An earlier version of this story referred to Tony Godsick as an agent at WME-IMG. In fact, Godsick worked at the firm when it was only IMG.

It was late 2006, and International Fight League CEO and co-creator Gareb Shamus knew he needed help.

His upstart, team-based MMA promotion had been around for less than a year and was struggling to gain a foothold on TV, thanks in part to a deal with FOX Sports Net that aired IFL events on tape-delay and in wildly different time slots, depending on the market. What the IFL needed was a better TV deal.

And to get that, Shamus reasoned, he needed a “powerhouse” by his side at the negotiating table.

That’s when the IFL reached out to the William Morris Agency. Back then it wasn’t WME-IMG, the company that, with the help of other investors, recently purchased the UFC for over $4 billion. Back then it wasn’t even WME yet.

Instead it was just William Morris, a premier talent agency, the oldest and most revered in Hollywood, according to frequent boasts. It was also just the kind of negotiating heavyweight a company like the IFL needed to go from the small time to the big time, according to Shamus.

“We needed some real weight behind us, and William Morris was awesome for that,” Shamus told MMAjunkie. “We had to have a big player by our side. There was no bigger player out there.”

At the time, the William Morris Agency was considerably smaller, and its focus much narrower. It primarily represented talent in various entertainment fields like TV, movies and music, and had very little experience with MMA.

But with the agency’s help, the IFL secured a network TV deal with the fledgling MyNetworkTV, a FOX property consisting mostly of former WB and UPN affiliates. It wasn’t enough to save the IFL from extinction after it blew through more than $30 million in its first two years, but a network TV deal of any kind was still a step forward for the company and the sport as a whole.

Lon Rosen, the former William Morris agent who helped negotiate that deal for the IFL, thought of it at the time as the hopeful first step in an ambitious plan.

“I think what we hoped was one day the UFC would buy the IFL,” said Rosen, now the executive vice president and chief marketing officer for the Los Angeles Dodgers. “But the UFC looked at it and thought, ‘These guys aren’t a threat.’ And you can see why. The UFC, they run a very good business. You’ve got to hand it to Dana White and the Ferittas. They were very strategic, they executed a great business plan, and they got over $4 billion for their business, so that tells you how successful they were.”

Maybe because of their past experiences with both William Morris and MMA, neither Rosen nor Shamus were surprised by the news that WME-IMG had finally bought all the way into the sport, and in the most all-encompassing manner possible.

Even if the agency was only just beginning to dip its toe into the MMA waters a decade ago, both men said it was practically inevitable that, after undergoing a metamorphosis that changed the agency’s entire identity, the new company that emerged would eventually dive all the way in. The move may be a bold and expensive one, but it also fits with a clear pattern the company has established in recent years.

“Honestly, I think this makes perfect sense for them,” Shamus said. “It’s not an area where they’re competing with their own clients to do something like this, the way it would be if they bought a football franchise. This is something where they can literally own and dominate an entire field, and use the leverage of what they have on a global basis.”

And for fighters and fans nervous about what the change in ownership of the most dominant brand in the sport might mean for the future of MMA? Those in the know suggest some reason for optimism.

As Rosen put it: “This is a group of people who have taken actors and athletes and musicians, and made them into big stars. That’s what they do. You’d think that with the UFC, it’s not at its pinnacle yet, but they’ll bring it way up there.”

For a clue as to what route that journey might take, it’s helpful to look to the past – both recent and distant.

From Charlie Chaplin to ‘The Rock’



WME-IMG can trace its roots back more than 100 years, all the way to the late 19th century, when German immigrant Zelman Moses, who later changed his name to William Morris, found success as a booking agent for vaudeville acts.

To look back at the list of those represented by Morris’ agency over the years is to thumb through a history of entertainment in America. Charlie Chaplin, George Burns, Will Rogers, and the Marx brothers were all clients of the agency. In later years, so were Mae West and Elvis Presley.

The agency’s status took a dip in the 1970s after several agents left to form the rival Creative Artists Agency (the company that has represented former UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre since 2008), which siphoned off much of William Morris’ top talent.

In the ’90s, William Morris rebounded, helped in part by the acquisition of several other key talent agencies, and along with them their roster of stars. Its expansion into a true mega-agency, however, began to take shape more recently.

