Overview
The development of football as an industry has led to the creation of whole new professional categories and roles. Amongst them, football agents have undoubtedly emerged as the most powerful cast of actors on the stage, operating as the negotiating bridge between players and clubs. In controlling players and in some instances controlling clubs, they have been responsible for a significant part of the creation of the modern football landscape. Whether or not they are a blot on that landscape has divided opinion.
Although football agents have been socially recognised as representatives of players since the early twentieth century, their role (and regulation) was not formally crystallised until 1994, when FIFA enacted its first rules to govern them. Ever since, public authorities and governing bodies have sought to identify and control this profession from both legal and economic perspectives. With formal recognition has come a more rigorous classification and definition of the roles, duties and responsibilities assumed by those seeking to look after the interests of professional footballers and, in so doing, look after their own interests and bank balances.
In order to understand how and why the modern day industry developed, we must first set out what is meant by the term āagentā. While the words agent and intermediary (since the formal creation of the āprofessionā of a Football Intermediary after the consignment of āAuthorized Football Agentsā to the dustbin of sporting history) are used interchangeably in common parlance, there have traditionally been subtle differences between the two. This distinction can help us to explain the development of the industry (Frenkiel, 2014). In the business context, both terms are defined as professionals who act with or in between two or more trading parties for legitimate economic activities, illegitimate payments, or a combination of both, offered by a supplier to a consumer. However, while agents are legally authorised to act on behalf of one of the two parties concluding a specific contract, intermediaries mainly carry out only material actions (establishing contracts, arranging meetings, etc.) in order to bring the contracting parties together and, as such, tend to have a less formal relationship. That is the strict legal position but a glance at the headlines in the newspapers is enough to convince us that legal positions may have little or nothing to do with the real world of football.
In many ways, without knowing the technicalities of the relationships in place, it is impossible to distinguish between the work of the two and to an extent the terms are therefore used interchangeably. Whatever the position before the creation by FIFA of the football intermediary the roles of the new intermediaries and the old agents cannot be distinguished from each other in practical terms. Only the expertise of those carrying them out is really different as the market has opened up, just in the UK, to some additional untrained and inexpert intermediaries who have paid their subscription to the FA in order to follow their hearts and their fortunes and discover if the streets of the world of football really are paved with gold.
This chapter explores the circumstances through which the football agents industry has developed globally, where appropriate using the US market for sports agents as a comparison. The transition of football agents from a social norm lacking any official status, to a coveted, legally recognised, profession central to the operation of global football markets, can be charted through three periods mirroring the dispersion of the game commercially and in parallel, the liberalisation of the labour and transfer markets (Magee, 2002; Gouget and Primault, 2006):
- From the late nineteenth century to the late 1950s: scouting and intermediation on behalf of clubs;
- From the early 1960s to the mid-1990s: the representation of football players;
- From the mid-1990s to the mid-2010s: the professionalisation of football agents.
In each of these time periods, we draw out the main structural changes in the marketplace which impacted the labour market for players and, as a corollary, the way in which agents operate.
1.1 From the late nineteenth century to the late 1950s: scouting and intermediation on the behalf of clubs
Intermediaries in the football market have existed since the advent of professionalism, performing scouting and recruitment roles for clubs. As clubs developed, they internalised this activity and, by developing their own scouting networks, diminished the role of middlemen. These changes in the market led intermediaries to seek other roles and their position as middlemen, working between players and clubs, started to develop. The first mention of intermediaries in official documents was in 1936 when the twenty-third FIFA Congress banned the use of intermediaries in transfers, believing they might have encouraged illegal moves (Semens, 2008). While middlemen are still known to have operated in the intervening period, it was not until the 1960s that āagentsā as we recognise them today began to emerge when they contracted directly with athletes to work as their representatives.
Agents emerged much earlier in more lucrative US sports. At the time of the Civil War (1861ā1865), touring professional baseball teams were established across the country and were promoted by various intermediaries, with their involvement later classified as that of a sports agent (Lamster, 2007). While their role was bespoke to each particular case, they would typically fund the production of a particular tour or event in order to generate future returns from ticket and commercial revenues. Former baseball player Albert Goodwill Spalding, for example, was a pioneer of the World Tour team of all-American baseball stars in 1888, when he offered players $50 per week to join the new tour (Levine, 1986). In contrast to the football market which was developing in Europe, in the US agents were recognised as facilitating these popular new forms of entertainment and, as such, their role was widely accepted. The US government gave sport a certain level of autonomy, choosing not to intervene, and allowed individual promoters and organisers to enjoy considerable independence. This space afforded these entrepreneurs the opportunity to profit through initiatives that were very avant-garde for their time (Lamster, 2007).
