 |
Said Tellem of his plans at WMG, ”I want
to build something that endures.” |
Bob Myers remembers having some trepidation the first time he entered the office of his future boss, agent Arn Tellem, about 10 years ago.
“First time I met him, I had an image of a [Drew] Rosenhaus,” said Myers, who now co-represents about 20 NBA players with Tellem. “I pictured an agent with three phones on his ear, saying, ‘I don’t have time for you, kid.’ But I walk in, and there he is, sitting back in his chair with his peach sweater on. He was very soft-spoken and very nice and I was just amazed.”
Of course, after Myers had started working for Tellem full time, it was not long before he witnessed “meltdowns” at least a couple of times each week.
“He was known for outbursts, mostly for NBA or MLB general managers or the like,” Myers said. When Tellem does get angry “he can usually attach it to a principle about what he feels … and 99 percent of the time he is right, because he is very smart. He can be very mild mannered, but if you cross a line … like a team that doesn’t back up what they said they would do.”
In recent years, Tellem has “tempered his volatility,” Myers said. But if a team executive tries to go back on his word, “he will fight
tooth and nail.”
Tellem, the most powerful agent in the NBA and one of the most powerful agents in baseball, is a guy who is not always what he seems. And he has more than a few qualities that differentiate him from other successful sports agents.
Among all agents, Tellem has been a particular nemesis to teams and leagues. NBA Commissioner David Stern blamed him, as well as agent David Falk, for stunting labor progress during the 1999 NBA lockout. Years earlier, Tellem led a successful effort to remove Simon Gourdine as executive director of the National Basketball Players Association because, among other things, Tellem viewed Gourdine as too management friendly.
Last year, New York Yankees boss George Steinbrenner said that he was “not happy” with Tellem because Tellem client Jason Giambi never used the word “steroids” in a public apology purportedly about him being sorry for using steroids.
But there are owners who do like Tellem, including Chicago Bulls and White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, who said, “His key to success is that he cares. He cares about his clients, and that comes through.”
Reinsdorf added, “He is pretty good at squeezing the last dollars out” during a contract negotiation. “There are different techniques in negotiation, and Arn has a way of making people want to give him money because they trust him.”
He was No. 1 in 2004.
Now where is Peter Johnson? | The current changing of the guard in the agent business was set in motion when Peter Johnson (No. 1 on our 2004 ranking of the Most Influential Agents in Sports) left IMG in January.  | | Johnson |
Johnson quit as CEO of sports and entertainment on the same day that IMG owner Ted Forstmann named George Pyne as president of sports and entertainment. His departure triggered clauses in the employment contracts of IMG Football agent Tom Condon and IMG Baseball agent Casey Close, which allowed them to leave IMG as well.Creative Artists Agency, which had for years considered entering the sports business, dove in, sources say, only because Condon and Close unexpectedly became available. In the last two months, IMG also lost its prominent NHL player practice, which was also picked up by CAA. Johnson, as mysterious as ever, could not be reached for comment, but rumors abound about what he will be doing next. The most prevalent talk is that he will end up as head of the new, burgeoning sports group at CAA. There also has been talk that he could take a job as president of an NFL club. For now, sources say, Johnson and his wife, Stephanie Tolleson, former head of tennis for IMG who quit a few weeks after her husband, are traveling the world. Included among their travels was a June Alaska cruise that was attended by about 40 current IMG staffers and dubbed “the mutiny cruise” within the walls of IMG. — Liz Mullen | |
Picking No. 1 Selecting the Most Influential Agent in Sports is a subjective task, but it was especially difficult this year, as the agent business has not seen such turmoil since the late 1990s. Within the last six months, IMG, long recognized as the U.S. leader in representing top athletes, has abandoned its star-filled team sports practices, and Creative Artists Agency, the most powerful Hollywood talent firm, has picked up all of those practices and is eying more acquisitions. Wasserman Media Group, which earlier this year hired Tellem, the former SFX Sports CEO, to lead its athlete management division, isalso in talks about acquisitions.
Still unclear is what agency will emerge as the new leader in representing sports talent in the United States. Octagon, which has built a multisport athlete representation practice over the last decade with a major presence in all four major team sports, tennis, golf, Olympics and action sports, already has what CAA and WMG seem to want.
Octagon’s president of athletes and personalities, Phil de Picciotto, was given serious consideration as the No. 1 agent, as was Scott Boras, arguably the most powerful agent in any single sport.
In the end, though, the committee picked Tellem, who is leading WMG’s effort to build a larger, global athlete representation business, based on his track record of dominating the representation of NBA players and his strong MLB practice.
Many factors were considered in naming agents to this list. The representation of young, superstar athletes, such as LeBron James, Reggie Bush, Sidney Crosby and David Wright, was given more weight in the decision, as these athletes are seen as having a major effect on their respective leagues for years to come.
