Paul Coggiola spent years at UTA leading the agency's sports crossover team — the division that turned athletes into brand ambassadors, content creators, and media personalities beyond their primary sport. Now he's left to become president of LIFT Creators, a new division inside athlete-representation firm LIFT Sports Management focused entirely on digital influencers. He's already brought clients with him.
The move is a clear signal: sports agencies have decided that digital creators are just as valuable as the athletes they've spent decades building infrastructure around. And they're building creator divisions before Hollywood can lock them down.
LIFT's bet is that the skills required to manage an athlete's career — negotiating endorsements, building brand partnerships, managing IP across platforms, navigating fame at scale — translate directly to managing a creator's. The infrastructure is already there. The relationships with brands are already there. The only thing missing was someone who understood the creator economy's specific mechanics, which is exactly what Coggiola brings from UTA's sports crossover team.
What makes this move particularly interesting is the direction of the talent flow. Coggiola didn't leave UTA to start his own boutique agency or join a traditional Hollywood shop. He left for a sports management firm that's treating creators as a natural extension of its existing business. That framing — creators as athletes, not entertainers — changes the entire representation model. Athletes have always been IP. Their names, images, and likenesses are assets that get licensed, monetized, and protected. Creators are now being treated the same way, and sports agencies have decades of experience doing exactly that.
Hollywood agencies have been slow to adapt to the creator economy's specific needs. Traditional talent representation is built around projects — booking roles, negotiating deals, managing film and TV careers. But creators don't work in projects. They work in ecosystems. Their value isn't tied to a single show or film — it's tied to their ability to generate consistent engagement across platforms, build brand partnerships, and maintain audience loyalty over time. That's a business model sports agencies already understand because it's how athletes have operated for decades.
The timing of LIFT's move is also deliberate. The creator economy is maturing. The early wave of influencers who built audiences on YouTube and Instagram are now aging out or pivoting into traditional media. The next generation — the ones building on TikTok, Twitch, and emerging platforms — are looking for representation that understands platform economics, algorithmic distribution, and brand integration at scale. Sports agencies are positioned to offer that because they've been managing athletes' off-field brands for years, and those brands increasingly live on the same platforms creators dominate.
There's also a defensive element to this. Sports agencies have watched Hollywood agencies poach their athlete clients for years, signing them to acting deals, hosting gigs, and production partnerships. Now sports agencies are poaching Hollywood's talent agents and building creator divisions that compete directly with UTA, CAA, and WME. The battleground isn't film and TV anymore — it's platform-native talent who can generate revenue without needing a studio, network, or production company.
Coggiola's move is the first visible sign that sports agencies are treating the creator economy as a core business line, not a side bet. LIFT didn't hire him to consult or advise — they made him president of an entire division. That's a structural commitment, and it suggests other sports agencies are likely building similar divisions behind the scenes. The question isn't whether creators belong in sports management firms. The question is whether Hollywood agencies can compete once sports agencies bring their full infrastructure to the creator space.
The next year will reveal whether LIFT's bet pays off. If Coggiola can sign a roster of top-tier creators and negotiate deals that rival what Hollywood agencies offer, other sports firms will follow. And Hollywood agencies will have to decide whether they're willing to restructure their entire business model around platform-native talent — or whether they'll keep treating creators as a novelty while sports agencies build the next generation of representation infrastructure.