At the same time, players typically represented themselves in contract negotiations, meaning that a fundamental imbalance existed in the bargaining process when negotiating with experienced general managers (Gould, 1992). Against the backdrop of increased commercialisation in sport, athletes realised that they could potentially earn more money if they had the help of an experienced negotiator. Charles C. Pyle, commonly known as āCash & Carryā Pyle, is credited as the first sports agent in the modern sense of the term (Neff, 1987; Reisler, 2008). In 1925 the theatrical promoter negotiated a $3,000 per game contract for Harold āRedā Grange with the Chicago Bears, plus $300,000 in movie rights and additional endorsements (Greenberg and Gray, 1998; Berry et al., 1986). Pyle represented other prominent athletes, including French tennis star Suzanne Langlen, during the 1920s and 1930s. When the New York Yankeesā baseball player āBabeā Ruth hired Christy Walsh, a sportswriter-turned-manager, as his financial consultant to help with negotiations, it marked a change in the way agents were viewed as franchises realised that they could lose some of their profits because of this new power dynamic. Until this time, the idea of representing athletes in every aspect of their lives had not existed and would in fact take decades to have an impact on professional sports (Reisler, 2008).
Whereas US sports agents, operating as promoters and intermediaries, were able to exploit the overtly commercial opportunities in setting up leagues and other competitions, the same was not true in the UK where football was the most popular sport and closely controlled by the existing football authorities. The first agents in the UK are not thought to have emerged until around two decades later than in the US and their role was largely confined to advising clubs on sourcing new football talent. Although the first case of professionalism in football dates back to 1876, with the transfer of the player James Lang to Sheffield Wednesday, the English FA sought to curb the use of professional players and it was almost a decade later in 1885 when they eventually reluctantly sanctioned professionalism. In this context, football agents operated only on behalf of clubs to scout and recruit players (Roderick, 2001).
At this time, clubs still tended to recruit based on recommendation; however, this was about to change. J. P. Campbell from Liverpool is thought to have been the first agent to promote some players to clubs through newspaper advertisements in March 1891 (Taylor, 1999). Clubs also began to use intermediaries more often; these middlemen were usually small-time entrepreneurs who, recognising the gap in the market, were able to exploit the lack of organisation in early professional clubs. Middlesbrough Iranopolis, for example, employed a Mr Ferguson, who was paid Ā£5 commission for every player he recommended to them who then went on to play for the club. Nevertheless, the judgements of agents were not infallible and in 1893, the entire Aston Villa committee was compelled to resign after an intermediary recruited some sub-standard players who had not been seen by committee members (Carter, 2006).
1893 was an important year for football in England. The retain and transfer system was introduced which enabled football clubs to exercise a great degree of control over the movement of players (Magee, 2002). In the early years of the twentieth century, clubs began to take responsibility for their own recruitment of players and agentsā activity declined. The FA felt that agents were against the ethos of football and did not approve of their profession, to such an extent that the activities of individuals who attempted to profit as go-betweens for clubs and players were officially banned. However, despite clubs being regularly warned not to deal with agents, there was still demand for their services. Agents were clearly operating in various guises ā the magazine Football Chat published a letter from a London-based agent willing to procure players for any clubs (Taylor, 2005). Despite affirming that he did not act as an agent, but in a private capacity for friends working for clubs, a detailed scale of travelling costs and charges was listed. The FAās suspension of former players H. J. Sims of East Ham and C. F. Caswell of Cardiff, and the ban of Birminghamās Football Player Agency, show that agents were fully operating (Taylor, 2005). Similarly, while players tied to clubs through restrictive contracts were unable to solicit a move, agents were beginning to play a role in working for players that was similar to what we have seen emerging in the US, as they often touted a player around clubs while he was still under contract (Banks, 2002).
Regardless of their disputed image, the growth and increasing openness of the international transfer market offered an opportunity for agents to start to gain both exposure and a prominent position in the development of football. From their inception, all of the professional leagues imported foreign players in accordance with the respective domestic transfer market restrictions (Taylor, 2006). In the 1920s, the football league ASL in the US made no restriction on the grounds of nationality and clubs hired agents to attract players, such as Scotlandās Alex Jackson. In Europe, however, limits on importing foreign players were widespread. In 1933, the German federation imposed a blanket ban on foreign players and managers, while in Italy only foreign players with dual citizenship from South America, the so-called āoriundiā, were allowed to play. From 1931, foreign players in England were required to have lived in the country for at least two years before the FA would recognise them as residents. Their number therefore remained limited and they were used to playing with the status of amateurs. In addition, the presence of the maximum wage in England meant that other, less restrictive, leagues were preferred by players and several British players transferred to French clubs. Since the English FA was not a member of FIFA at that time, foreign clubs were not obliged to pay any transfer fees for players. Agents appeared from abroad to collaborate with local intermediaries, who mainly operated domestically, in order to transfer British players overseas (Taylor, 2002). Consequently, agents were not welcome and team managers did not want to deal with them.
French football saw strong growth post WWI, with the diffusion of amateur leagues (Gouget and Primault, 2006). As its popularity increased, so too did match-day revenues. It became standard practice for clubs to reimburse expenses and award match prizes to players. Gradually, football took hold in traditionally working class areas with many players coming from mining regions and with a strong contingent of Polish and Italian migrants. At that time, players were allowed to change clubs at will, hence creating a similar role for agents to that seen in England in supporting clubsā recruitment. In order to cont...
