Casey Wasserman may no longer be a member of the team soon.
After coming under pressure to hold an auction for his Westwood-based company that attracted interest from United Talent Agency, Patrick Whitesell’s startup 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 Bellone reported in Book on Thursday. Providence had already acquired a significant stake in Wasserman in November 2022 to fuel growth in the company — notably the big acquisition of Brillstein Entertainment less than a year later — so buying out the company’s founder would keep the company in the same strategic hands it has been for the past several years.
News of a potential deal comes 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 president, Ken Moelis, is a member of the board of directors of Wasserman’s LA28 Olympic Committee.)
Providence, a source previously said Hollywood Reporterpressured the mogul after a flurry of headlines and an artist rebellion followed Wasserman’s naming in a trove of Justice Department documents related to convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell in late January.
More than 20 artists said they dropped Wasserman during the height of the February scandal — including Lovie, Chappelle Rowan, Best Coast and Jon Summit — and the company’s social pages were flooded with calls for talent to distance themselves from the mogul. In an email to employees in February, Wasserman admitted, “I have become a distraction” to the company’s business.
Immediately following Wasserman’s bombshell revelation at the time he was selling his namesake company, Providence issued a statement on February 14 supporting company president Mike Watts, 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 that the company is proud to represent.”
In 2003, Wasserman and Maxwell exchanged a series of flirtatious messages, though nothing criminal was mentioned in those emails, Justice Department documents showed. Wasserman, along with Bill Clinton, Chris Tucker and Kevin Spacey, had also traveled on Epstein’s private plane on what was said to be a 2002 AIDS research trip to Africa. The mogul apologized at the time, saying on January 31: “I deeply regret my correspondence with Ghislaine Maxwell which occurred more than two decades ago, long before her horrific crimes came to light. I never had any personal or business relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.”
Wasserman — who renamed it The Team in March to distance himself from its founder (he marketed himself as “Team Wass”) — is one of the biggest players in sports. As professional athletes gain a larger share of the entertainment economy, sports have now become one of the most sought-after areas of the acting scene. Wasserman’s sports division generated revenue of $266 million in 2024, 29 percent of the company’s total revenue, S&P Global reported in June of last year. That’s second in Hollywood behind CAA’s sports division, which grossed $578 million that year.
Providence invested in Wasserman after replacing previous investors Red Bird Capital and Madrone Capital Partners. These companies held ownership stakes in sports teams – the AC Milan soccer club and the NFL’s Denver Broncos – and were therefore unable to own a stake in a sports talent representation company.
In addition to sports, The Team is also home to a prominent music agency group created following its 2021 acquisition of Paradigm’s music division, as well as production management company Brillstein, a marketing services unit and more properties. Since Wasserman’s founding in 2002, the company has assembled several creative companies as well as small agencies and had 4,000 employees as of earlier this year.
While out of the administration, Wasserman also serves as president of LA28, which organizes the game plan for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. While city officials, including Mayor Karen Bass, have called for Wasserman to step down from his prominent role running the Games over Maxwell’s emails, they deferred to the LA28 board, which has supported Wasserman. In February, LA28 said it had hired an outside law firm to investigate Wasserman’s correspondence with Maxwell, finding that “his relationship with Epstein and Maxwell did not go beyond what had already been publicly documented.”
