Brad Small watched his legal practice pivot during the pandemic.
As Hollywood shut down amid lockdowns and then, three years later, the double strikes, the veteran sports and entertainment lawyer’s client roster went from “90% entertainment to 90% sports,” Small told TheWrap. Athletes kept earning under their contracts while other entertainment work stalled, and Small found himself repping about 40 wrestlers who were among the few still making money.
Small got his start repping professional wrestlers 30 years ago, having taken them on as clients when senior attorneys at his first law firm dismissed them as “low brow.” He started his client roster with Diamond Dallas Page and built through word-of-mouth to world champions like Drew McIntyre, Goldberg and Chris Jericho.
Nowadays, professional wrestling is anything but low brow, drawing tons of fans and, more importantly, the eye of major entertainment companies. Netflix’s 10-year, $5 billion deal with WWE to stream “Monday Night Raw” and the formation of the TKO Group changed the business of wrestling and brought new money into the sport.
Small specifically joined Innovative to launch its sports division over the summer and had worked with agents at the agency early in his career. He was previously at Fox Rothschild LLP, where he worked for four years as a partner in the firm’s Entertainment and Sports Law Department in Los Angeles.
His approach differs from the larger agencies pursuing acquisitions. Small is adding clients selectively based on their relationships and fit with the agency’s culture, a strategy he developed over 30 years in the business. Read on to learn more about his insights into the world of wrestling and sports representation.
You’ve launched Innovative’s sports division with a focus on wrestling and MMA. What’s your roadmap for building this from scratch?
My roadmap is to make very selective additions, as opposed to acquisitions, which other agencies have done. I’m focusing more on quality, less on quantity, focusing on relationships – bringing in individuals with strong reputations with promoters and people we negotiate with. We’re being very selective about who we add to make us stronger and increase our leverage. It’s more adding than acquiring.
What convinced you this was the right time to make this move?
The pandemic, then the strike, kind of set this in motion, combined with social media. The wrestlers have their own podcasts now, and in terms of the amount of money being raised from merchandise and ticket sales – when WrestleMania events are now doing two nights instead of one, it’s just booming. The significance and involvement of the females is staggering. There was also TKO, which took over UFC and WWE. The Netflix deal – $5 billion for 10 years – is staggering. It was too much not to look at.
How has the Netflix-WWE deal changed the representation game?
When the Netflix deal was done, I went back to the company for all the clients I had with WWE and negotiated new deals with them, because there was a lot more money out there. Max with AEW also did a big deal for programming. It used to be that a million dollars was the Holy Grail – I represented Triple H at the time, and now he’s married to Vince McMahon’s daughter and running WWE’s creative. Now these wrestlers with WWE, some are making $12 million, some are making $20 million. It’s staggering, and they deserve it because they’re producing the revenues.
What have you learned about the entertainment business that traditional sports agents might miss?
Relationships are the key in the business. No matter where the business affairs person goes – from ABC to NBC to Netflix– you still have that relationship. One of the keys for me in the wrestling world is having very strong relationships with AEW and WWE, the two primary promoters. The key is never going into a deal saying you’re going to destroy the other side. Always leave a little bit of room for the next deal, and the next deal, and the next deal that you’re going to do with them.
What’s your three-year vision for where the sports division will be?
My vision is that we’ve established a very strong foothold in sports – all sports, not just wrestling – that we are a place to go no matter what the sport. But we’re unique in that we are selective. We’re not looking for mass quantity, but very hand-picked additions. We want to be looked at for top quality, not quantity. I don’t want to be throwing things against the wall, but looking back and saying, “Wow, look at what we put together, what we built.”
How do you approach negotiations differently when representing sports entertainment talent versus traditional entertainment clients?
With sports entertainment clients, there are issues having to do with injury and disability and force majeure — things having to do with the physicality of the profession. There’s a lot of focus on what happens if they get injured, how long, what’s the guarantee. The biggest issue is probably the physical side, with concussion concerns that come up in wrestling too. I have a few clients right now with concussions who are on hold until the medical doctor clears them. Those are scary situations — are they still going to get paid? How do they get paid? Did the injury occur in the ring or outside?
The other thing is that with higher-end performers, you have a little bit more control of the creative in terms of your role. Certain wrestlers do have that control, but very few. When you’re negotiating with someone like Vince McMahon, you don’t get a lot of control telling him how the match is going to end up.
