UTA President David Kramer on London Expansion, Brexit, Writers Strike and “Getting Smart Around AI”

Georg Szalai
·12 min read

UTA is inaugurating its new London office on Thursday evening with a gala opening.

The new space in the heart of the British capital is bringing together more than 100 people on two floors, ranging from UTA’s music practice, agents working on production, podcasting, endorsements, voiceovers, and entertainment marketing, as well as staff of advisory practice MediaLink, which UTA acquired in 2021. The new home is also near that of the talent and literary agency Curtis Brown Group, which became part of UTA last year.

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Management is hoping for “increased collaboration” and a chance to offer “more collective expertise and resources” to clients and the broader London creative and business communities. And UTA aims to continue growing its investment in “bringing U.K. and European clients more opportunities.”

The Hollywood Reporter talked to UTA president David Kramer about how a growing presence in the British capital made the bigger office necessary, the importance of greater international reach, how key music and literary work is for the agency’s London business, other growth opportunities, including for MediaLink, and why clients must pay close attention to AI.

UTA has been growing in London in recent years, including thanks to acquisitions. The company has its L.A. headquarters and offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Nashville, New York and London. What has driven that desire for expansion in the U.K. and how does London fit into your broader global ambitions?

We had been making an investment in the U.K. for a very long time, since the beginning of the company. But that was with a different approach, which was that a lot of agents would travel over there, get to know all the different agents and agencies there. We ended up, and still and will continue to do so, co-repping an amazing roster of clients coming out of the U.K. It’s such an exciting, vibrant, robust community.

Especially as you saw the world getting smaller over the past several years, with technology and the birth of the streamers, and with what people are interested in watching and what markets were growing, the U.K. was the most logical next step for us to expand outside of the U.S. Some of that happened when we acquired The Agency Group, so had an office there since that acquisition, less than 10 years ago. As we saw different companies planting their flags in that market, among others, we decided that the smart thing would be, to be able to work with them and represent people from that market, to plant our own flag.

(This week) marked the one-year anniversary of our Curtis Brown acquisition, which has gone incredibly, incredibly well. It’s a great company. That was a further investment in the U.K. Also, when we acquired Michael Kassan’s company, MediaLink, which is a fantastic company – they have people in London. The good news-bad news is that we ran out of office space. All of a sudden, we had a production person and a comedy touring person and an audio person there. So we decided that it was time for us to take the next move and to grow the office footprint. We took this space on Newman Street, and we have been building it out for a long time now. I think it’s going to be terrific for our culture.

Curtis Brown’s headquarters is nearby. The company has been the home to authors such as Margaret Atwood and the estates of John le Carre and Ian Fleming. It has also been representing such big acting names and Lily James and Alicia Vikander via its talent arm Tavistock Wood. How does that business fit into UTA in London and how you manage the company’s presence in London?

I think (the new office is) going to be terrific for our relationship with Curtis Brown, although they are going to keep their own offices. They are an independently run company. Yes, we acquired them, but Jonny Geller is the CEO, and he runs the day-to-day business over there, them being who they are for almost 125 years now. That was the other thing that was really important to us as we ventured into the U.K. space and any region that we go into. You got to have real boots on the ground, and you got to be authentic to the region. We have seen that in New York, we have seen that in Nashville, we are doing that now in Atlanta and in the U.K. We want to be additive to Curtis Brown where we can be additive, and we want to be hands-off where we should be hands-off. The past year has shown us that that’s the right approach, and it has worked really well for them and really well for us.

But as we have all gotten to know each other better, there has been some nice crossover and some nice wins together as a team, which has been great. And with the new office, we are going to see more opportunities come our way. That could be in audio, that could be in production, that could be in our brand marketing group, that could be in events, that could be in sports, and music. So we are really excited about the U.K. and it might open doors for us in other parts of the world, certainly in Europe and in other areas.

Is this global ambition mainly driven by major business and industry changes? What’s the biggest opportunity here? And how key is that to clients?

The hope is that by having all these talented agents and executives around the globe that they will be additive to one another. Opportunities will present themselves in a way that wouldn’t, if we hadn’t built out the platform the way we are building out the platform. It’s not just the streamers that have gone global. The clients have gone global. What a star is has changed completely. So whether it’s a digital star, whether it’s a sports star, music star, comedy star, a movie star, we need to keep up with their ambition, we need to be more ambitious than them. Part of the plan here is we got to make sure that they can tap into whatever division of the agency and whatever resources. And whatever community those people are in, they can add to their profile and their career. So we want to be there with them and keep up with them.

Clients, especially this younger generation of clients, are ambitious, so you do have to meet them where they are or be there already. They want help with ventures. We have a ventures group. They want help with speaking, we got that. They want to do a publishing deal, they want sponsorship for their tour, we can do that. They want to get closer to the brands, Michael Kassan’s MediaLink can do that.

