Biz news: IMG owner goes to law against rival
NewsAlexander Shustorovich, president of IMG Artists, has launched a bid to take over classical artists who are listed with WME.
‘If the artists at WME are up for grabs, that doesn’t mean we’ll get them all, but we’ll take a crack at it,’ says Shustorovich. Having defeated his former partner Barrett Wissman (pictured right), Shusto is now on the rampage
Read on here between the heavily legalled lines.
Please use abbreviations only having stated at beginning of article the full name of the companies you are writing about. Thanks . In reference to : IMG and WME
Given the huge volume of posts over the years about all the on-going troubles at the top of IMG Artists following the unexpectedly early death of IMG’s Founder and Chairman Mark McCormack, I am slightly surprised there are still readers who are not aware of the title. It was founded as a division of McCormack’s global athlete representation and sports marketing empire International Management Group when it took over the small New York-based Hamlen/Landau concert agency in 1984. McCormack’s aim was to develop a worldwide agency with some of the world’s finest classical artists. Its unwritten objective was that McCormack wanted to “wipe the floor” with the then largest artists agency CAMI (Columbia Artists Management Inc.) managed by the reclusive Ronald Wilford. By the 1990s IMGA had offices in various parts of the world and a list that included some of the world’s major artists. It had a larger global reach but never attained anything like the volume managed by CAMI.
On the other hand, both agencies went into a steady decline in the 2000s. IMGA’s influence declined after McCormack’s death in 2003 and CAMI had already started down the slippery slope after Wilford retired as President in 2000 with the company soon moving offices from New York’s prestigious Steinway Building round the corner to a much less imposing office bock on Broadway. IMGA was hived off and sold shortly after McCormack’s death but permitted to keep the name.
To call WME a rival of IMGA is sort of hilarious.What is not mentioned is that if WME were to shed its entire list of clients and properties to IMGA, no one at that agency would know what to do with them. Not only do they lack the executive talent but they do not possess the reach in the industry to commercially leverage in a manner even close to what WME does on a daily basis.
IMGA does not “lack the executive talent” or “reach in the industry”? These are strong statements and basically untrue. The shenanigans at the top of IMGA can not disguise the fact that they have some hugely impressive names in their roster. Any agency managing such artists as Leif Ove Andsnes, Murray Perahia, Mitsuko Uchida, Joshua Bell, Yevgeny Kissin, Renee Fleming, Semyon Bychkov, Sir Antonio Pappano, Julia Fischer, the young winner of the last Van Cliburn Competition whom everyone wants to book Yunchan Lim, Sarah Chang, Vasily Petrenko and a whole host of others clearly has a great deal of executive talent, the more so when you consider that many of the above names have been represented by IMGA for many years –
No atists agency remains static. But many of the above and others have remained with the agency for decades. For example Joshua Bell started his career as a teenager with the original Hamlen/Landau agency. IMGA gained Itzhak Perlman in the mid-1980s who remained with them for close to three decades.
On the other hand, WME stands for William Morris Endeavour which is virtually a pure entertainment brand covering primarily film and TV. It may be much larger in terms of actors, directors, writers, lyricists etc. and is primarily based in the USA – but seems to represent very few classical artists. Were any takeover in either direction to take place, as with similar examples in the past it would be almost certain that most of the management teams would follow suit.
I think the funniest thing about this is Shustorovich basically saying he wants to represent Kathryn Jenkins!
William Morris is not a classical agency and has zero input, power, or say in the classical world.