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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.
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. [1]
Some agents are part of large companies, and some are on their own. [2] 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. [3] In Sweden, there were only three licensed agents in 1995. [4] As of 2002, there were 33. According to FIFA, there were 5,187 licensed association football agents worldwide, with 600 agents in Italy alone. [5] 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.
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.
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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.
Some sports agency firms were once prominent, but are now gone or reorganized:
Leigh William Steinberg is an American sports agent, philanthropist, and author. During his 50-year career, Steinberg has represented over 300 professional athletes in football, baseball, basketball, boxing, and Olympic sports. He has represented the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL draft a record eight times. Steinberg is often credited as the real-life inspiration for the sports agent in Cameron Crowe's film Jerry Maguire in 1996.
Casey Wasserman is an entertainment executive and sports agent executive who owned the now defunct Arena Football League team the Los Angeles Avengers. He headed the successful Los Angeles bid to host the 2028 Summer Olympics and became president of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee.
Jeffrey S. Moorad is an American businessman and investor. He began his career as a sports agent, before serving as General Partner and CEO of MLB's Arizona Diamondbacks, and Vice-Chairman and CEO of MLB's San Diego Padres.
Arn Herschel Tellem is an American sports executive who is the vice chairman of the Detroit Pistons of the National Basketball Association (NBA). From 1981 to 2015, he was a sports agent best known for his representation of basketball and baseball players. Tellem was vice chairman of the Wasserman Media Group, a global sport and entertainment marketing agency headed by Casey Wasserman. From 2009 to 2010, he wrote a semi-weekly sports column for The Huffington Post. He has also written for Sports Illustrated, the op-ed page of The New York Times, Grantland, Detroit Free Press, The Hollywood Reporter, The Japan Times and The Detroit News.
Professional Services Inc., (ProServ) was one of the first sports management firms. Initially focused on tennis, the company would grow to become among the world's largest sports marketing, athlete management, event production, and TV companies.
Ben Dogra was an American sports agent who, until July 2006, headed the Football Division of SFX Football, with associate Mark Heligman.
Robert Todd Pelinka Jr. is an American basketball executive, lawyer, sports agent, and former college basketball player from Lake Bluff, Illinois in the North Shore of the Chicago metropolitan area. Pelinka is currently the vice president of basketball operations and general manager of the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association (NBA).
David B. Falk is an American sports agent who primarily works with basketball players in the National Basketball Association (NBA). He began his career representing professional tennis players for Donald Dell's ProServ and is best known for representing sports icon Michael Jordan for the entirety of Jordan's career. Besides Jordan, Falk has represented more than 100 other NBA players, and is generally considered to be the most influential player agent the NBA has seen. During the peak years of Falk's career in the 1990s, he was often considered the second-most powerful person in the NBA behind Commissioner David Stern, and in 2000 he had at least one client on all but two NBA teams. He was listed among the "100 Most Powerful People in Sports" for 12 straight years from 1990 to 2001 by The Sporting News, and was also named one of the Top 50 Marketers in the United States by Advertising Age in 1995.
Randal "Randy" Hendricks is an American attorney and sports agent. He was raised in Westwood, Kansas and is a 1963 graduate of Shawnee Mission North High School, where he was a finalist in the National Merit Scholarship Program. He is managing partner of Hendricks Sports Management, L.P., and managing member of Hendricks Interests LLC, both in Houston, Texas.
Mark Steinberg is a sports agent who has been representing top golfers since 1992. He is a partner at Excel Sports Management. where he heads the professional golf division. Established in 2002, Excel Sports Management is a full-service sports management and marketing agency representing top athletes in professional basketball, baseball and golf. On June 6, 2011, Tiger Woods announced he would be going to Excel with Steinberg. Since that announcement, Steinberg has continued to build his division, including signing nine-time PGA Tour winner Matt Kuchar and Danielle Kang.
Priority Sports & Entertainment is a full-service sports management firm, representing NFL and NBA athletes and coaches, based in Chicago, Illinois and Sherman Oaks, California.
Casey Richard Close is an American former baseball player and sports agent.
Brodie Van Wagenen is an American sports agent and former executive. He was formerly the general manager for the New York Mets of Major League Baseball (MLB). He previously worked at Creative Artists Agency (CAA) and served as a co-head of the baseball division at CAA Sports. He is currently an executive for Roc Nation.
Peter Schaffer is an American sports agent and lawyer who represents players in the National Football League, Major League Baseball, PGA Tour, the National Basketball Association, the Premier Lacrosse League, and the National Hockey League. He is the founder and owner of Authentic Athletix, a Colorado-based sports agency, and is known for representing highly drafted players and notable names. He also owns an athletic combine training facility in Denver.
Robert Michael Myers is an American former basketball executive who was the general manager for the Golden State Warriors of the National Basketball Association (NBA) from 2012 to 2023. During his tenure, he was twice named NBA Executive of the Year while leading the Warriors to four NBA championships. Myers is currently an NBA analyst for ESPN.
Jeff Schwartz is president and founder of Excel Sports Management, an industry-leading sports agency representing top-tier talent, blue-chip brands and marquee properties. Schwartz oversees business operations for the agency and leads strategy for Excel's basketball division. As the top-ranked NBA agent in the industry for nearly a decade, Schwartz's clients include Nikola Jokić, Russell Westbrook, Kevin Love, Brandon Ingram, Tyler Herro and Cade Cunningham among others.
Wasserman Group is a sports marketing and talent management company based in Los Angeles. Casey Wasserman, grandson of media mogul Lew Wasserman, founded the company in 1998 and acts as its chief executive.
Klutch Sports Group is an American sports agency based in Los Angeles, California, founded by sports agent and chief executive officer Rich Paul. Klutch Sports Group represents nearly 200 players in the NBA, NFL, MLB, and WNBA. It has offices in Atlanta, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Nashville, and New York. In mid-2024, Klutch Sports Group began expanding into Europe following the takeover of a major German soccer agency.
Austin Walton is an attorney and American sports agent who represents players in the National Basketball Association. He is the CEO and founder of NEXT SPORTS Agency, who represents Bones Hyland; Dean Wade; Aaron Wiggins; Kent Bazemore; Dereon Seabron and Jared Rhoden of the Denver Nuggets; Cleveland Cavaliers; Oklahoma City Thunder; Sacramento Kings; New Orleans Pelicans and Portland Trail Blazers.
The North American continent is the birthplace of several organized sports, such as basketball, charrería/rodeo, gridiron football, ice hockey, jaripeo/bull riding, lacrosse, ollamaliztl, mixed martial arts (MMA), padel, pickleball, racquetball, ultimate, and volleyball. The modern versions of baseball and softball, skateboarding, snowboarding, stock car racing, and surfing also developed in North America.