Each of the Power Brokers Barrett Media has featured this week all have great stories about how they got into the industry. WME’s Josh Levy might have the best.
Levy initially wanted to be a lawyer. “I thought I was going to be Mr. Jerry Maguire,” he said. “I took the LSAT, I applied to law school, and actually the summer after graduating, before law school, I was in [New York] city, suit-and-tie, copies of my resume in my hands. I couldn’t tell you the places that I was going to. There are a lot of sports marketing and sports adjacent companies that I was interested in working with. At the time I just remember literally typing into my BlackBerry, ‘Sports Agencies NYC’.
“The first place I saw…I just showed up at their front desk reception and said, ‘I have an interview at 2:30 with so-and-so and I need to be buzzed up.’ They buzzed me up, the first person I saw I gave her my elevator pitch. I gave her my whole spiel and she said, ‘That was great, but I’m just the receptionist.'”
Undeterred, Levy said he waited at the elevators until he saw someone walk into the agency. When someone did, it happened to be the Vice President of Broadcasting. Levy walked right up and gave his pitch.
“I stopped her, we had a long chat and two weeks later, she hired me as an intern…at the time, I had no idea TV talent even had agents!”
That was 15 years ago. He would later find his way over to WME in September 2010 and is now a Partner and Head of Sports Broadcasting. His client list includes the likes of Matthew Berry, Candace Parker, P.K. Subban, Jamie Erdahl, Kay Adams, Dean Blandino and Adam Lefkoe, in addition to many other top broadcasters.
His start at WME, however, was in the mailroom, same place it starts for all of the other young want-to-be agents.
“You start and you’re sort of like this Swiss army knife who’s reading scripts and doing tapings and you’re doing these various tasks and projects for different agents and assistants and it’s before you’re really an assistant starting to find your lane. But I knew even at the time, that I really wanted to be in television and that I really wanted to be in sports.”
At the time, however, Levy was unsure if there was really an opportunity for a mixture of the two. Only a few agents then were specializing in sports broadcasters. Times have certainly changed with many agencies now having several people working with both those currently in sports media as well as athletes who want to have a media career after their playing days are over.
Eventually, Levy ended up working as an assistant to Jim Ornstein, who was the first agent in the company to focus heavily on the sports broadcast genre.
“Through osmosis and plenty more experiences and events, I just knew the minute I started working for Jim, this is what I need to be doing,” Levy said.
In what turned out to be incredible foresight, one of Levy’s first clients was Todd Fuhrman, who was making appearances on FS1 as a gambling analyst. Fuhrman had been an oddsmaker for Caesars and when Levy saw him doing something that at the time nobody else was doing, he thought this might be the start of something that could really take off.
Levy said, “I told my boss, ‘This feels like it’s going to be big.'” He sent a cold email introducing himself to Fuhrman and told him he thought he had “something to deliver to a television audience and I want to be along for that ride with you.” Levy continues to represent Fuhrman to this day. “It’s been really cool to work with somebody from just coming on once in a while to helping them build a business,” Levy said.
As he predicted when first signing Fuhrman, it was the start of something that has expanded beyond anyone’s expectations. Gambling and fantasy sports have become part of mainstream sports media, and it has just continued to open up more opportunities for broadcasters in that space.
Levy added, “It feels like we’re in this era where people are watching a game and texting their friends about it, they’re watching a game and checking their fantasy lines, they’re watching a game and tracking their bets – that’s what this generation, this era has become.”
“If the dam finally broke, it was going to be a juggernaut and it’s proven to be, and I get it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s certainly a very complimentary content offering as we watch sports today.”
Not only are we seeing more gambling and fantasy content, but we are also seeing more talent who go far beyond just their primary roles. Some are doing separate podcasts while others are creating entire production companies. While that works for some, it is not for everyone. Levy said there is a saying he has found himself repeating a lot recently: ‘You can’t make somebody into something they’re not’.
“I think being inorganic is probably the worst thing to tell a talent or to encourage a talent to do,” he said. “I just think in today’s day and age being a specialist and owning a space is far more valuable than being this sort of jack-of-all-trades generalist.
“If you can sell yourself or if I can sell you as a talent in a unique way, that you do something either better than anybody else, more uniquely than anybody else, or just come at something with such a different perspective and point of view, I just think that’s such a more attractive sell. We’re just in a new world in a new day and age that I think being a specialist at something personally has a lot more value than ever before.”
As for working with his clients and advising them on which lanes to look in, Levy said the key is to have a clear strategy.
“One shape does not fit all, and I just think we have to be very calculated and honest with talent on how they want to build something and know what the end goal is. If it’s to build a massive media company and have several tentacles to it in terms of broadcasting and production and hosting, there’s a process in a way to do that and more often than not it doesn’t happen overnight. It’s far more advantageous to sit in a room and come up with a plan.”
Levy appears to have the same passion for what he is doing today, if not more, than the kid who was standing at the elevator waiting for someone to come out a decade and a half ago. And if he were that person who walked off the elevator today and spoke to someone who desired to become an agent, he knows what he would tell them, and it would be the exact opposite of something one of the top agents in the game once told him.
“I was on vacation years and years ago and I actually ran into Scott Boras. I remember telling him that I wanted to be a sports agent, and I’ll never forget his response was, ‘Don’t do it.’ … That was the extent of our conversation. It was brief. I almost had 25 follow-up questions of why? But it actually only made me want to be in this business more.
“I say all that to say if somebody young told me they wanted to be in this business, great, the business has never offered more opportunity, between tech companies who are now in our space and betting companies who are now in our space. My only advice to them would be work your ass off because that’s the only way for you to ever cut through and actually build a meaningful business. No one’s going to hand you anything.”
Barrett Media produces daily content on the music, news, and sports media industries. To stay updated, sign up for our newsletters and get the latest information delivered straight to your inbox.
