If he has not already, Alan Zucker is going to start getting really comfortable on stage. Excel Sports Management took home the honors in the Best in Talent Representation & Management category of the Sports Business Awards for the second straight year, and Zucker accepted the award for the second time in his short 13-month tenure as a partner. “The double barrel!” he exclaimed to his celebratory team backstage. In a year when the talent agency expertly managed Yankees SS Derek Jeter’s retirement tour and helped launch his post-retirement website The Players’ Tribune, Zucker swears the team at Excel did not realize what a good year they had going until much later. “You don’t reflect upon it until you have to put the presentation together, and that’s when I think you look back and say, ‘OK, that was a good year,’” Zucker said. So what’s next? “The Trifecta,” he says, predicting big things for the boutique agency in an era of consolidation. He and partners Jeff Schwartz, Casey Close and Mark Steinberg will continue focusing on making sure they have “the right clients,” he said.
