Casey Wasserman Andreas Rentz/Getty Images It’s been over two months since Casey Wasserman made the surprise move under pressure to put his namesake company up for auction after facing an artist exodus when his decades-old emails with Ghislaine Maxwell surfaced in the Department of Justice’s Jeffrey Epstein documents.
Since that time, potential suitors have been gaming out a few questions, namely: Is this a fire sale? Is Wasserman willing to break up his sprawling firm into pieces? Is there an appetite to buy the company whole — or just pick off clients in each division? And is Wasserman serious about a sale or is this the equivalent of a homeowner putting a beloved property on the market at way too high of a listing price in the hopes of chasing off all but the highest bidders?
On Monday, the first round of bids were submitted to investment bank Moelis & Co, which is handling the auction process. (Ken Moelis, who runs the firm, sits on the Wasserman’s LA28 Olympics Committee board and had advised on the mogul’s major acquisition of Brillstein Entertainment Partners in 2023).
Among suitors: Big 3 Hollywood talent giant United Talent Agency has submitted a non-binding bid to move along in the auction process. The agency, now run by David Kramer, has been in growth mode since a fund operated by the private equity firm EQT Partners became the largest outside investor in the Beverly Hills-based company in 2022. (One wrinkle with UTA’s bid, it likely couldn’t or wouldn’t acquire Brillstein from Wasserman due to a conflict of interest deal with the Writers Guild regarding agency ownership of production entities.)
A perhaps dark horse suitor is WME mogul Patrick Whitesell’s upstart firm WIN, which he founded along with ex-Endeavor exec Jason Lublin last year. That representation company had launched with a football talent agency titled WIN Sports Group that it acquired from WME’s NFL business. In his bid for Wasserman assets, Whitesell has not yet partnered with an additional financial backer but is in active talks regarding funding if his firm chooses to proceed with its overture.
The private equity crowd also seems eager for opportunities to jump in to the space. Goldman Sachs’ major deal in November 2025 for Excel Sports Management kickstarted interest given that the investment bank hadn’t backed a representation business previously.
Among agencies that did not submit bids: WME Group and Creative Artists Agency, the two other major Hollywood representation giants. A Wasserman rep declined to comment on prospective suitors. The New York Times earlier reported that UTA and Whitesell were planning to submit bids.
In addition to its core sports representation division — which has rolled up countless boutique shingles since the company was founded in 2002 — Wasserman comprises a notable music agency group built from its 2021 acquisition of Paradigm’s music division, a major production-management firm in Brillstein and a marketing services unit.
One other question may be how easily his businesses may be untangled if the company is sold in pieces. When Wasserman made his blockbuster deal to acquire Brillstein in 2023 he told The Hollywood Reporter that the company wouldn’t continue operating as a standalone silo. “It will still operate in the public domain as Brillstein but we don’t operate our businesses separately,” Wasserman said at the time. “We’re one company and one culture working together on behalf of and for and with our clients.”
While more than 20 performing artists peeled off from Wasserman during the February scandal — including Laufey, Chappell Roan, Best Coast and John Summit — only U.S. soccer star Abby Wambach from the sports unit publicly posted that she was parting ways with her reps. The company formally rebranded from Wasserman to distance itself from its founder, talking the name The Team in March.
Wasserman’s sports unit is likely a crown jewel given it’s seen as the second-largest in the industry after market leader CAA. The division generated $266 million in revenue in 2024, 29 percent of the company’s total revenue, an S&P Global report from June of last year detailed. CAA’s sports division generated $578 million that year.
At the table along with Wasserman to navigate the sale decision is Providence Equity Partners, which took a notable stake in Wasserman in November 2022 to fuel growth at the company. Providence was founded by Jonathan Nelson, who is also on the board of directors of the Chernin Group. The private equity firm took the place of two investors, RedBird Capital and Madrone Capital, which took ownership stakes in pro teams — football club AC Milan and the NFL’s Denver Broncos — and as such couldn’t own a stake in a sports talent representation firm like Wasserman. In February at the height of the artist exodus on social media, a rep for Providence said the firm was “fully committed” to investing and expanding the company’s “capabilities across sports, music, and entertainment.”
Wasserman issued an apology for his correspondence on Jan. 31, shortly after the latest DoJ Epstein Files tranche was released, saying, “I am terribly sorry for having any association” with Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence for her role in conspiring to sex trafficking minors with Epstein. In the files, Wasserman exchanged a serious of flirtatious messages with Maxwell in 2003. He also took a flight with Epstein, Bill Clinton and others to Africa in 2002.
The mogul, who is chairman of the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Committee and has led the city’s bid since 2014, has been backed by the board of directors at LA 28 and has stated that he plans to keep overseeing the organization ahead of the Summer Games. LA 28 said it had enlisted outside law firm O’Melveny & Myers LLP to review Wasserman’s emails with Maxwell in 2003, three years before Epstein was first arrested in Florida on a count of soliciting prostitution. “We found Mr. Wasserman’s relationship with Epstein and Maxwell did not go beyond what has already been publicly documented,” it stated on Feb. 11.
After a pause on social media and a teardown of its old website skin, The Team is going on about business as usual, publicly anyway, announcing signings, launching new initiatives like a leadership advisory and executive search practice led by former Bloomberg exec Amy Segal and listing open jobs, L.A.-based “Content Creator,” “People Coordinator” and “AI Engineer” roles among them.
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