The New York Times | July 6, 2013
PRETTY much forever, one question has hovered over Casey Wasserman: Would he ever be the power hitter that Grandpa Lew was?
It didn’t matter that Mr. Wasserman was considered a nice guy, something for which his grandfather, the super-scary agent and studio boss Lew Wasserman, was not especially known. When boys grow up in Hollywood as Casey did — rich, surrounded by celebrities, with V.I.P. concert tickets a phone call away — they often emerge as world-class jerks. Casey somehow came out a mensch.
Yes, that’s nice. But could Mr. Wasserman ever follow in his grandfather’s footsteps as a force in business, civic affairs and politics?
It is no longer a question.
Mr. Wasserman, 39, is chief executive of the Wasserman Media Group, a sports-focused management and marketing firm. Founded 11 years ago, this $150 million business is now one of the largest sports agencies in the world, negotiating lucrative television and endorsement deals and handling naming rights for billion-dollar complexes, including MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. Nike, Pepsi and Microsoft are corporate clients, and individual clients include Derrick Rose of the Chicago Bulls and Andrew Luck of the Indianapolis Colts.
Astoundingly, Wasserman Media represented the No. 1 overall draft pick last year in five professional sports: men’s and women’s basketball, baseball, soccer and football. “There’s a sense of permanence about Casey,” said Adam Silver, the incoming commissioner of the N.B.A. “You know you are going to be dealing with him for a very long time.”
Mr. Wasserman has also become a big deal behind the scenes in his hometown. That new $116 million medical building at the University of California, Los Angeles? He had it built, with his foundation providing significant financing. A $300 million movie museum will soon rise on Wilshire Boulevard, a partnership of the Oscars organization and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where he serves on the board. The alliance was his idea.
“I only see him growing in stature, and he’s already one of the most civically active philanthropists in the city,” said Antonio R. Villaraigosa, the former mayor of Los Angeles, citing the tens of millions of dollars that Mr. Wasserman and his foundation have funneled to the city’s beleaguered public school system. Mr. Wasserman also sits at the center of continued efforts to build a stadium that would bring the National Football League back to the Los Angeles after an 18-year absence. “His influence extends far beyond what you see on the surface,” Roger Goodell, the N.F.L. commissioner, said.
As for political influence, well, put it this way: Hillary Rodham Clinton likely did not have a two-hour breakfast with Mr. Wasserman a few weeks ago just to shoot the breeze. Mr. Wasserman is a trustee of the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation. He is also a significant Democratic donor and fund-raiser.
IT’S a big and wide-ranging portfolio, but perhaps not a surprising one given the head start he received at birth. Mention Mr. Wasserman’s success around Los Angeles, and some eyes will roll, conveying the sentiment: “What did you expect?”
Mr. Wasserman, whom GQ once called “a kosher Kennedy,” without question had a privileged upbringing. At 10, he helped carry the torch at the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. At 12, he flew to Ohio to be a Cleveland Browns ball boy. At 18, when he wanted to go to a sold-out Guns N’ Roses concert, his grandfather told him to call David Geffen, one of Hollywood’s biggest power brokers. (“Slash was sweating on my head,” Mr. Wasserman said, recalling how close to the stage his seats were.) At 19, he worked as a production assistant on the hit television series “Murder, She Wrote,” which was taped at Universal, where his grandfather was chairman.
He inherited many important relationships from his grandfather, who died in 2002, including the one with the Clintons. “Casey has a keen intellect and a strong desire to make a difference in both business and society,” Bill Clinton said in an e-mail.
But ne’er-do-well heirs crash and burn all the time proving that access to money and power does not preordain success. Yes, Lew Wasserman lavished attention on his daughter’s son. Every Saturday or Sunday morning for 25 years, he took Casey to Nate n’ Al, a Beverly Hills delicatessen, for matzo brei and a life lesson. But the student had to be willing to learn, and to maintain and expand the relationships he inherited.
“Growing up with means gives a person one important thing, which is the ability to make choices,” Mr. Wasserman said last month as he lounged in his Gulfstream V en route to Los Angeles from Philadelphia. He took a sip of vegan black bean soup and glanced at a TV tuned to the N.B.A. finals.
“Good choices or bad,” he said, clearing his throat, “those are all on me.”
SPORTS was a very specific choice for Mr. Wasserman. He said Hollywood felt too incestuous — a place where, he says, he knew he could never “make a reputation” that was his own. Though not an athlete himself, aside from tennis in high school, he found himself fascinated by the business side of sports from an early age.
“I wasn’t the kid who cried if my team lost,” he said. “I was the kid who wanted to know what was going on in the front office after the game.”
His first business was a success. Mr. Wasserman and a childhood friend, the fashion designer James Perse, started a T-shirt and hat company while attending U.C.L.A., from which Mr. Wasserman graduated in 1996 with a political science degree.
He started Wasserman Media in 2002 using family money, and began assembling a client base. He was early to spot the potential of action sports (snowboarding, skateboarding, surfing), and that division of his firm has grown from an $800,000 annual business a decade ago to a $16 million one today.
Mr. Wasserman also learned how to wield a checkbook. His company has made at least 10 significant acquisitions over the last decade. Perhaps the most important was in 2006, when he paid an estimated $12 million to acquire the practice of Arn Tellem, the superstar agent.
