Agents and Managers for Artists, Athletes, Entertainers, and Other Public Figures (U.S., NAICS 71141)

A NAICS industry (5-digit) that is effectively identical to its single child, U.S. industry 711410. This is a short rollup page — for the full treatment (economics, players, regulation, how to invest), read the 711410 primer.

1. Overview

NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) 71141 is the representation business: the agents and managers who negotiate contracts, book work, chase endorsements, and steer the careers of actors, musicians, professional athletes, authors, models, influencers, and other public figures. It is a relationship-driven, asset-light services industry that sits at a chokepoint over very large money — the talent it represents signs the sports contracts, film and streaming deals, tours, and brand endorsements worth tens of billions of dollars a year, and the agent keeps a slice of each one. [1][2]

At this level of the taxonomy there is nothing to add to its one child: 71141 and 711410 describe the same activity, the same firms, and the same money. The interesting detail lives one level down. [4]

2. What's inside — and why this level equals its one child

A 5-digit NAICS industry can contain several 6-digit U.S. industries. This one contains exactly one:

Because the split is one-to-one, every figure, boundary, and caveat for 71141 is the 711410 figure. The scope covers establishments that represent and/or manage creative and performing artists, athletes, entertainers, and other public figures — negotiating contracts, managing clients' business and financial affairs, and promoting careers (celebrity, sports, literary, talent, and modeling agents and managers). It excludes independent artists working on their own account (711510), promoters of live events (711310/711320), team ownership and athletes/entertainers themselves (711211/711212), model registries and staffing (561311/561320), and business managers doing primarily accounting work (541219). [4]

For the full structure — the agent-versus-manager distinction, the "Big Three" mega-agencies (WME, CAA, UTA) versus the boutique long tail, and where the value actually concentrates — see the 711410 primer.

3. Size (this level's rollup figures)

These are our ground-truth federal figures for NAICS 71141. Because the industry has one child, they equal the 711410 totals.

That is roughly $2.3 million of receipts per firm and about 5 employees per establishment — high pay per head, consistent with a commission-driven professional-services business. The HHI of 289.9 is far below the ~1,000 mark U.S. antitrust regulators treat as "unconcentrated," so by firm count this looks like a fragmented national market. Read that with care: the concentration figures cover the whole federal category (thousands of small and specialized firms), not the market shares of the best-known Hollywood agencies, and they understate real power because the top agencies dominate the high-value clients while the long tail splits the rest. [2]

Undercount caveat (matters here). Treat these totals as a floor, not a full picture:

1. Only commission revenue is counted — the $10.81 billion is what agents keep, not what they move; Forbes estimates the top ten North American sports agencies alone earn up to ~$4.6 billion of commissions on more than $72 billion of active contracts, and that is sports only. [8]
2. Employer businesses only — County Business Patterns (CBP) and the Economic Census size data cover payroll firms; the large population of solo, no-employee agents and managers (nonemployer sole proprietors) sits outside these figures, and our data include no separate nonemployer count. Individual and small-operator ownership is common in representation, so the operator count is understated. [1][5]
3. Managers and in-house work slip the net — unlicensed personal managers may not classify here, and in-house representation at studios, leagues, or brands is not counted as a separate establishment. [6]

Our data do not provide profit, margin, commission rates, cash flow, growth, or valuation for this level; any such figures below come from company filings or third-party sources, not the federal statistics.

4. Investable universe (where value concentrates across the children)

With one child, all of the industry's value sits in 711410, and the pattern there is unusually lopsided: the marquee names are private. Pure-play public exposure is limited to one micro-cap near-pure-play, Wilhelmina International (OTCQX: WHLM), a model and talent management firm. Broader public exposure is indirect — through adjacent sports and live-entertainment companies such as TKO Group Holdings (NYSE: TKO) and Live Nation Entertainment (NYSE: LYV), or through the institutional investors backing the big agencies. The dominant agencies (WME Group, CAA, UTA, Wasserman, Excel, Roc Nation) are private and mostly private-equity-owned; owning the marquee end is a private-markets game. Full company-by-company detail is in the 711410 primer. [9][10][12]

5. How the money works

The model is simple: agencies earn a commission on what their clients earn. A firm signs a client, sources or negotiates work and endorsements, and collects a commission or service fee when the client is paid. Union-franchised talent agents generally take 10%; personal and business managers take 10%–30%; sports agents are capped by each players' union (roughly 3% NFL, 4% NBA/NHL, 5% MLB). The roster is the asset, so operating leverage is high — but the "asset" walks out the door every night, which makes key-person and client retention the quiet drivers of value. The last decade's margin story was agencies moving up the stack into packaging, owned content, live events, and even leagues — much of which now books under other NAICS codes. [6][8][9] Full mechanics and the metrics buyers track are in the 711410 primer.

