The business was growing and we found remarkable people there.”
PASSION AS A REQUIREMENT: What Whitesell and co-CEO Ari Emanuel found in the ranks of IMG was a “passion” for the seemingly disparate divisions.
“One thing we’ve found that connects everybody is that whatever area you work in our business, you have a deep passion for that,” Whitesell said. “I moved to L.A. and went in the mailroom because I loved movies and I wanted to work in the movie business. And if you go across every part of our company … the people who work in the golf business, first off, they love golf. They’re fired up that Augusta is this week. The people who work in college, they love college athletics. So that kind of passion connected everybody and I think that if you’re in this business, you have an affinity towards this.”
Whitesell said the first opportunity to flex WME/IMG’s synergistic muscles came with the Miami Open.
“It’s the first example of what WME and IMG are going to be able to provide and do together, and, I think, uniquely do as a company of one that could not have happened before. This year, in addition to great tennis and doing a great job putting that event on, we were able to offer other content and other offerings when you went to he tennis match. As an example, we have a big footprint in the food space, so some of our top chefs came down and we did a taste of Miami kind of experience. The chefs came, people got to meet them, and the food was unbelievable. So, in addition to tennis, you have that.”
Miami offered the chance to use several arms of the company to touch clients.
“What we found was when people love tennis they also share a passion for food and fashion and other things,” Whitesell said. “So to be able to go there and broaden that experience was great for our sponsor partners, and for the people who came and saw the event it was pretty spectacular. That was the first example of what we’re going to do and we’re very proud of it.
And plans are already in the works to bring another level. Next year, we’re going to bring music into it, and this kind of concept, hopefully, we’re going to be able to duplicate across a bunch of our different businesses.”
END-TO-END SOLUTIONS: That diversity is WME/IMG’s edge when putting together “holistic” strategies for clients.
“One of the things we’re hopeful we’ll be able to accomplish is that we’ll be able to to go to a big sponsor or advertiser and say, ‘You have your media plan, you’re always going to have that, but if you want to get around these live events and these assets that we touch we’re going to give you a holistic offering and we’re going to have a strategy for you around that and we’re also going to be able to execute that in a way that you couldn’t get from another company.’”
That integration is the company’s roadmap for growth.
In two to five years, Whitesell said, “Hopefully, you’ll see this integration and it will be kind of self-evident that when you look at what we’re doing and all these things we’re trying to integrate, that’ll be pretty obvious to you.”
And more toys in the sandbox are also likely.
“I think you’ll see additional acquisitions that will come under this footprint. I think the idea is that we’re going to build a company that is unique and nothing (will be) like it in the world. I think when you look at our position in film, television, books, commercials, and you add that with golf, tennis and all the sports we run internationally, fashion, food -- and if you can have all that organized, that’s a pretty unique place. Really, I don’t know how many companies touch all of those things in the way we do it.”