Now, a big decision looms for Mr. Wasserman — one that he will surely be asked about at Allen & Company’s annual media and technology jamboree, which begins on Tuesday in Sun Valley, Idaho. IMG Worldwide, the world’s largest sports agency, is on the block. Will Mr. Wasserman bid?
He figures that his agency — which is profitable, although he declined to say to what degree — has enough internal momentum to double in size over the next five years. Growth has already been impressive. In 2007, Wasserman Media represented 400 athletes; its client roster now totals roughly 1,300.
Mr. Wasserman declined to comment about IMG. He has privately told confidants, however, that he may be interested in pieces of that company, whose operations range from athlete training to fashion show management.
“Casey is not interested in immediate gratification or being the biggest,” said Mr. Tellem, who now oversees the team sports division of Wasserman Media. “He’s about focus and being a leader.”
Friends say Mr. Wasserman learned the hard way not to expand into areas with uncertain promise. In 2003, for instance, he opened a music management branch. (Coldplay was a client.) The division never found its footing, and he pulled the plug. In 1998, he paid $5 million for the Los Angeles Avengers, an Arena Football League team, but called it quitsafter nine unprofitable seasons.
Becoming bigger brings problems along with rewards, Mr. Wasserman said. “The chances that one person could make a big mistake increase,” he said, “and that keeps me up at night.”
A case in point: last year, Wasserman Media paid a reported $2 million to Francisco Rodriguez, a Milwaukee Brewers relief pitcher and a former client who contended that his trade from the New York Mets had been bungled.
Mr. Tellem said Mr. Wasserman infuses a personal touch that is missing at what he called “faceless” agencies. “Casey sticks his neck out,” Mr. Tellem said. “People know there is a person who is responsible at the end of the day.”
Mr. Tellem pointed to April, when the basketball player Jason Collins, a Wasserman client,revealed his homosexuality. Among the many who expressed public support for Mr. Collins was President Obama — something that was not an accident. Behind the scenes, Mr. Wasserman had phoned Mr. Clinton, who had his staff reach out to Valerie Jarrett, the senior White House adviser.
As Mr. Wasserman contemplates a bid for IMG, he must weigh a challenge coming from an unlikely corner: Hollywood. The two biggest talent agencies, Creative Artists Agency and William Morris Endeavor, are both likely IMG bidders. Creative Artists, in particular, has been muscling into sports as the movie business shrinks and star wattages dim. Another movie company, Relativity Media, has also been coming on strong in sports; last year, it bought the football agency Maximum Sports Management and SFX Baseball.
“Sports will continue to be more and more valuable while movies and television will become more and more challenged,” Mr. Wasserman said. “Sports is predictable and unreplicable in a world where almost nothing else is.”
MR. WASSERMAN, who is married with two young children, works from an office near U.C.L.A. But he conducts much of his business in the field. Last month, he flew to Philadelphia and hung out around the putting green at the Merion Golf Club, where the United States Open was about to begin.
Wearing aviator sunglasses and chewing cinnamon gum, an asthma inhaler tucked inside a trouser pocket, Mr. Wasserman warmly greeted clients like Kyle Stanley and Rickie Fowler. United States Golf Association officials pulled Mr. Wasserman aside to ask for help with a new ad campaign. Perhaps one of his young players would participate? After some banter that took place outside of my earshot, Mr. Wasserman said brightly, “We will see if we can make it happen.”
While almost no one will say anything negative about him on the record — perhaps a sign of how influential he has become — some of his fellow Hollywood scions in particular grouse that Mr. Wasserman’s nice-guy persona is a well-practiced shtick. A few current and former employees say he can be controlling, aloof and impatient. Others fault his decision at 18 to change his surname to Wasserman from Myers, calling it a cynical effort to capitalize on his grandfather’s legacy.
Mr. Wasserman disputed that notion. “It was a simple reflection of the facts: I was raised by my mom and my grandparents,” he said. His parents divorced when he was 7, and his father, Jack Myers, largely exited his life. Mr. Myers, an avid golfer, died in 2010 and is partly remembered for a guilty plea in a 1990 drug money-laundering case.
“If I had any interest in trading on my grandfather’s success, I didn’t need to change my name to do it,” Mr. Wasserman added.
HE sounded mildly agitated but not defensive — similar to his demeanor later that day on the jet when he started losing at rummy. (Playing on an iPad against his public relations adviser, Melissa Zukerman, Mr. Wasserman eventually won.) Asked to point out one of his own flaws, Mr. Wasserman made a where-would-you-like-me-to-start face and pointed to the turbulence. To get over a fear of flying, he once took 60 hours of pilot training. But he said his “control issues” sometimes still get the best of him during choppy air, when the pilot and Mother Nature are in command, and he is not.
Still, Mr. Wasserman does seem to have a way for easily navigating life’s challenges. Back in Philadelphia, the golf course had been a swamp after days of rain; while my deck shoes were soon soaked and caked in mud, Mr. Wasserman managed to keep his suede oxfords perfectly clean.
“Gliding across the mud, not a spot on him,” said Gary Stevenson, the former president of the Pac-12 Conference’s television and digital media unit, who worked for a time at Wasserman Media.
Mr. Stevenson smiled and shook his head: “That is so Casey Wasserman.”
Photo: Casey Wasserman, shown at the Edie and Lew Wasserman Building at U.C.L.A., chose the sports world for making his mark.
Photo Credit: Monica Almeida/The New York Times
Source publication: The New York Times