Casey Wasserman may no longer be on The Team soon.
After being pressured to set up an auction for his Westwood-based firm that drew interest from United Talent Agency, Patrick Whitesell’s upstart shingle WIN and other suitors, the sale of his company may not go to any outside party.
Wasserman is in talks to sell his stake in the company to private equity firm Providence Equity Partners, Matthew Belloni reported at Puck on Thursday. Providence had already taken a major stake in Wasserman in November 2022 to fuel growth at the company — notably, a major acquisition of Brillstein Entertainment less than a year later — so a buyout of the company’s founder would keep the firm in the same strategic hands it had been in for the past several years.
The news of a would-be deal breakthrough arrives three months after the first round of bids were submitted in April to investment bank Moelis & Co, which handled the auction process. (The bank’s leader, Ken Moelis, sits on Wasserman’s LA28 Olympics Committee board.) One major suitor, UTA, had bowed out of the bidding process as of early June, an insider says.
Providence, a source previously told The Hollywood Reporter, had put pressure on the mogul after a wave of headlines and an artist rebellion followed Wasserman being named in a tranche of Department of Justice documents related to convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell in late January.
More than 20 artists said they were dropping Wasserman during the height of the February scandal — including Laufey, Chappell Roan, Best Coast and John Summit — and the firm’s social pages were deluged with calls for talent to distance themselves from the mogul.In an email to employees in February, Wasserman conceded, “I have become a distraction” to the company’s business.
Immediately following Wasserman’s surprise reveal at the time that he was selling his namesake firm, Providence issued a statement on Feb. 14 backing company president Mike Watts and saying, “We remain fully committed to investing in its growth, expanding its capabilities across sports, music, and entertainment,and supporting the extraordinary talent, brands, and properties the Company is proud to represent.”
The DOJ documentsshowedthat in 2003, Wasserman and Maxwell exchanged a series of flirtatious messages, though nothing criminal was mentioned in those emails. Wasserman had also, along with Bill Clinton, Chris Tucker and Kevin Spacey, flown on Epstein’s private jet on what was said to be a 2002 AIDS research trip to Africa. The mogul apologized at the time, saying on Jan. 31, “I deeply regret my correspondence with Ghislaine Maxwell which took place over two decades ago, long before her horrific crimes came to light. I never had a personal or business relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.”
Wasserman — which rebranded as The Team in March in order to distance itself from its founder (it used to market itself as “Team Wass”) — is one of the biggest players in the sports space. As pro athletes have taken a greater share of the entertainment economy, sports is now one of the most sought-after areas in the representation landscape. Wasserman’s sports 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. That’s second in Hollywood only to CAA’s sports division, which generated $578 million that year.
Providence had invested in Wasserman after taking the place of prior investors RedBird Capital and Madrone Capital Partners. Those firms took ownership stakes in sports teams — football club AC Milan and the NFL’s Denver Broncos — and thus couldn’t own a stake in a sports talent representation firm.
In addition to sports, The Team is also home to a notable music agency group built from its 2021 acquisition of Paradigm’s music division, as well as production-management firm Brillstein, a marketing services unit and more properties. Since founding Wasserman in 2002, the company has rolled up multiple creative firms as well as boutique agencies and had 4,000 employees as of earlier this year.
As he navigates his exit from management, Wasserman also serves as the chair for LA28, which is organizing Los Angeles’ 2028 Olympics game plan. While city officials, including Mayor Karen Bass, have called upon Wasserman to step down from his high-profile role managing the Games over the Maxwell emails, they have deferred to the LA28 board, which has backed Wasserman. In February, LA28 said it hired an outside law firm to investigate Wasserman’s correspondence with Maxwell, and it found his “relationship with Epstein and Maxwell did not go beyond what has already been publicly documented.”