Wealthspire launches a $2.88 billion sports and entertainment practice inside its family office

Wealthspire, the New York City RIA that FA-Mag sizes at $660 billion in assets, has launched Wealthspire Sports & Entertainment, a practice for professional athletes, entertainers, creators and other creative professionals. The unit oversees about $2.88 billion in assets under management and more than 200 ultra-high-net-worth clients, families and institutions.

Frank Marzano, a managing director at Wealthspire, heads the new unit while continuing as co-head of Wealthspire Family Office, the platform the firm launched early this year with nearly $50 billion in assets and more than 300 families. He came aboard when Wealthspire bought his firm, GM Advisory Group, in 2023, and the launch release credits him with more than 25 years advising high-net-worth individuals and families, professional athletes, entertainers and producers among them. The offering pairs wealth planning and investment management with family office services aimed at complicated income and career transitions.

The sports practice is a vertical of the family office, plugged into the existing accounting, lifestyle and concierge, bill pay and wealth strategy functions while adding an investment platform of its own. The practice is selling that plumbing more than portfolio construction. How Wealthspire staffs and prices it will matter more to the economics than the client roster does.

The sports book works out to roughly $14.4 million per relationship at the stated floor of 200 clients, against about $167 million per family across the family office’s $50 billion and 300-plus families. Both counts are described as minimums, so both averages are ceilings. The sports practice is the thinner, more numerous end of the ultra-wealth book, a volume business inside a house built around larger relationships.

FA-Mag links the launch to a widening cohort of RIAs and wealth managers forming athlete and entertainer practices since the NIL rule let high school and college athletes profit from their name, image and likeness five years ago, creating a client base of newly wealthy young people. JPMorgan Chase went the celebrity route earlier this year, enlisting Dwyane Wade and Tom Brady to lead a council advising the bank on athlete wealth programs. FA-Mag also calls Wealthspire one of the most aggressive RIA acquirers.

The sports practice’s head came with an acquisition: Marzano’s GM Advisory Group was bought by Wealthspire in 2023, and the practice he now runs leans on infrastructure the parent already owns, the kind of post-close integration the M&A market has been paying a premium for. Whether a practice built around 200 established clients can recruit the NIL cohort, who will need advice long before they need a family office, may determine whether the agencies, brands and banks sitting closer to those athletes get there first.