In 2009, the Endeavor Talent Agency, founded by current WME-IMG co-CEO Ari Emanuel – the brother of Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, Ari is often said to be the inspiration for the Ari Gold character on “Entourage” – executed a takeover of the William Morris Agency. That merger produced a new company, William Morris Endeavor, which in 2013, along with private equity firm Silver Lake Partners, acquired prominent sports agency International Management Group (IMG) for $2.4 billion.

The company that emerged from those busy few years was WME-IMG, and it quickly became a worldwide force in entertainment and sports, not to mention the many ancillary markets that branch off from both. Emanuel was also said to be an integral part of the UFC’s negotiations with FOX for its current TV deal.

Now WME-IMG represents athletes, actors and musicians. It handles licensing and marketing for more than 200 college sports teams. It owns an e-sports league and a bull-riding organization. It has negotiated TV deals for European soccer and Indian cricket leagues. It runs Fashion Week events all over the globe, and represents several top models and designers. It owns the Miss Universe pageant, which it bought from former client and current Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. It represents Oprah Winfrey and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

If it’s on a TV or movie screen, if you can buy a ticket to see it in a major arena, if it involves any sort of on-air talent or professional athlete, chances are good that there’s a WME-IMG tie-in somewhere. And as recent moves have shown, the company isn’t afraid to open up the checkbook when it sees the chance to own something that will strengthen its grip – especially when it comes to new or emerging sports.

‘No conflict, no interest’

The UFC may be the latest, and it may have come with a gaudy price tag, but it doesn’t represent WME-IMG’s first attempt at cornering the market on an entire sport. In fact, the more of a market it can own with one flourish of the pen, the more likely it is to fit with WME-IMG’s broader goals, according to co-CEO Patrick Whitesell.

“We don’t compete with anybody in more than 20 percent of our business,” Whitesell told The Hollywood Reporter in March. “That’s an incredible operating leverage. We’ll compete with the talent agencies in two or three businesses. We’ll compete with certain media rights-buying companies internationally. But that diversity is super powerful.”

A telling recent example is WME-IMG’s purchase of Professional Bull Riding, Inc., which it bought in 2015 for a reported $100 million. That investment represents a much smaller risk than does the UFC purchase, which cost WME-IMG 40 times as much, but there are some useful similarities for those trying to determine what changes might be in store for the UFC.

For one thing, the two sports are not entirely dissimilar. Professional bull riding and professional cage fighting are both physically punishing sports in which competitors can and do suffer serious injuries. Both make use of athletes who are independent contractors rather than employees. Both are often considered niche sports that depend on passionate, highly engaged fan bases. Both have been heavily focused on international expansion of late, particularly in places like Brazil, Canada, Mexico and Australia.

WME-IMG has owned PBR for a little more than a year, but by most metrics, it’s been a productive relationship for both sides so far. TV ratings are up slightly, TV rights fees have doubled, and revenue from international syndication has seen a 15 percent increase, according to WME-IMG. PBR is planning to launch its own over-the-top streaming service (think UFC Fight Pass for bull riding) in 2017.

Much of what WME-IMG is doing with PBR has already been done or at least attempted with the UFC, and executives are said to be hoping for similar increases in revenue from UFC broadcast rights in the near future.

More importantly for the athletes, according to Andrew Giangola, a WME-IMG executive who became the head of communications for PBR after the sale, is that WME-IMG has a wealth of relationships it can leverage in order to get athletes in these niche sports more mainstream exposure.

“What I think is really relevant to the UFC is how we’ve been building bull riders into mainstream personalities,” Giangola said. “You’re starting to see that with our champion, J.B. Mauney. When he goes on (‘The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’) or when he’s on the cover of ‘Parade Magazine’ with Jay-Z, that’s those relationships at work.”

To those within the entertainment industry, this is one of the major benefits to being under the WME-IMG umbrella.

They’re the people who can get you on TV with Colbert (who is also one of their clients). They’re the ones who can help you get mainstream press (here’s PBR in The New York Times). They can leverage their relationships to get you better access to bigger arenas (PBR events will go from Las Vegas’ Thomas & Mack Arena to the newly opened T-Mobile Arena this year). They know people who can get a Netflix documentary made and marketed (a series on PBR riders, “Fearless,” premieres Aug. 19).

And, if you’ve got the right look, they can even get you a modeling gig or two.

That has come in especially handy for Bonner Bolton, a 28-year-old PBR rider who recently suffered what could very well turn out to be a career-ending injury. In January, Bolton was thrown off a bull and landed directly his head, splitting his C2 vertebrae almost in half and briefly paralyzing him. He’s since made a recovery that shocked his doctors, he said, but they still insist his bull riding days must come to an end.

