2017 has been a rough year for sports journalists, with layoffs at notable places like ESPN, Fox Sports, Sports Illustrated, Vice Sports and Yahoo Sports.
Despite that tough market, one talent agent is doubling down on sports journalism. CAA’s Matt Kramer, the son of an ink-stained wretch, is filling his client list with “old-school” sports reporters such as ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, The Vertical’s Shams Charania and Yahoo’s Pat Forde.
“I love working with old print journalists,” said Kramer, whose client list also includes NFL Network’s Mike Garafolo, NBC Sports’ Chris Mannix, Fox Sports’ Jason McIntyre and the New York Post’s Joel Sherman. “I grew up in that world.”
Kramer’s dad, Larry, was a metro editor at The Washington Post and executive editor of the San Francisco Examiner through the 1980s, so journalism was a dinner table topic during Kramer’s childhood, he said.
It was that journalism background that enabled Kramer to land his first client, Wojnarowski, back in 2008.
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Kramer (center) with his father, Larry, and client Kristen Ludlow of NBA TV and TNT.
Photo by: MARC BRYAN-BROWN |
At the time, Kramer was in his mid-20s and working in PR for
Career Sports & Entertainment (now
CSE), which represented several college coaches. Wojnarowski, who worked for Yahoo Sports at the time, frequently would call Kramer to confirm rumors on some of his clients, which included coaches such as
Doc Rivers and
Sam Mitchell.
“Once he called about a client we had that was getting fired,” Kramer said. “Adrian knew about it and called me even before the agent was told about it.”
Kramer wasn’t an agent at the time, but knew he wanted to get into that side of the business. He set about to persuade Wojnarowski to become his first client. After nearly a year of recruiting, Wojnarowski agreed. Kramer’s sales pitch was simple. He convinced Wojnarowski that he understands journalism and knows sports media.
“I wasn’t sure that I needed an agent,” Wojnarowski said. “I eventually came to a point where I decided I did. Matt grew up in the business, and I always felt like he knew what was important to me, understood what I did and valued what I did.”
Kramer almost immediately sat down with Dave Morgan, who was then the executive editor of Yahoo Sports, and negotiated a new deal. For Kramer, the negotiations with Morgan felt a lot like the dinner table conversations with his father two decades earlier.
Earlier this year, Kramer orchestrated the deal to bring Wojnarowski to ESPN. Kramer negotiated with the recently departed digital executive John Kosner to complete that deal.
Despite the problems in the business, Kramer remains optimistic about the market for sports journalists.
“It’s not dead,” he said. “Great journalism is more important than ever. Journalists have to be excellent at something. It’s the people in the middle that are having trouble.”
