Leff is helping expand the agency’s reach beyond athlete representation into global partnerships, commercial strategy, and entertainment while building on its growing influence across sports.
This story appeared in Boardroom’s Fall Issue print magazine and has been adapted for online publication.
When I connect with KLUTCH Sports Group COO and UTA Partner Fara Leff in late summer, she’s just come off of a whirlwind week in New York, with multiple clients booking gigs at Fanatics Fest and appearing on red carpets at the ESPYS and TIME100 Sports Gala — all amid the cloud of speculation that followed KLUTCH client LeBron James everywhere he went in the weeks leading up to his signing announcement with the Philadelphia 76ers. “I just sent a company email,” she tells me. “I was so proud that everywhere I looked, there was a KLUTCH client or employee crushing it, from NFL to global football to the WNBA to a global partnership sale this week.”
Most notably for Leff, she was clocking considerable hours with the agency’s newest signing, U.S. Men’s National Team soccer star Folarin Balogun — a huge addition to KLUTCH’s international soccer roster, and their first direct signing following its partnership with ROOF agency in 2024.
As Leff describes it, the signing of Balogun and the subsequent opportunities came together remarkably fast. “We said [to him] that if we were going to do this, ‘You have to capitalize on this week. We need you in New York on Monday.’ He’s such a professional that he landed, and we got him fitted for an Emporio Armani suit to go straight to the ESPYS. I’m even more excited now [after the World Cup] because we have four years to build with him until the next World Cup.”
Jemal Countess / Getty Images for TIME
That nimble approach — find the opportunity, then commit yourself to the logistics no matter the time frame — is one that Leff learned early in her career when she maneuvered an internship at private aviation company Marquis Jet into a full-time role and managed a host of celebrity clients, including LeBron and his business partners Maverick Carter, Randy Mims, and Rich Paul. In 2012, Paul sent her a BlackBerry message asking what her college major had been (marketing), paving the way for a conversation about a new opportunity.
In the pre-Instagram-DM era, booking athlete travel was a never-ending sea of shifting itineraries and logistics that necessitated strong relationship building — not coincidentally, the same “can only be taught by doing” foundation needed for with athletes on the agency side. Leff joined Paul at the start of KLUTCH in 2012, with James, Tristan Thompson, Cory Joseph, and Eric Bledsoe as the agency’s first NBA clients. “The service that I learned at Marquis Jet [in client relations] was just as important in the agency business. We did everything for them,” Leff explains. “And I still think that’s what we do today, but on the largest scale.”
In its early days, KLUTCH had the advantage and the challenge of being defined by its most famous client. The turning point, says Leff, is when the agency signed Anthony Davis in 2018 when he was playing for the New Orleans Pelicans. It was a move that led to Davis’s 2019 trade to the Lakers and sent a strong signal to the sports world that KLUTCH could deliver for its players. With every subsequent signing, Leff says, the work spoke for itself.
Photo courtesy of KLUTCH Sports Group
“The hardest part of growing,” she says, “is that we have to enter at a high level.” That doesn’t just mean the talent they sign for representation; it means the talent they hire. In spring of 2021, KLUTCH made headlines in American football by signing veteran NFL agent Nicole Lynn to lead the division, which now includes heavy hitters such as Will Anderson Jr., Myles Garrett, DeVonta Smith, and Malik Nabers. In February 2022, the agency followed that move with its first foray into women’s sports, launching its women’s basketball division with former Octagon agent Jade-Li English at the helm and WNBA stars like A’ja Wilson, Chelsea Gray, and Allisha Gray as anchors. You don’t have to have your finger on the pulse of sports culture to know those bets paid off.
When she talks about her work creating company culture, Leff uses those signings as key examples of how the business has strengthened its culture as it has grown. “It’s not something I create,” she explains. “It’s about who we hire, and how they fit. I want to hire people that feel the love that we have for this brand and this company deep down, because it’s not a job that’s nine-to-five that you can turn off. When you’re home with your kids on Sunday, there’s going to be text messages and emails.”
