With the movie and TV businesses "facing an uncertain future," WME and CAA, the nation’s "two largest talent agencies, are going all in on sports," according Cieply & Barnes of the N.Y. TIMES. Now that both agencies "are majority-owned by private equity firms," they are "looking to expand and diversify their businesses, presumably in pursuit of the same end: a sale or an initial public offering." But the two agencies' sports units "are employing different strategies." CAA "pursues players in team sports" like Heat G Dwyane Wade and La Liga club Real Madrid MF Cristiano Ronaldo, while WME "focuses on athletes with more individual careers," including sprinter Usain Bolt and UFC fighter Ronda Rousey. WME "owns sporting events and distributes more than 30,000 hours of sports programming annually," while CAA has "decided that those businesses carry too much overhead." CAA "has about 400 employees in the sports business," while WME subsidiary IMG "has nearly 5,000 workers globally, most of them employed in labor-intensive college sports and broadcast and event production businesses." Sources said that IMG made about $1.5B "in sports revenue" last year, and that CAA had "less than one-third that amount." College sports is "emerging as a battleground" between the two. IMG College is "one of IMG’s biggest divisions," and in March, it struck a 10-year deal with the NCAA that "deepened their relationship." IMG already "has a lucrative licensing unit through its Collegiate Licensing Company, which manages the brands for roughly 200 university and college teams." CAA has "started to encroach on the upper end of the licensing business with its acquisition in April of the Atlanta-based Fermata Partners." Meanwhile, WME-IMG co-CEOs Ari Emanuel and Patrick Whitesell "continue to push William Morris Endeavor into new arenas." The agency in April paid roughly $100M to "acquire the Professional Bull Riders circuit" (N.Y. TIMES, 9/14).