And what we have learned is that talent can be anywhere: whether it’s in Scandinavia, France, Italy or Germany, or South Korea. We are seeing and representing people from all those places. So it’s very exciting to be closer to them. The most talked about television show this year probably was the series finale of Succession. (Show creator) Jesse Armstrong is a client of ours. He and so many of our wonderful clients come from the U.K., but we also have clients from all these other different great countries. So we’re open to all of it, and we would like to be smart and thoughtful about it.

The great thing for us is that our clients are as ambitious as they have ever been. They see the world through a different lens, the world sees content through a different lens. It’s a really exciting time for all this growth that we are seeing. And I know in some places there has been a bit of a tightening up on M&A, and there are some challenges around inflation and interest rates and what’s going to happen with Brexit and what it is going to mean for the U.K., but we look at that as an opportunity when other people get a little conservative and nervous.

I was wondering about the impact of Brexit. What do you see as the risks and opportunities for Britain and clients here so far?

We don’t know yet how Brexit is going to play out completely, of course. But what we are seeing is that there is going to be opportunity, both in the U.K. and on the continent: production opportunities, content opportunities, IP opportunities, talent acquisitions. Every time there has been some level of disruption, people look back and say, “Oh, if I had done this.” We don’t want to do that. With all of this change, the business has continued to grow. And our business is so diversified today versus 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago. So those opportunities only continue to expand for us.

Speaking of disruption: disruption has been a key theme in the entertainment industry in the streaming age…

Whenever there are new technologies, new platforms, new economic models, people get a little nervous, and they can sit back on their heels. We want to be on the front foot, we want to put our foot on the gas. Even during COVID, when a lot of people tightened up, we wanted to do everything as thoughtfully as we could do, because we didn’t know what was going to happen. But you also saw us talking about M&A, hiring agents, promoting people. We have always had a pretty aggressive culture at UTA.

What can UTA bring from the U.S. or from its U.S. practice to international markets and clients?

I think the relationships we have in the U.S. are going to be incredibly additive to people coming from different parts of the world, and the relationships that they have in their community is going to be incredibly additive to what we are trying to do. There are also verticals that UTA has that I think can be transported into other markets. I think there is still some level of immaturity in the spaces around audio around the world in some places, the digital market, and what digital star can go back and forth. For an athlete in Europe, what can we contribute to their profile because of our platform. And global music is only growing and growing, from what we are seeing come out of Latin America, come out of Africa, and come out of Asia.

The U.K. and London are known for a vibrant music scene. How key is that business for UTA’s London office and what are other key areas?

Music has gone so global, and what we have seen in our London music office has been terrific and serves the rest of the world. We have a tendency in America to look west; they are looking east as well, and that’s really important.

On the Curtis Brown side, they checked a lot of boxes for us, including going back to being authentic to the region. They have a fantastic publishing division, which was a big initiative of ours, and that spoke to our media rights side and our IP initiative. So that’s been really great.

Comedy has continued to travel internationally. Digital stars as well. I also think with MediaLink and what’s going on with the brand business and brands wanting to get closer and closer to the talent, whether that’s a movie or television star, or a music or a comedy star or a podcast or digital star. So what MediaLink is going to be able to do in the U.K. and other parts of the world is really exciting. There are a lot of touchpoints and opportunities for success.

You mentioned Jesse Armstrong earlier. He and other writers from Succession and beyond, along with members of other creative guilds, expressed solidarity with the WGA writers strike at an event here in London this week. Any thoughts on the strike?

I think everyone really so appreciates the support that the U.K. is giving to the WGA fight. We really hope that they get everything they want and they deserve. But we also hope they can resolve their differences as quickly as possible, which is good for everybody, and hopefully SAG can figure it out as well. So, we are behind them 100 percent and hope we can come to a resolution that’s really fair to them as quickly as possible.

I have been through a strike once before, and it was a little different. 15 years ago the business was completely different. But they are not fun, they are not pleasant. Eventually, we’ll get back to it, but until then, everyone’s on pins and needles.

What else is a big topic for clients and you right now?

The advent of the kind of AI that we are talking about now. Obviously, there has been AI for a long time, but with this level of AI, it’s fascinating to see how in just a few short months, it’s started to monopolize conversations. It’s a really important conversation. And it’s so early that we don’t know exactly what it’s going to be capable of. We actually had an AI symposium in our office last week with a bunch of smart people just to talk about what it really was, from the most basic version to what it could be. It’s going to be pretty sophisticated. It’s going to be interesting to see what that means for the world and our business. And so getting smart around AI, I think for all of us, is really important.

Do you expect that there will be parts of the business that could benefit and other parts where there will be more tension and worry?

That’s probably true with any kind of change. If you are a travel agent, with the internet, you suddenly had the customer book their own tickets. There are certain things it has made more efficient. But it has also put certain people in factories out of jobs. In terms of the creative community, we can’t be asleep at the wheel on this. I think that is why it has taken sort of the front seat in some of these WGA conversations, which, even six months ago, it didn’t. It has been really fascinating to see the acceleration of the AI conversation.

Interview edited for length and clarity.

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