Sports media agencies sit between events and the broadcasters, "slicing and packaging thousands of hours of footage and auctioning the bundles to the highest bidder in each country," according to Moore & Massoudi of the FINANCIAL TIMES. Broadcasters are "paying record prices for sport," because it is "the essential glue that bonds subscribers to their cable television packages." This has "led investors to these agencies:" IMG was bought for $2.3B by Silver Lake and William Morris Endeavour in '13; and Infront Sports & Media was bought for $1.2B by Dalian Wanda in February. These deals have "put pressure on the final member of the big three," MP & Silva, to seek outside investment. MP & Silva CEO Marco Auletta said that the company's founders -- Italians Riccardo Silva and Andrea Radrizzani -- "are willing to sell up to 40 percent of the company's shares" at an equity valuation of over $1B. Auletta: "We have had a lot of interest in the past from investment funds. But until now we have not been interested. Now funds are saying to me they are impressed with what we have done and they believe we can keep going with their support." IMG is now the "biggest agency in the world", while Wanda, "with the help of Infront, wants to create the world's largest sport company," having also bought a stake in Atlético Madrid and the Ironman triathlon competition. Auletta acknowledged that the need for scale is driving MP & Silva's decision to raise funds, and said, "Infront and IMG can invest a lot of money. They have acquired some properties that they are losing money on. We are not interested in this approach, but we want more money so that we can buy more properties ourselves" (FT, 10/11).
