For many years, Casey Wasserman has insisted that he would by no means enter the normal leisure enterprise. Movie and TV felt too incestuous — his grandfather Lew Wasserman reigned as Hollywood’s energy dealer from the Sixties to the Nineties — and too financially challenged, he would say.
By no means say by no means: Mr. Wasserman, 49, introduced on Monday that his sports-centered conglomerate, Wasserman, had accomplished a deal to purchase Brillstein Leisure Companions, a Hollywood administration agency and content material manufacturing firm. Phrases weren’t disclosed.
Brillstein represents stars like Brad Pitt, Tiffany Haddish, Adam Sandler, Florence Pugh, Rami Malek and Elizabeth Olsen. The agency additionally represents digital creators, podcasters {and professional} online game gamers. Brillstein, which landed a significant hit in 1999 with “The Sopranos” and has a hand in “Actual Time With Invoice Maher,” lately signed a first-look take care of Paramount Tv Studios and has initiatives within the works at Netflix, Disney and Amazon.
What modified Mr. Wasserman’s thoughts?
“The media enterprise is radically totally different than it was even 5 years in the past, and that frankly requires us to suppose otherwise about how we symbolize sports activities and music expertise,” he mentioned. “Musicians are on TikTok and athletes are on YouTube and folks need to produce documentaries. The strains have blurred much more than I believe anybody would have anticipated even 5 years in the past.”
He continued, “Athletes used to monetize themselves in sports activities, musicians in music, leisure in leisure house, and people strains are gone.”
Wasserman, based in 2002 because the Wasserman Media Group, has turn out to be one of many largest sports activities illustration and advertising businesses on this planet. After a failed enlargement into the administration of musicians within the early 2000s, Wasserman tried once more in recent times and now has a big music division, representing artists and bands like Billie Eilish, Brandi Carlile, Drake and Coldplay.
Mr. Wasserman mentioned he meant to broaden Brillstein’s tv and movie manufacturing enterprise, maybe by buying extra movie and tv corporations. “We need to get this primary step proper,” he mentioned. “However it is a first step, not a final step.”
Brillstein was based in 1969 by Bernie Brillstein, a garrulous expertise supervisor who died in 2008. With early shoppers like Lorne Michaels and Jim Henson, Mr. Brillstein constructed his agency into one in every of Hollywood’s main administration corporations. His enterprise mannequin — managing stars and serving to to provide tv exhibits and flicks for them — attracted opponents, a few of which (Nameless Content material, 3 Arts Leisure) would ultimately surpass Brillstein in dimension.
Jon Liebman, Brillstein’s co-chief government, mentioned that Wasserman would offer the assets wanted to broaden, notably in content material manufacturing. “The enterprise has turn out to be extremely complicated,” Mr. Liebman mentioned. “The times when a supervisor might successfully serve shoppers with out being plugged into a bigger group are over.”