Wealthspire launches sports and entertainment practice with $2.9 billion in assets

Wealthspire's new sports and entertainment practice opens with about $2.9 billion in assets under management across more than 200 high-net-worth clients, families and institutions. The New York City RIA will run the vertical inside Wealthspire Family Office, where accounting, lifestyle, concierge and bill-pay services become the platform for winning professional athletes, entertainers and creators. WealthManagement.com first reported the launch and puts the firm's total client assets at $660 billion.

Frank Marzano, a managing director who also co-heads Wealthspire Family Office, leads the practice after more than 25 years working with athletes, entertainers, producers and creative executives, and he arrived at Wealthspire in 2023 through its acquisition of GM Advisory Group, where BrokerCheck records show he had worked since 2004. Consolidators have argued for years that retention, not purchase price, decides whether an RIA deal holds, and a specialist book that survives an acquisition and then gets promoted into a firm-level vertical is one version of that argument made concrete. Madison Dearborn Partners acquired Wealthspire last year, and CEO Mike LaMena and senior executives have been reshaping the firm since, including a dedicated family office launched in March.

The practice will sell itself on the problems the firm lists — income that is concentrated and variable, contracts with layered compensation, tax and estate planning, business ventures, real estate, charitable giving and career transitions — and Marzano said in a statement that "success in sports and entertainment can create tremendous opportunity, but it also brings a level of complexity that traditional wealth management may not always address." Much of that is the same planning gap our coverage of Chip Wilson's divorce described, where the absence of a reported prenup left the opening for an advisor.

The lane is filling anyway. Americana Partners, the Houston RIA with $11.5 billion in client assets, announced a sports and entertainment division in July under associate vice president Ben Davidson, and MAI Capital, which has run its own division since 2020, expanded it last year with two advisors who work with NBA and MLB athletes. The client pool now reaches college athletes who can monetize their name, image and likeness.

At that scale, the vertical starts inside a family office that already bills for concierge services, an economics set a standalone practice would find hard to match. Growth from here likely depends on referrals, because these clients tend to arrive through agents, business managers and entertainment lawyers rather than through a search, and those lines get built one relationship at a time. The report does not say how many advisors staff the practice or how much of the $2.9 billion Marzano brought with him — the two figures worth watching when Wealthspire next describes the unit.