WME-Backed Raine Raises $300M Content Fund, Not For Film or TV…

WME Entertainment—you know, Endeavor’s new name after its shotgun wedding with agency with William Morris—has apparently helped score $300 million for private equity media fund for The Raine Group, in which the agency owns a sizable stake.

The one year-old Raine Group, run by former Goldman Sachs banker Joe Ravitch and former UBS partner Jeff Sine, was able to raise the private equity fund to invest in content across all sorts of media—”from content providers like global comic book brands to sports leagues to ‘really anything but not to make movies or television’, according to Nikki Finke and her venerable sources.

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We’ve been saying for a while now how someone needed to raise a fund for original online content, ready to commit the kind of dollars needed to garner some blockbuster level attention. To be sure, this new Raine fund will be placing bets all over the map. But a content fund that size that doesn’t aim spend its cash on film or television, has quite the tank of gas to make moves online.

So, content creators, dust off your pitch decks—even those cooky 68-page 3D transmedia concepts—as it looks like Raine might be the latest (and biggest) trough that the industry lines up for. And you won’t have far to travel if you’re on the coasts. According to Finke, Raine has been operating out of WME’s New York office but will also take over space in WME’s headquarters in Beverly Hills.

The new $300 million fund is reportedly coming from international investors, including foreign government investment funds from the China, Singapore, and Abu Dhabi, through its state-owned Mubadala Development Company. Not surprisingly, the firm also plans to open up a Beijing office.