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Sports a star in ‘Powerhouse’ history of CAA

New division has extended agency’s influence, author says

James Andrew Miller co-wrote “Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live” and “Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN,” books that made news by pulling back the curtain on well-known institutions whose inner workings weren’t well-documented.

Now Miller is flying solo with his just-published history of Creative Artists Agency. In “Powerhouse: The Untold Story of Hollywood’s Creative Artists Agency” ($32.50, Custom House, 707 pages), he explores a firm that started as a small-time rebellion among talent agents and morphed into an agency that now commands extensive power and influence in movies, TV, music and, as of the past decade, sports.

CAA’s gleaming headquarters in Century City, Calif., is a power hub for movies, television and, now, sports.
Photo by: NEWSCOM

Again with “Powerhouse,” Miller proves successful gaining the trust and confidence of a wide range of sources, which include CAA executives and staffers past and present, rivals and clients. Among them: LeBron James, Mick Fleetwood, David Letterman, Cher, Pat Riley, Ari Emanuel, Jimmy Sexton, Tom Hanks and Michael Eisner.

Miller spoke with SportsBusiness Journal about “Powerhouse,” the unexpected rise of CAA’s sports division and more. Following are excerpts from that conversation.

ON WHAT WAS INTRIGUING ABOUT THE PROJECT: I did an outline of the book before I started and I always find these outlines at the beginning of the book to kind of be like a Rorschach test because, with (“Live From New York”), the outline wound up mirroring a lot of what the book was. And with (“Those Guys Have All the Fun”) there were certain things that had to be adjusted — things that I thought might be bigger wound up being smaller, things that I thought might be insignificant, the more reporting I did, the more I realized there was a lot of information that hadn’t surfaced before.

MILLER
In the case of CAA and CAA Sports, I must say that I didn’t really plan on spending as much time on CAA Sports as I wound up doing in the book. It was a surprise and some of the reporting I did wound up being a surprise to some people inside the building.

Because a lot of people weren’t aware of how successful [CAA Sports] had become. … It was launched in 2006, so it’s not like it’s been around for a long, long time.

We’re talking about a division that, in its first decade, winds up outstripping the movie division and the TV division and the music division that, at least two of them, have been around since the beginning [of CAA in 1975].

ON HOW CAA CO-FOUNDER MICHAEL OVITZ MIGHT HAVE RUN AN NFL TEAM IF HE COULD HAVE BROUGHT ONE TO L.A.: I think he would have been more in the Jerry Jones-Robert Kraft mold. That’s not to say, by the way, that those two are the same. I just mean that they’re visible; they want to be involved with what’s going on with the league. I would include Pat Bowlen in that, as well. Michael would not have been a quiet, background kind of owner.

ON HOW REPRESENTING STAR ATHLETES HELPS PRODUCE OTHER REVENUE: When somebody like J.J. Watt signs with CAA, I think they’re not just signing because they feel they can get a better deal on their next contract. There would probably be a lot of other people that might be able to do the same for them. Who knows?

But I think the fact that they want to be vertically integrated, they want to be with these companies and with these endorsements and the access CAA has to that.

By the way, I’m not saying WME-IMG doesn’t have access to that either, but my only point is, I think that that’s part of the calculation. That the companies now have structured themselves in such a way that they’re not just about transactions and contracts. It’s about so many other things.

I was blown away when I interviewed Dwyane Wade and he talked about this conference that he has every year with his sponsors. CAA goes down there and it’s unbelievable. CAA puts this conference together and they all go down to Turks and Caicos and hang out — it’s unbelievable.

You’re probably not going to get a conference like that with a guy named Morty who’s making your deals from a rotary telephone. “OK, Dwyane, you’re all good now. We’ll talk in three years when your deal is up.” Those days are gone.

ON THE ART OF THE LEVI’S STADIUM NAMING-RIGHTS DEAL: [CAA head of sponsorship sales Paul] Danforth … is one of those guys, when the oxygen masks come down from the ceiling in the airplane, you better make sure he’s got one. He’s incredibly talented and there are probably a lot of reasons for CAA Sports’ success, but he’s definitely one of the top mentions.

CAA Sports’ Levine (left) and Nuchow put the focus on the firm rather than themselves.
Photo by: TONY FLOREZ PHOTOGRAPHY
There’s a lot of different ways to go about this business. It’s a subculture, right? Selling these naming rights, you have to be incredibly imaginative.

And there’s no playbook you can Xerox from stadium to stadium. Each one is its own case based on geography and culture and people involved. The fact that they recognized that is really important.

ON HOW SELLING SPONSORSHIPS AT YANKEE STADIUM STARTED IT ALL: If you’re going to start a sports business and you’re able to engineer a deal with the New York Yankees in the company’s infancy, that’s pretty good because it’s all about pedigree. It’s almost like a stamp of approval.

ON ACCESS TO CAA SPORTS FOR THE BOOK: I will say this: CAA was somewhat reticent at the beginning. They didn’t ask me to do the book, I didn’t ask them for permission to do the book. I think they have been traditionally pretty secretive about their own business and they’d rather talk about their clients, but, particularly in the world of sports, [CAA Sports executives] Howie [Nuchow] and Vino [Michael Levine], they, from the beginning, were incredibly accessible, really helpful. They wanted me to understand CAA Sports. They spent a lot of time with me and I think they just wanted to make sure that, since I was doing it, that I got it right. I was incredibly grateful. I got to meet many, many people in the sports division and talk to them. They have a hell of a team there.

ON HOW NUCHOW AND LEVINE RUN CAA SPORTS: The thing about Howie and Vino is these are two guys who didn’t have huge profiles in the sports business before they got to CAA Sports. These guys had worked in sports and they had proven track records, but they weren’t exactly marquee names. And they don’t need to pound their own chests. But you kind of wind up being surprised because they don’t really talk about themselves — they’re focused on making sure things work on the inside rather than creating big profiles of themselves on the outside.

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