CAA Will Buy ICM to Take on WME, But the Destination Appears to Be the Same: IPO - NewsBreak

CAA's planned acquisition of ICM Partners would reduce the big four agencies to three, but the deal suggests that the magic number may be two. Each of the two largest agencies have embraced a different business model: Be like CAA and double down on the representation business and strengthen negotiating power against increasingly powerful studios and streamers; or, be like WME and try to have it both ways as part of media empire that competes with Disney while also negotiating with it. And finally, there may be only one path for agency enlightenment: While CAA's focused strategy is very different than...