“The always-on needs of high-profile clients are part of what led Paul, Leff, and the team at KLUTCH to a 2019 initial investment and later acquisition by global talent agency UTA. Through that partnership, the team has been able to both supercharge their offerings for clients and to focus on expansion into commercial dealmaking. Leff points to Davis’s debut season of Foul Play With Anthony Davis as an example of where UTA has been able to make an immediate impact. A fan of the original Impractical Jokers show, Davis and his team at KLUTCH knew that UTA represented that property and would be instrumental in helping Davis create his own version of the format. Premiering in April of this year, the first season of Foul Play on TBS drew strong ratings out of the gate, with Davis as a natural in front of the camera.
Davis’s success in TV follows that of fellow KLUTCH athletes like Draymond Green, who is perhaps the most “born to have a podcast” NBA player on the planet. “If you’re someone who’s inquisitive [like Draymond], he has to have a podcast,” Leff explains. “He has opinions, he’s an amazing interviewer, he has connections — it’s a no-brainer.”
Photo courtesy of KLUTCH Sports Group
She sees these successes, also citing the example of NFL client Jalen Hurts’s best-selling children’s book, Better Than a Touchdown, as natural extensions of the players’ personalities and passions. “I tell all our clients, ‘This is your university.’ We don’t need every client to have a podcast, but when it fits, that’s what you should do. We just try to avoid the force of having to do it.”
One aspect of KLUTCH’s current trajectory that tends to stay under the radar is its growing presence in commercial business, an area that lends itself to faster growth and higher margins than individual client representation, and one that helps grow all other areas of business in its offering. Leff cites the leadership of its Global Partnerships division, led by Andrew Feinberg, and the KLUTCH/UTA Valuations and Commercial Insights group, led by Caryn Rosoff, as game changers for the group.
“We don’t want to just represent the athletes,” Leff explains. “We want to represent the entire stadium or arena, the name on the outside of the arena, the brands on the inside, the brand on the jersey, the coach, the executive, the athlete. And as we continue building this, I think it just shows we’ve done it on so many levels and just to keep growing it.”
To date, the agency’s commercial business includes its first international deal, a front-of-shirt partnership for Aston Villa (a deal with Visit Rwanda reported at around £20 million annually), and domestic partnerships with blue-chip brands such as Robinhood, New York City FC, Monumental Sports, and Sprite. On top of these partnerships, KLUTCH’s brand-consulting arm is bolstering both commercial and talent efforts through strategic advisory that includes development of white papers highlighting opportunities in the commercial sports business for clients and peers.
Following a summer that featured international successes like the signings of Balogun and Aston Villa, a host of ESPY and TIME100 honors for clients, a championship run with the Knicks for client Jordan Clarkson, the continued WNBA regular-season dominance of players like Wilson and Jewell Loyd, and of course the much-anticipated LeBron move to the 76ers ahead of what many speculate will be his last season, it’s hard to imagine what KLUTCH is planning next heading into the fall.
Leff highlights a sport that’s been growing in cultural currency in leaps and bounds over the past few years, led in no small part by the enthusiasm of KLUTCH’s most high-profile client in James. “We’re doing our first-ever KLUTCH Golf Cup,” she explains, citing an opportunity to plan a full client and executive outing as a way to continue to grow interest in the sport, noting that it can be a steep learning curve. “It’s been amazing to see players pick up a new sport at all levels, and their frustrations and their successes have been hilarious to watch.”
Such moments, coupled with the start of an NFL season following KLUTCH’s two 2026 first-round draft picks in Arvell Reese (to the New York Giants) and Kaydn Proctor (to the Miami Dolphins), ensure an already-stacked fall for the agency. When looking ahead to the NFL and NBA seasons, Leff cites the globalization of both leagues as an area of opportunity, echoing other industry insiders in the belief that there’s much more to capitalize on in the future.
“As we look at what the World Cup did here [in the United States], I think these international NFL and NBA games going forward are going to create even bigger connection,” Leff says. As KLUTCH continues to make further inroads internationally and as the conversations around NBA Europe heat up, it stands to reason that there’s much more on the horizon for the global expansion of the agency.
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