Veteran Talent Agent Ross Raphael Joins CAA Sports

EXCLUSIVE: Ross Raphael is joining CAA Sports.

Raphael will work at the intersection of sports, entertainment, and brands, helping create content opportunities, new businesses, and brand-building opportunities for the agency’s sports talent clients. He will be based in CAA’s New York office beginning July 1. 

Raphael comes to CAA Sports from WME, where he most recently served as partner. Throughout his nearly 15-year tenure with the agency, he represented such athletes as Anthony Edwards, Joel Embiid, Alex Rodriguez, Tracy McGrady, and Russell Westbrook; former President of ESPN John Skipper; documentary filmmaker Brian Knappenberger; and HGTV stars Ben and Erin Napier. 

Raphael has participated in various thought-leadership discussions, recently delivering a keynote conversation on athlete-driven media companies at Variety’s Sports and Entertainment Summit in 2023, and he was featured on the publication’s Family Entertainment Impact list in 2022.

CAA represents several athlete-backed production companies, including Dwyane Wade’s 59th & Prairie Entertainment, Chris Paul’s OHH DIP!!!, Naomi Osaka’s Hana Kuma, Paul George’s The Pack Productions, and Carmelo Anthony’s Creative 7, in addition to Box-To-Box, producers of Drive to Survive and Full Swing.

Recently, CAA Sports brokered a deal with Roaring Brook Press to publish Basketball Dreams, authored by Chris Paul, and sold The Barber of Little Rock, executive produced by Dwyane Wade, to New Yorker Studios. The critically acclaimed documentary short was nominated for a Critics Choice Documentary Award and shortlisted for an Oscar.

Other deals brokered by CAA Sports include the Sports Emmy Award-winning docuseries Superleague: War for Football, from Connor Schell and his company Words + Pictures and featuring UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin, to Apple TV+; Get Minted, a Web3-focused YouTube show with Autograph.io, produced by Showtime Sports and launched Tyrese Haliburton; and Travis Kelce hosting a spin-off of Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader? for Amazon Prime Video. Kelce will make his acting debut in Ryan Murphy‘s new FX horror series Grotesquerie opposite Niecy Nash-Betts, Courtney B. Vance and Lesley Manville.

CAA also closed a deal with ESPN Films to acquire the worldwide rights to the documentary Fate of a Sport, ahead of the film’s world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival.