Jeremy Zimmer on Leaving UTA, Hollywood and the MediaLink Mistake | Exclusive

It’s an exquisite irony that Jeremy Zimmer’s last major business trip was at the end of February, where he sat at a gala dinner in Doha with Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani — just across from his nemesis, Michael Kassan.

The CEO of United Talent Agency was there to secure MediaLink’s business with Qatar’s Government Digital Council (GDC), which was hosting a Web Summit for 25,000 attendees and star speakers like Will Smith and Alexis Ohanian. 

Kassan, the brand-whisperer who has been entangled in a bitter lawsuit with Zimmer for a year after (pick a side) quitting or being fired from UTA, was competing for Qatar’s business too, but as a rival to UTA-owned MediaLink. 

Less than two weeks later, Zimmer was asked to step down after 13 years as CEO and 34 years since co-founding UTA with Jim Berkus and Peter Benedek. Kassan would be a key factor in that unwelcome decision. David Kramer will take over as Zimmer’s successor CEO. 

In an interview with TheWrap, Zimmer, 66, said that he was ready for the transition, and had been discussing it with his board for some time. 

“I really agree that this is the best time,” Zimmer told WaxWord on Wednesday. “What I loved doing was building a full service agency that could operate in a bunch of different areas. It was my drive to start music, sports, to build a creator business, and a brand facing business. Those were all the right things to do. They are amazing parts of our company.”

That said, Zimmer is aware — as multiple individuals told me this week — that the protracted dispute with Kassan hurt him and UTA. It has cost the agency millions in legal fees, damaged MediaLink’s brand, led to lost brand revenue and publicly embarrassed a company whose entire brand equity is tied to its savvy navigation of relationships. 

This one, not so much. Zimmer declined to address the Kassan of it all. But he acknowledged that the acquisition of MediaLink in 2021 for $125 million was a mistake.

“The strategy of our brand-facing business is right, and MediaLink fits well into that strategy,” said Zimmer, without saying the quiet part out loud: that bringing Kassan into the culture of UTA was a bad fit.

Worse still, the UTA board has been deeply unhappy with Zimmer’s handling of the matter — and the fact that it still isn’t out of their lives. In an unusually emotional response, Zimmer seemed to take Kassan’s actions personally. His fury over the alleged misconduct of the swashbuckling marketing executive is well-known to anyone who has crossed paths with him in the past year, with Zimmer venting his contempt and indignation over someone he believes stole millions from UTA. A year later, negotiations to settle dueling lawsuits continue, but aren’t done. 

Kassan, who declined to comment for this article, has instead gone on building his own new business, taking MediaLink clients along the way and claiming that a non-compete does not apply. In the latest salvo, iHeart Media has pulled out of a long-standing partnership with MediaLink at the upcoming Cannes Lions advertising festival, one individual with knowledge told TheWrap.

All that said, Zimmer’s exit from UTA was about as dignified an ending as Hollywood permits in this cutthroat culture. His tenure at the agency leaves far more in the positive column than otherwise, guiding UTA through tumultuous changes to the entertainment economy, through COVID, two strikes and the behemoth competition of Endeavor and CAA. 

In that time, Zimmer led a string of high profile acquisitions that solidified UTA’s standing as a viable third agency in a tightening universe of consolidation. He expanded the core competencies of UTA as the movie and TV businesses struggled, acquiring: The Agency Group, a music talent agency in 2015, Rich Paul’s Klutch Sports Group in 2019; Digital Brand Architects extending into the creator economy that same year; MediaLink in 2021 and the British talent agency the Curtis Brown Group in 2022.  

Then in 2022, Zimmer brought in a major investment from Swedish-based private equity firm EQT, which bought out other investors and created a major wealth event for UTA’s principal partners. “He was intimately involved in getting us to a place where we could do big financial transaction that put a lot of money in people’s pockets,” said a top agency insider. “He should be celebrated for that.”

Along the way, Zimmer amassed a formidable art collection — examples of which hang in the agency’s sleek building in Beverly Hills — along with a never-ending string of public media appearances, part of his career-long competition with his much larger competitors, Ari Emanuel at Endeavor and Bryan Lourd at CAA.  

But the board, which now includes two private equity executives, along with colleague-antagonist Jay Sures, led to pressure for Zimmer to make way now for his protégé, the level-headed and well-liked David Kramer. Multiple sources who spoke to TheWrap said that Zimmer was well suited for the period of expansion and acquisition just ended, and that the more-focused Kramer is what UTA needs in the phase to come, drilling down on existing businesses. 

“Kramer is absolutely the right CEO at this moment in time,” said the insider. “We need to double down on our business of representation. That’s where our focus is going to be. Representation drives every part of our business. David suits that mold.”

In the end, there was no board vote on making the call. And apparently Zimmer himself agreed when board chairman Paul Wachter reached out on March 10 to let Zimmer know that, unfortunately, it was the right moment for the change they’d planned for. 

As for the MediaLink dispute, an individual close to the dispute told TheWrap that UTA has made an overture to Kassan about buying his old company back. 

“David Kramer is the savior of getting it settled,” said the individual with knowledge of the dispute. “They need to close this down and go back to running their business.”

UTA declined to comment for this story.  

The post Jeremy Zimmer on Leaving UTA, Hollywood and the MediaLink Mistake | Exclusive appeared first on TheWrap.