Laundry Service, the Greg Norman production company and the French soccer agency Mondial Promotion are only the latest additions to the Wasserman portfolio. There will be more, including potentially several later this year, although nothing is imminent. “Our intention is to acquire two to five a year for the foreseeable future,” Wasserman says. “I’m not expecting anything in the next 60 days, but it isn’t for lack of trying. We’re definitely in acquisition mode.”
Some of the new businesses get folded into businesses in the parent company. Others continue to stand alone. Inevitably, the relationships that each of them forge will intersect and occasionally double back on each other.
That’s where the compartmentalizing that Wasserman learned as a child pays off. He looked down recently and realized he was writing a $270,000 check to a golf agency that would be considered a competitor if this was the only business that he was in. But the competitor in one deal, he knows, may be the partner in another.
With the company’s long tentacles, potential conflicts abound. Casey’s zeal to maintain long-term relationships — coupled with a fundamental sense of honor he attributes to his grandfather — soothe any discomfort his partners might have. “I trust him to disclose his own conflicts,” says NBA Commissioner Adam Silver. “With Casey, you don’t just feel he has his best interests at heart. With the experience of well over 20 years, I can say that he also has my best interests at heart. He’s competitive, but there is never the sense with Casey of win at any cost. I know there have been pitches he has made to clients that he has not won that he probably could have won if he’d presented himself in a certain way, but he chose not to.”
“His philosophy is, transactions make you a lot of money in the moment,” says Elizabeth Lindsey, the managing partner of Wasserman’s consulting division. “But relationships generate more business over time.”
Lindsey plays a game with Wasserman, trying to come up with someone he hasn’t connected with through one business deal or another, or L.A. social circles, or lately the IOC. “The entire time I’ve worked with him, there was one time — one time! — that he couldn’t get me a meeting,” she says. “And he was like, ‘But I can make a phone call.’”
“I tried to stump him with a sheikh once, from the royal family in Doha. And I said, ‘Do you know so-and-so?’ And he said, ‘Yeah.’ And I’m like, ‘Dammit. Of course you do.’”
— Bruce Schoenfeld
