Milk & Honey Music + Sports + Ventures, the management company led by president and founding partner Lucas Keller, has acquired VMG Sports, whose client roster includes three-time Super Bowl-winning Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, Arizona Cardinals offensive tackle Paris Johnson Jr., and a total of 15 NFL players.
VMG Sports founders Adam Heller, Michael Simon, Greg Diulus and Sammy Spina will join the Milk & Honey executive staff under terms of the multi-seven figure deal, which more than doubles Milk & Honey’s NFL roster and brings to 83 its total client representation across football and baseball.
“It’s an honor to have Adam, Mike, Greg and Sammy in the family. VMG Sports shared the same ethos with Milk & Honey, which is a relentless commitment to advocating and creating value for the American athlete,” says Keller. “For us it could be an athlete, an artist, a songwriter or a record producer—our clients train to be some of the greatest in the world.”
The announcement of the deal comes just days before the 2024 NFL Draft on April 25-27, and marks another significant milestone for Milk & Honey, which Keller and GM/business partner Nic Warner founded in 2014 and whose artist department today represents top songwriters, record producers and nearly 30 global DJs. Across music disciplines, the company boasts more than 1 billion albums sold.
Three years ago the firm entered the sports arena and has accelerated that division under the helm of Milk & Honey Sports co-heads Dave Frank, Jake Presser and Rawleigh Williams, and partner Alex Harrow, with a roster that includes Courtland Sutton of the Denver Broncos and Kamren Curl of the Los Angeles Rams. Two years ago, Milk & Honey hired Roc Nation’s Kyle Thousand to run its baseball department.
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Founded in 2011, VMG Sports’ partners have been involved in representing more than two dozen first round draft picks, eight top 10 picks, and more than 50 Pro Bowl players. The NFLPA certified agents have negotiated contracts for some of the highest paid athletes in the NFL.
The acquisition substantially widens not only Milk & Honey’s roster of players currently in the NFL but also its 2024 NFL Draft class and NIL business, expanding
its recruitment reach into a larger pool of markets and universities across the country. Where Milk & Honey has a strong foothold in the South and on the West Coast, VMG has a history of strong relationships across the East Coast and Midwest.
“In line with our growth strategy, we are intensely focused on adding impact players at premium positions to bolster our roster, which made the VMG team such a great fit for us,” says Frank. “To add decades of experience and legal expertise to our day-to-day team, the timing was right both financially and on our near-term target for getting to scale of at least 100 athletes under representation.”
The deal represents the coming together of two companies connected not only by their deep relationships in the NFL but also their shared boutique familial culture and indie work ethic. Importantly, it also speaks to the rapidly shifting power dynamic in the role and reach of management firms, and the increasing cross-pollination of the entertainment and sports realms.
Milk & Honey’s evolution from solely a music shop to a full-stack firm working across multiple facets of entertainment and sports—coupled with its focus of getting in on the ground floor with clients to guide their brand, merchandise, social media image and identity—has enabled greater opportunity to build out ventures with clients in the music space and led to collaborations with the likes of Volkswagen, AT&T, CarMax
“Our belief in the influence of both music and sports and the important intersection between the two as an entertainment company is unwavering, and this acquisition further reinforces that ethos and marks another significant step in our commitment to representing a diverse roster of premier talent worldwide,” Frank says.
That enterprising ambition and deep integration was a key deal sweetener for the VMG team.
“When we saw what Milk & Honey was doing on the music side with songwriters and producers—looking at the entrepreneurial aspect of building businesses with that type of talent and taking that same culture into sports and being able to apply things that would be successful to the athlete clients—that’s what we felt was really special about this opportunity,” says Heller.
“Building IP and sellable assets with clients is a major part of our long-term vision, and a focus point of what we will support the incoming roster on,” says Frank. “Off the field we’ll strengthen the level and quantity of opportunities for the roster through elevated access to Hollywood and the ad agencies, equity and investment deals, fund raising, the fashion world, and the cross pollination of music and sports collaborations.”
“With staff on the ground in multiple continents we’ve cultivated far-reaching relationships outside of North America, which has perfectly positioned us to facilitate global opportunities for our clients as the NFL continues its major push for international growth across Europe, South America, and more,” he adds.
Milk & Honey has offices in Los Angeles, New York, Nashville, London and Dallas, and with the addition of sports now has additional employees across 15 states. The firm, which is approaching 50 employees, intends to aggressively expand further into various sports verticals in the coming years.
The VMG deal was brokered for Milk & Honey by lawyers Brian Schall, Ryan Barncastle and Rebecca Rosen from Barnes & Thornburg, Josh Joseph and Eric Russell from Big Plan Holdings, Jarrod Grubb, Woody Hartman, Jason Dobbs, Tom Fox and Andy Moats from Pinnacle Bank, and Ed Gold and Mike Berlly from Gold Business Management.
