While last week’s announcement that Providence Equity Partners would buy out Casey Wasserman’s remaining stake in The Team is what one corporate dealmaker calls “the most eye-rollingly boring outcome possible,” it was also a reminder of the grip PE has on Hollywood.
PE firms now have stakes in agencies including WME (Silver Lake), UTA (EQT), Independent Artist Group (The Yucaipa Companies), Gersh (Crestview Partners), Innovative Artists (Coral Tree Partners) and Excel Sports Management (Goldman Sachs) as well as management firms Entertainment 360 (Carlyle), Initial Group (TPG) and now Brillstein Entertainment Partners via The Team (Providence).
Of course, private equity’s entertainment reach extends well beyond the representation business. Look no further than some of this year’s buzziest M&A pacts: Mediawan’s (KKR) acquisition of North Road, the $8 billion merger of Banijay Entertainment and All3Media (RedBird IMI) or the launch of TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC (Silver Lake).
Today, I’m digging into the PE players in town along with their assets, investments and “dry powder” — i.e., capital waiting to be deployed. After talking with lawyers, financial experts and other industry dealmakers, I’ve compiled this list of 14 private equity firms you should be watching, especially if you’re looking to take on an investor.
The firms I’m highlighting are a mix of diversified behemoths that invest in Hollywood companies on occasion, smaller firms focused on entertainment and media, and a handful that aren’t yet in the sector but, I’m told, are looking for the right deal to break in. Across my conversations, one investment thesis came up repeatedly: sports, live events and other scarce real-world experiences look increasingly valuable precisely because generative AI cannot easily replace them.
In the interest of keeping this shorter than The Odyssey, I’m focusing only on private equity and skipping (for now) venture capital firms and investors who primarily specialize in acquiring IP rights, even if they’re also expanding into other areas.
For paid subscribers, I break down the roughly $1 trillion in undeployed U.S. capital, how Hollywood operators may soon become targets and the 14 firms insiders say are ready to spend.
Today:
- How PE money can rescue a Hollywood company — or help sink it
- Why an expiring fund doesn’t always mean a sale — and the workaround becoming routine
- Why some investors want a Hollywood company to get bigger and others just want to cut it leaner
- The firm sitting on more than $50 billion in capital ready to deploy
- Which firm may need to sell off decade-old investments to help cover what it just spent
- Why sports have become private equity’s favorite hedge against an AI-upended Hollywood
Don’t stop here
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