A long-simmering conflict of interest in baseball is coming to a head as talent agency William Morris Endeavor (WME) is now looking to sell its baseball representation business and exit the sport, sources told FOS.
The forthcoming move arrives after WME parent company Endeavor completed a long-planned move to become a private company again, and is now controlled by majority shareholder Silver Lake. The private equity giant also owns Diamond Baseball Holdings, a dominant entity in Minor League Baseball team ownership, with 43 teams in its portfolio, including the Single-A Dayton (Ohio) Dragons, owners of the longest sellout streak in U.S. pro sports.
The MLB Players Association, which certifies MLB player agents, has long prohibited those agents from also having direct or indirect ownership of MLB or MiLB teams or related entities.
A similar situation emerged three years ago when the union took issue with Endeavor buying up MiLB teams and threatened decertification of WME agents. That was resolved when Endeavor sold the franchises to Silver Lake in August 2022 in a $280 million deal.
The prior separation of Silver Lake and the publicly traded Endeavor, however, ended with the latter’s privatization and near-total holding by Silver Lake, resurfacing the conflict-of-interest concerns. Instead of Endeavor selling WME Baseball, Silver Lake could choose to sell DBH to resolve the conflict, but that is unlikely. Silver Lake has since more than quadrupled the size of DBH from the 10 teams involved in the 2022 deal, and that entity has become a colossus in the affiliated minor leagues.
Each of the principals declined to comment, but a source familiar with the developing situation said, “There are ongoing conversations about getting this into [union] compliance.”
With the Endeavor privatization, that company is creating a new entity, WME Group, that will include the bulk of the WME talent agency, IMG Licensing, marketing agency 160over90, and nonscripted content business Pantheon Media.
WME Football, meanwhile, has been acquired by former Endeavor executive chairman Patrick Whitesell. That deal satisfied similar conflict-of-interest concerns from the NFL Players Association between the football representation and a partial ownership of the Raiders by Silver Lake co-CEO and managing partner Egon Durban.
In baseball, however, the situation appears to be going in a different direction; sources told FOS that Whitesell is not interested in buying the baseball representation business.
While WME Baseball is not necessarily on the scale of other major agencies in the sport, such as Boras Corp., it does have former All-Stars and MLB award-winners such as Cubs infielder/outfielder Ian Happ, Phillies pitcher Taijuan Walker, and Yankees shortstop Anthony Volpe as clients.