“If this had been the pre-IMG days of PBR, I’d probably still be a little lost as to what I’m supposed to be doing right now,” Bolton said. “I’d probably be busting my ass doing more than I should, trying to make ends meet, and not getting the most of out my recovery process.”

Instead, Bolton has signed a modeling contract with IMG Models, one of the many WME-IMG tentacles that reach across the worlds of entertainment and sports.

“It’s not something I thought I’d ever be doing,” he said, “but I’m trying to make the most of the opportunity.”

It’s good news for Bolton, driven in part by a winning ticket in one aspect of the genetic lottery, but it’s not necessarily something other bull riders can rely on. No matter how many connections the parent company may have, bull rider-turned-model isn’t likely to turn into a common career arc.

If there’s a reason to be less optimistic about what the sale of the UFC could do for fighters’ future options, it’s probably buried in that reality. While it’s true that a talent agency like WME-IMG may be uniquely positioned to offer fighters opportunities outside the cage, and to make full use of the potential it spots in it, it also stands to reason that those opportunities will likely benefit only a select few.

That much is already evident by looking at which fighters have signed with major talent agencies, and what has resulted from it. Former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey has seen her acting career blossom as a WME-IMG client, but former UFC middleweight champion Chris Weidman can’t necessarily say the same.

And then there’s former heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez, who recently left his longtime management team at Zinkin Entertainment to sign with CAA, which means he now finds himself working for a company owned by a rival agency.

Such potential conflicts of interest aren’t new to WME-IMG. It owns the rights to several professional tennis tournaments, but also represents many of the players who compete in those tournaments. Some in the tennis world have criticized the mega-agency for that, but WME-IMG executives insist it’s a fact of life in the modern pro sports landscape.

“No conflict, no interest,” co-CEO Ari Emanuel told The New York Times in June 2015. “We represent writers, directors, actors in television who put shows on the air. Same thing with movies. We have Lollapalooza, where we put acts. It is the nature of it. In every vertical, we do that. The great thing about the business is if you don’t treat the client properly, whether it be in television, movies, tennis, golf, etc., there’s a door.”

Of course, the same story quoted tennis star Roger Federer’s agent, Tony Godsick, who gave his reasons for walking through that door and leaving IMG after two decades as an agent there.

“I left to start my own firm when it became clear that I would have to frequently choose between what was best for Roger and what was best for IMG,” Godsick said. “That tension is not anyone’s fault. It’s just inevitable when a company in our business tries to do it all.”

‘That’s what these people do’

For now, not much seems poised to change within the world’s premier MMA promotion. Dana White remains the UFC president. Joe Silva and Sean Shelby remain the matchmakers who offer the bouts, assemble the fight cards, and plug holes as needed. WME-IMG reportedly plans to keep operating the UFC as its own separate business with its own separate debts.

But as WME-IMG expands its holdings amid rumors that it will go public within the next year, there’s always the possibility that the company’s own sizable debt will eventually force it to sell off some of its parts. There are also several potential legal and regulatory challenges on the horizon for the new owners, including a class-action lawsuit against the UFC, the threat of a Muhammad Ali Act expansion, and the potential for the kind of future lawsuits from past competitors that have plagued other sports, such as pro wrestling and professional football, of late.

It’s business as usual at the UFC for the moment, though it’s hard not to wonder for how long, especially with the departure of UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta, who was often seen as the one driving the decision-making at the very highest level of the company.

Three managers who spoke with MMAjunkie on the condition of anonymity, out of concerns for alienating the new UFC ownership, expressed doubt as to who might replace Fertitta in that role. White has always been the more public face, some said, but Fertitta was a vital executive force behind closed doors.

One manager said that when clients ask him what’s going to change with the new ownership group, he has to tell him he just doesn’t know. But, the manager said, if high-level decisions end up being made in Los Angeles instead of Las Vegas, they’ll have their answer.

Still, according to Dodgers executive VP Rosen, who watched the deal unfold from afar, the move to retain White as UFC president should be an encouraging one. It suggests that WME-IMG appreciates what it doesn’t know about the MMA business.

“Dana’s a great promoter,” Rosen said. “You’ve seen lots of people try to enter that business, and they haven’t been able to do it. Now they have the help they need to grow. That’s what these people do.”

For more on the UFC’s upcoming schedule, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.