UPDATED with Wasserman statement: Casey Wasserman‘s name is still listed as chair of L.A.’s 2028 Olympics, but the Epstein Files-stained executive’s surname is coming off the company he founded as bidders line up for all or part of his agency empire.
The circulating new name for Wasserman is “The Team.”
Several LOGOS have been out there for the music, sports and talent representation entity during the past few weeks, but the final one is a grey text colored graphic.
“Wasserman is rebranding as The Team.” the company said in a statement Monday. “As a company we have been shaped by our work, our people and our unifying belief in the power of Sports, Music and Entertainment. That philosophy remains the foundation of who we are — and where we are going. We remain completely focused on serving our clients with the same professionalism that has always been our standard.”
To that, because this is Hollywood and everyone gets a gift bag, there is already The Team merch — as you can see:
The Team name isn’t actually the biggest move this week around the company once known as Wasserman. Interested parties have been notified that the formal process to acquire the agency is about to start. NDAs are set to go out and a data room will be opened by the end of the week, we hear.
Among the entities looking to make the Team their own are WME, CAA, Range Media Partners, UTA, Goldman Sachs and a smattering of equity firms, we’ve learned. Almost all of the potential bidders are interested in the whole shebang of the A-lister-representing Brillstein Entertainment Partners, what was once the Paradigm Talent Agency, the various consultancies and more.
“This is a once-in-a-decade opportunity,” one agency exec told Deadline today. “It’ll all come down to price, and everyone will put a premium number on the table.”
Whether that number tops $1 billion will be seen in the coming weeks. Whatever the eventual selling price, the hope on both sides of the bidding process is that things will move quickly, we’re told.
This change of fortune for the ambitious Wasserman follows a growing tide of big-name defections and disaffected staffers after revelations of the extent of the Wasserman Media Group founder’s ties with deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and currently incarcerated sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell cut his own company loose on February 11.
“At this moment, I believe that I have become a distraction to those efforts,” Wasserman said of the decision to sell the company with his and his legendary Hollywood kingpin grandfather’s name. Intentionally or not, the exec echoed terms used by exit-threatening clients and L.A. politicians over the past weeks since the massive document dump by Donald Trump‘s DOJ showed a carnal 2003 correspondence with Maxwell. “That is why I have begun the process of selling the company, an effort that is already underway.”
While the founder’s circumstances clearly have motivated the Wasserman sale process, it is also occurring in a challenging operating environment for the representation business. Waves of consolidation have reshaped the sector, with Hollywood agencies WME and CAA remaining dominant. UTA has held in at No. 3 but continually faces questions about how it will close the gap with its bigger rivals.
Ari Emanuel’s Endeavor, which was taken private last year by longtime backer Silver Lake, was reconstituted into WME Group, with a number of holdings being shipped to sister company TKO, parent of the UFC and WWE.
While the privatization enriched Emanuel, onetime partner Patrick Whitesell and other executives, it followed two years of unsuccessfully trying to persuade Wall Street of the merits of the talent representation business. While sports — a strong suit of Wasserman — has been growing along with valuations of teams and media rights fees, talent in entertainment and other areas has been constrained by corporate cutbacks. Always volatile, the representation world has gotten tougher due to corporate M&A and overall pullbacks in spending on film and TV projects.
Along with WME’s new capital structure, CAA sold a majority stake to Artémis, the firm run by French billionaire Francois-Henri Pinault, in 2023. The investment came a year after CAA acquired rival ICM for $750 million.
Despite solid backing from the LA28 board last month, Wasserman’s Olympic future is not assured.
Incumbent Mayor Karen Bass wants Wasserman out, as does her rival, Councilmember Nithya Raman, and several members of the county Board of Supervisors and other local elected officials and statewide candidates,
Delayed from its original March 6 date, a L.A. City Council resolution from Councilmember Monica Rodriguez seeks a “thorough and transparent review” of “the potential conflict” between Wasserman’s Epstein connections and the adverse affect that could have on the coming Summer Olympics. The resolution, which does actually ask Wasserman to step down, but pretty much puts him every tighter between a rock and a hard place, is now up for a vote on March 13.
