From the dawn of the profession to today, the football agent has seen a radical evolution of this professional figure, passing from working alone to an increasingly frequent associative form. Increasingly, agents have been associated under one big shield, one multinational company capable of including various customers for their most various needs.
The excellent study carried out by Raffaele Poli, professor and researcher of the CIES Football Observatory, of the University of Neuchâtel, Professor Giambattista Rossi, of Birkbec University of London, and Dr. Roger Besson, also from CIES Football Observatory, published by Routledge Taylor & Francis in the book “Sports Agents and Labor Markets” highlights how the legal framework at the head of FIFA of this figure, which today we define professional for membership more or less generalized of the same to a professional register or at least to a register, is actually one very recent news, given that it is only since 1991 that FIFA has decided to establish the first register of FIFA agents posted on their official website.
Ten years later, in November 2011, there were 6,082 agent licenses worldwide: About 40 percent are domiciled in the Big Five sisters: England, Spain, Germany, Italy, and France. The illustrious work just mentioned, first of all studies the market shares of players’ representation in the five most important European leagues. By presenting the results of a survey questionnaire, it analyzes the socio-demographic profile of licensed football agents, analyzes their corporate sector and the diversification of services offered by individual agencies. From the following study, it is possible to derive some indicative factors of a trend that has now crystallized in the market, namely that the Big Five sisters and their transfers strongly influence the rest of the global transfer market. The study in the analysis reveals the existence of closed relational networks that clearly favor the concentration of players under the control of a few agents.
Only 3.4 percent of the sample is female, which confirms that until today, the activity of football agents is still almost completely male centered.
Another interesting data is certainly given by the personal data, in fact the average age of the agents in the reference sample is 42 years. Twothirds of them are included in the age group of 31 to 50 years.
Interestingly, a quarter of them operated for the first time without a regular license. This shows that authorized agents are clearly not the only intermediaries involved in the conclusion of a transfer transaction, but we will discuss this in more detail in Chapter 5 when we will address the difficult issue of management in relations with the families of players. More than half of the respondents (54%) were already part of the football world before becoming an agent. This activity, as we will recall several times, is strongly characterized by personal relationships, so it is clear that those who have a substantial past as a footballer could have an advantage in taking the first steps in the world of football intermediation; the first steps indeed. Because, mind you, having a past as a footballer can be a favorable condition but certainly not sufficient to become a good sports agent. Indeed, it is certainly no coincidence that no former famous footballer has become a popular agent.
In terms of the business structure through which agents operate, the survey questionnaire reveals that a small majority of the study’s respondents (51%) have established their own agency. Only half of the companies founded by agents have shareholders other than the founder, also complicit in federal endo regulations which, upon registering their sports agency, try to put professionals who do not have any sporting qualification out of the federal world. Of these companies, nearly 70 percent have no more than two shareholders. In nearly eight out of ten cases, the authorized agent is the main shareholder.
Another data that will certainly be useful to us, and that will be analyzed more deeply in the last chapter, is that related to the type of services rendered by the agent. While negotiating is the most frequent service provided (98% of the sample analyzed), almost two-thirds of them also assist their clients with marketing and specialization contracts while also providing some sort of legal advice and dispute resolution. Surprisingly, only a minority of agents (46%) support their clients in personal care activities such as finding a home or apartment, organizing travel, helping family members, and so on. This result shows that the general view of agents as 360° protectors of their clients does not correspond to reality.
A different reading from the prevailing opinion that I feel I can provide is the one about the bad reputation of football agents, who, according to the majority press, are interested in having their client transferred whenever the opportunity arises, to make money on the new professional contract stipulated. The need for many agents to negotiate short-term deals is often found in the well-defined willingness of clubs to sign contracts for professionals, for one, maximum two years. This professional investment mentality of some clubs, in the short term, is detrimental to the career prospects of young players who will be aware of having to fight hard to get a reconfirmation the following year and, consequently, of agents intent already at six months from the natural expiry of the contract, to ideally seek new solutions. In order to develop their business, the authorized agents work closely with other professionals. Sporting directors, technical directors, coaches, and presidents are clearly indicated as the most important professional partners when negotiating an employment contract between agents and clubs. Almost 40 percent of the agents interviewed by the aforementioned research have already represented at least one football manager. The large percentage of agents who manage the careers of players and coaches at the same time has often caused the problem raised by the federations and the sports justice bodies, regarding the legitimacy of this activity as regards the aspect of conflicts of interest (even if only potential) between an agent who represents a player who, for different dynamics, finds himself playing in the club coached by the coach, who in turn is also represented by the same agent. This potential conflict of interest, in my humble opinion, is made even more acute, if you want, by the infamous Blatter reform of 2015, which in fact placed the activity of football agents (now intermediaries for FIFA) in the middle between the two figures since they could represent professionals, footballer, and club. The very high risk of conflicts of interest on the part of the football agent is evident. From this worrying perspective, the English Premier League’s decision to make public the figures of the commissions paid by clubs to agents generated. Furthermore, in 2011, FIFA expressed in favor of the hypothesis of publication of the remuneration paid to intermediaries, so much so that in the aforementioned reform project launched by FIFA in 2018, which will see its conclusion toward the first months of 2021, due to a slowdown in the work caused by the global pandemic from Covid-19, an important obligation of transparency has been provided for the football clubs that use the professional activity of a sports agent in the negotiation of an employment contract for a football player, which takes the form of obligation on the part of the companies to publish the data related to the commissions paid to agents for each individual transaction, and no longer, as in use until last year, to simply publish the more generic aggregate data.