6. Demand drivers

Demand for representation rises with the size and complexity of the talent economy: streaming-era content spending, live-events and touring growth, and sports media-rights inflation all enlarge commissionable contracts; new client pools — college athletes' name, image, and likeness (NIL) rights and the creator/influencer economy — are transformational; and rising cross-selling complexity rewards firms that can serve one client across sports, entertainment, music, brand, and licensing. The counterweight is cyclicality in advertising, production, touring, and the sports calendar. [8][10][11][12]

7. Regulation

Federal oversight is light; the weight is state licensing plus union self-regulation, with antitrust and artificial intelligence (AI) as the live frontiers. California's Talent Agencies Act and the players'-union certification regimes set the core rules; the federal Sports Agent Responsibility and Trust Act (SPARTA) drew its first Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enforcement inquiry in January 2026; and AI "digital replica" rights are a fast-moving issue in SAG-AFTRA agreements and state law. A patchwork of state licenses and union rules, not a single federal regulator. See the 711410 primer for the full map. [6][13][14][15]

8. Consolidation

The story of the last decade is consolidation and institutional capital: CAA's 2022 purchase of ICM turned the "Big Four" into three (WME, CAA, UTA); private equity and family offices took the top (Silver Lake/WME, Artémis/CAA, EQT/UTA, Providence/Wasserman, Goldman Sachs/Excel); leaders integrated vertically into owned content and leagues; and the same roll-up playbook is now running on the creator economy. Scale exists at the top, but the low HHI and 4,767-firm count confirm boutiques still matter. [2][9][12][13]

9. Risks

• Key-person and roster flight — agents can leave and take clients; the defining structural risk.
• Client concentration and talent risk — dependence on a few stars, plus career, injury, and reputational risk.
• Cyclicality and labor stoppages — the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes froze Hollywood income for months. [9]
• Conflicts of interest and regulatory pressure (NIL/SPARTA enforcement, licensing, AI likeness rules). [14][15]
• Leverage and opacity — private-equity platforms can carry heavy acquisition debt, and private financials are thin. [9]
• Federal undercounting of solo and nonemployer operators makes market-size comparisons imprecise. [1][5]

10. How to invest & outlook

Public routes are all indirect or micro-cap: Wilhelmina (WHLM) as the closest listed comparable, TKO and Live Nation as adjacent proxies, sponsor exposure through diversified managers, or the downstream beneficiaries (streamers, leagues, endorsement-heavy brands). The marquee agencies themselves are reached through private equity, family offices, or direct stakes. Outlook is constructive but selective — sports-rights inflation, streaming demand, and the fast-growing NIL and creator markets expand commissionable earnings while private capital keeps consolidating the field, offset by strike risk, key-person volatility, leverage, and regulatory attention. Public investors will likely keep getting this industry at one remove. Do not underwrite it from federal receipts alone — the data omit much of the smallest-operator universe. Full how-to-invest detail and diligence checklist: 711410 primer. [8][11][12]

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Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns 2023, NAICS 711410 (establishments, employment, annual and Q1 payroll), 2025. https://www.census.gov/data/datasets/2023/econ/cbp/2023-cbp.html
2. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census — Establishment and Firm Size / Concentration of Largest Firms, NAICS 711410 (receipts, firms, CR4/CR8/CR20/CR50, HHI), 2022. https://api.census.gov/data/2022/ecnsize/groups/EC2200SIZECONCEN.html
3. U.S. Census Bureau / NAICS, 2022 NAICS Definition — 711410 Agents and Managers for Artists, Athletes, Entertainers, and Other Public Figures (scope and cross-references), 2022. https://www.census.gov/naics/?input=711410&year=2022
4. U.S. Census Bureau, Nonemployer Statistics by Demographics: 2023 (context for nonemployer / solo operators), 2025. https://data.census.gov/table/ABSNESD2023.AB00MYNESD01D?q=711410
5. SAG-AFTRA, Agents & Managers — Frequently Asked Questions (10% franchised-agent commission cap; agents vs. managers), 2026. https://www.sagaftra.org/contracts-industry-resources/agents-managers/frequently-asked-questions
6. Brett Knight, The Most Valuable Sports Agencies 2025, Forbes, 2025 (top-10 ~$4.6B commissions on ~$72B contracts; league fee caps). https://www.forbes.com/sites/brettknight/2025/07/31/the-most-valuable-sports-agencies-2025/
7. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 8-K: Silver Lake and Affiliates Complete Acquisition of Endeavor Group Holdings (take-private; representation reorganized as WME Group), 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1973266/000119312525060949/d928498d8k.htm
8. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, TKO Group Holdings, Inc. Form 10-K (UFC/WWE/IMG; media rights, events, licensing), 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1973266/000119312526071651/tko-20251231.htm
9. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Wilhelmina International, Inc. Form 10-K for 2024 (commission and service revenue; talent pass-through model), 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1013706/000168316825001932/wilhelmina_i10k-123124.htm
10. TPG / Pollstar, Creative Artists Agency and Artémis Announce Artémis (Pinault family) as New Majority Shareholder; ~$7B valuation, 2023. https://www.tpg.com/news-and-insights/creative-artists-agency-and-artemis-pinault-familys-investment
11. Business of College Sports / Opendorse, State of NIL 2025 and House v. NCAA Settlement, 2025. https://businessofcollegesports.com/other/student-athlete-sponsorships-in-2025-nil-trends-to-watch/
12. RockWater, 2026 Creator M&A Outlook; The Great Consolidation: Creator Economy M&A, 2026. https://wearerockwater.com/2026-creator-ma-outlook/
13. California Department of Industrial Relations, How to Obtain a Talent Agency License (Talent Agencies Act; Labor Commissioner), 2026. https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/talent_agency_license.html
14. Winston & Strawn, Sports Agents Under a Microscope: FTC Signals SPARTA Enforcement (FTC's first SPARTA inquiry, January 2026). https://www.winston.com/en/insights-news/sports-agents-under-a-microscope-the-ftc-signals-potential-enforcement-of-long-dormant-sports-agent-law
15. SAG-AFTRA, Artificial Intelligence Resources (consent and compensation for digital replicas), 2026. https://www.sagaftra.org/contracts-industry-resources/member-resources/artificial-intelligence