By Gigi Picard ’22
Sports Editor
On Sept. 21, 2020, Wasserman — a sports marketing and talent management company representing over 150 female athletes — announced on Twitter a new think tank from their recently created division, The Collective. The new division is a team working to embrace women’s sports, entertainment and culture.
Wasserman is based in Los Angeles with offices in cities around the world such as London, Amsterdam, Dubai and more. There are also other offices in the U.S., including ones in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Dallas, Texas. Wasserman officially launched The Collective, a division of the company, with the aim of bringing visibility to women’s sports. The current president of Wasserman is Mike Watts. Casey Wasserman, who founded the company in 2002, serves as chairman and chief executive officer.
The company currently represents well-known female athletes such as Tobin Heath, Katie Ledecky, Simone Manuel and Megan Rapinoe, and received praise for making the representation of women in sports a priority.
Olivia Wreford, marketing manager for Wasserman’s operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, blogged on the company’s website about The Collective on Aug. 7, 2019. The blog mentions the actions Casey took to ensure a “growth and development of women in sports and entertainment.” In an effort to do so, the Wasserman Foundation, led by Casey, promised $1 million to their nonprofit partners, such as Women in Sports and Events and Evolve Entertainment Fund. Additionally, Wasserman planned on increasing “the number of female agents, data analysts and marketers in the industry.
The Collective also partners with AT&T, Orreco/FitrWoman, Snow Monkey, Google, Concacaf and the International Cricket Council. “The goal is ultimately to move women forward,” said Thayer Lavielle, The Collective’s executive vice president. According to sports business news website Ministry of Sport, Lavielle will lead the new think tank with Shelley Pisarra, executive vice president of global insights at Wasserman. The Collective Think Tank is partnered with AT&T, ESPNW, Concacaf, Nationwide, EverFi and Royal Bank of Canada. The think tank has also begun partnering with professors and students from 10 universities including the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Other participating schools include the School of Sport and Recreation and Tourism Management at George Mason University, the Ohio University College of Business and Ryerson University in Canada. These universities will launch research projects focusing on female fandom, consumption and purchasing power as well as how women who work in the business of sport are represented. At UMass Amherst, Nefertiti A. Walker, the vice chancellor, chief diversity officer and associate professor of sports management, talked about what it means for UMass Amherst to join the think tank.
“Being a part of The Collective Think Tank allows us to leverage the power of multiple institutions and researchers, in our efforts to produce industry-changing research and insights on the economic power and social impact of women in sports,” a statement from UMass Amherst News and Media Relations said.“Several of those projects will be led by students, the future generation of sports marketers, while the balance will be led by the expertise of faculty academics.”“The unique thing about this think tank is it doesn’t exist in sports today, as it is, certainly in the women’s sports space,” Lavielle said about the project.