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Sports agent

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A sports agent is a legal representative (hence agent) for professional sports figures such as athletes and coaches. They procure and negotiate employment and endorsement contracts for the athlete or coach whom they represent. In addition to contract negotiations, sports agents may also help their clients with financial planning, legal issues, and marketing. They may work closely with financial advisors, lawyers, and marketing professionals on behalf of their clients.

DescriptionEdit

Because of the unique characteristics of the sports industry, sports agents are responsible for communications with team owners, managers, and other individuals. In addition to finding income sources, agents often handle public relations matters for their clients. In some large sports agencies, such as IMG, Creative Artists Agency, Roc Nation Sports and Octagon, agents deal with all aspects of a client's finances, from investment to filing taxes.

Sports agents may be relied upon by their clients for guidance in all business aspects, and sometimes even more broadly. For example, hockey agents start recruiting clients as young as 15, allowing the agent to guide the athlete's career before the NHL draft, which happens usually at 18 years of age.

Due to the length and complexity of contracts, many sports agents are lawyers or have a background in contract law. Agents are expected to be knowledgeable about finance, business management, and financial and risk analysis, as well as sports. It is important for a sports agent to follow trends in sports. Other skills an agent must possess are excellent communication and negotiation skills. Agents must be highly motivated, willing to work long hours, and capable of multitasking. It is very common for agents to be in negotiations on behalf of several clients at one time.<ref>Job Profiles.org Template:Webarchive – description of roles of sports agent and some educational programs to prepare for the field</ref>

Some agents are part of large companies, and some are on their own.<ref>An Industry Of Conglomerates Sports Agent Blog, July 16, 2007</ref> The number of clients an individual agent can handle and how many clients his or her employing agency can handle in total are interdependent variables.

Before the 1990s, most football players did not use agents. In some cases, they used their parents as agents. Because of most parents' naivety about the football business, these footballers were often given less-than-stellar contracts by football clubs, which yielded lower salaries than they thought they deserved.<ref>"The Big Interview: Neil Webb" Sunday Times, November 28, 2004, interview with soccer/football player</ref> In Sweden, there were only three licensed agents in 1995.<ref>"Market Saturation of Agents" Template:Webarchive, May 23, 2002, note: source can be translated into English on the website</ref> As of 2002, there were 33. According to FIFA, there were 5,187 licensed association football agents worldwide, with 600 agents in Italy alone.<ref>[ FIFA – Players' agents list – by country]</ref> Since 2001, agents have not been licensed by FIFA. Instead, agents are now licensed directly by each association.

Sports agents generally receive between 4 and 15% of the athlete's playing contract, and 10 to 20% of the athlete's endorsement contract, although these figures vary. NFL agents are not permitted to receive more than 3%, and NBA agents not more than 4%, of their client's playing contracts.

Media depictionsEdit

Films such as Jerry Maguire, Two for the Money, and Any Given Sunday depicted sports agents. In England, ITV's Footballers' Wives included a female agent Hazel Bailey. The television show Ballers, which started in 2015, also shows a strong depiction of sports agents.

Notable sports agentsEdit

American footballEdit

File:Drew Rosenhaus.jpg
Football agent Drew Rosenhaus
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Football agent Leigh Steinberg

|CitationClass=web }}</ref> and PGA golfers including two-time PGA tour winner Jonathan Kaye and Shane Bertsch.

Australian footballEdit

BaseballEdit

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Scott Boras

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BasketballEdit

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David Falk

|CitationClass=web }}</ref> His clients include David Robinson, Moses Malone, Kirk Hinrich, Stephen Curry and Jimmer Fredette.

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|CitationClass=web }}</ref> Tellum left the agent business to become President of the Detroit Pistons.

CricketEdit

European basketballEdit

Association footballEdit

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GolfEdit

|CitationClass=web }}</ref> Rory McIlroy was a client of Chandler until October 2011, when he left for Dublin-based Horizon Sports Management.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Ice hockeyEdit

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MotorsportEdit

OlympicsEdit

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Notable former sports agentsEdit

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Joe Kehoskie

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Sports agency groupsEdit

There have been some efforts to transform the sports agency business from an individual, entrepreneurial business, to more of a corporate structure. These experiments met with varying degrees of longevity and success.

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  • Wasserman Media Group (WME) - acquired Arn Tellem's basketball agency from SFX, and usually represents the most players in NBA lottery draft each year.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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Formerly active agenciesEdit

Some sports agency firms were once prominent, but are now gone or reorganized:

  • Assante Corporation – Canadian public company that acquired the Steinberg, Moorad & Dunn agency, then acquired other than agencies including Dan Fegan & Associates and Maximum Sports Management in an unsuccessful effort to build multi-sport corporate agency.<ref>"These Drafts Come and Go, and So Do Agents' Fortunes" The New York Times, April 28, 2003</ref>
  • SFX Entertainment (now Live Nation, a publicly traded company) – in 1998 SFX agreed to pay up to $150 million in cash, stock, and bonuses for F.A.M.E., the sports agency run by David Falk, the agent for basketball players Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing. SFX also acquired two other major sports agencies, Arn Tellem's agency (Tellem & Associates) and the baseball-oriented firm run by Randy Hendricks and Allan Hendricks.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> SFX would later reverse course, and sell off the pieces of its large sports agency business.
  • Steinberg, Moorad & Dunn ("SMD") – a multi-sport agency sold in October 1999 for reported $120 million to Canadian financial firm. Defections of principals, and litigation, followed. Originally led by entrepreneurial agents Leigh Steinberg and Jeff Moorad.<ref>"Crash Landing"- ESPN, by Peter Keating, article about Leigh Steinberg</ref>

See alsoEdit

ReferencesEdit

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Further readingEdit

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