The committee tried to take a forward-looking view on which agents are likely to continue to be influential. For example, agents who represent players with collective high salaries (see chart, this page), but have not signed new major clients for a while, such as basketball agent David Falk and football agent David Dunn, were given less consideration.
Gaining power
Although a number of agents have done well in representing athletes in more than one sport, no one has ever taken it to Tellem’s level. When he was CEO of SFX Basketball and SFX Baseball, he either personally represented or supervised agents who represented an astounding 16 percent of MLB players and 18 percent of NBA players. Since he moved from SFX to WMG this year, he left a number of agents and players behind, but he still represents about 15 percent of NBA players and a star-studded group of MLB players, includingHideki Matsui, Mike Mussina, Chase Utley and Nomar Garciaparra.
 |
Tellem is focused on building WMG into a
leader in basketball, baseball and soccer. |
Tellem was one of a number of powerful sports agents who sold their companies to larger corporations during the late 1990s and early 2000s, but unlike agents like Falk, Leigh Steinberg and Alan and Randy Hendricks, he came out of his corporate foray more powerful than he was when he went in.
Tellem thinks he was able to thrive in a corporate structure partly because he began his career at a prominent Los Angeles law firm, Manatt Phelps, and was accustomed to dealing with the big egos of other partners.
Another factor, Tellem admits, is the fact that his wife, Nancy Tellem, is president of CBS Paramount Network Television Entertainment Group. “That may be more important,” Tellem said. “Every day of my life I am challenged at home, and life with my wife is one of compromise. She has an equally demanding job, if not more. We have been able to balance career and family and be there for each other for 30 years and it has not been easy.”
Now, as head of WMG’s Management Group, Tellem faces a new, fierce competitor. A mere three months after Tellem sold his business to WMG, announcing that the firm planned to grow even bigger through acquisitions, CAA began its own quest to be the dominant multisport agency. Sources said that at least a couple of major agents, including NFL agent Tom Condon and NHL agents Pat Brisson and J.P. Barry, held talks with WMG before selling to CAA.
About those talks, Tellem said, “We talked to people because we want to learn. I think we made a decision that we are not going into football.” Instead, he said, the company is focused on “being a leader” in three global sports — basketball, baseball and soccer — and in action sports. WMG already acquired the largest American soccer player representation practice and may be announcing more acquisitions in the next few months, Tellem said.
A lasting presence
In addition to plans to build a global sports agency, Tellem said he wants WMG Management to last. “I never wanted to be one of those agents that when I retire, my business dissolves. I want to build something thatendures.”
It is his wish that at least one of his three sons join the company. He is grooming a number of agents, including Joel Wolfe in baseball and Myers and Thad Foucher in basketball, as future leaders of the business.
But one notable young agent that Tellem developed, Rob Pelinka, did not follow his mentor to WMG and stayed behind at SFX. Pelinka is best known as the agent for Kobe Bryant, who was originally a Tellem client but became a Pelinka client after what sources said was a falling out between Tellem and Bryant. Pelinka would not comment for this story.
 |
| Tellem’s clients include Hideki Matsui, shown above with Tellem during a news conference last year announcing Matsui’s deal with the Yankees. |
Tellem said, “Whenever I hire someone, I do it with the idea that it will be a long-term relationship, and for the most part I think I picked the right people, and in this case it unfortunately didn’t work out. The key to working it out is that someone has to accept being part of a team and working within a team concept. … As difficult as those decisions may be, it becomes clear that it is better to sometimes move on and separate when your goals and values are not the same, so your executive team remains solid, even when it means losing some clients and revenue along the way.”
Sonny Vaccaro, Reebok’s director of grassroots basketball and a friend of Tellem’s for about 20 years, said, “I think that was the most hurtful thing that Arn had to go through, the end of the relationship between Rob Pelinka and Kobe Bryant and him. It didn’t end the way it was supposed to. Rob Pelinka was in a position a lot of people would have given their left nut for … and that had to hurt Arn more than anything.”
Vaccaro introduced Tellem to Bryant, and in fact introduced Tellem to a number of players over the years. Vaccaro, a confidant to many NBA stars before they became stars, said back when he met Tellem, he was just starting out and Falk had all the players. “I wanted someone else to beat David Falk,” Vaccaro said. He said he also wanted to help Tellem “because I liked him. Because he was unprententious.”
“He was the most unlikely pit bull I ever met in my life,” Vaccaro said. “He looks like a nerd, but I have seen him with owners and he is so prepared. He is a bulldog.” Vaccaro said he has been in Tellem’s office during the NBA lockout and other times “when he met some of the biggest people in the world. He is, in my lifetime, the most dogged person I have ever met.”