FIFA has also provided for the obligation to register online on the platform developed for international transfers (Transfer Matching System) of sports agents. Based on the data from the UEFA comparison report, we can estimate that the annual turnover of football agents in UEFA-affiliated national associations is around 400 million euros, exactly double that estimated for all the sports agents in the EU in 2008 by a study launched by the European Commission. In 2015, the five major European leagues generated total revenues of €11.3 billion and spent €6.7 billion in wage costs and transfer taxes (Deloitte, 2015). Measuring the turnover of intermediaries has always been a difficult task. The English leagues have led the way in terms of transparency, with the FA (English Football Association) reporting annually on the fees that clubs pay to agents.
Given the international nature of the sector, various other reports have tried to demonstrate the size of the “agent market” across Europe: in 2014, the European Court published a study on the player transfer system, based on the previous work by the European Commission and stated that, during the 2011/2012 and 2012/2013 football seasons, UEFA clubs spent $254 million on club agent fees, equivalent to 14.6 percent of the total value of the transfers in the same clubs. Unsurprisingly, clubs in Europe’s top leagues have pledged to pay the highest commissions to agents, totaling $197 million, practically 80 percent of the total.
Since October 2010, TMS FIFA has tracked all the international transfers in football and its “Global Transfer Report” states that between 2011 and 2014, $754 million was spent by clubs paying commissions to intermediaries for their roles in international transfers.
These exorbitant figures must not make you turn up your nose. The figure of the football agent is essential in the successful conclusion of a transfer. The agent is often a friend or a trusted man of footballers and their families, he knows the dynamics within the decision-making process of his client and, basically, he knows when to sink the shot and when to refuse. It is the first true ally of the clubs. Returning then to the calculations from the TMS, also published by Deloitte in the same year, suggest that agents received about 6 percent of the commissions for each transfer and that transfer costs are increasing from year to year, so much so that it is estimated that commissions will double at the end of 2020.1
The analysis borrowed, as regards to the statistical and methodological part by G. Rossi, A. Semens, and J.F. Brocard in their Sports Agents and Labor Markets text, provides us with an important basis on which to develop our comparative study that will highlight the main differences between the five most important European national sports federations, with regard to the figure of the football agent.
These five are defined in common football jargon as the “Big Five sisters” and alone move most of the world’s affairs. That is, they are capable of influencing the football world by themselves.
The Market for Agent and Intermediaries in England
The England of hooligans and empty stadiums, besieged by the police of M. Thatcher who harshly condemned those weekend acts of violence, ended in 1992. The year in which the Premier League actually entered the field. Currently, England is the most attractive and profitable league for players and, consequently, for their agents.
English Premier League2 has adopted strict rules to govern the activities of agents, in particular by demanding transparency in transfers after two major “bung scandals.”3 The FA’s first investigation began in 1995 in response to allegations of illegal payments made in a British High Court case between Terry Venables and Alan Sugar, surrounding Teddy Sheringham’s transfer from Nottingham Forest to Tottenham Hotspur. The FA’s investigation lasted three and a half years and considered several domestic and international transfers between 1992 and 1994. In September 1997, the investigative report revealed the increasing influence agents had on financial transactions and revealed a lack of financial strength within English football.
A practice, that of tax evasion, which unfortunately constantly proliferates. The story of a few years ago is sadly known, in which Sam Allardyce, Massimo Cellino, and JF Hasselbaink (the latter later cleared and defended by the QPR, the club he coached at the time) ended up in a media fuss for alleged rounds of illegal money. This sad story is the last in chronological order, but betting and infiltration of the underworld continue and will continue to enter football if the justice bodies of the ball do not enter the disciplinary level also on the criminal side.
However, there was no real political will on the part of the football universe to acknowledge the problem and discipline tougher punishments, such as a lifetime ban (and not with a single year of inhibition from the world of football). In other words, football authorities did not try hard enough to ensure that multimillion-dollar transfers conformed to their rules. Already in the past, the English FA has tried to intervene with 39 recommendations4 to make significant changes and improve transparency, as well as give the governing body greater regulatory control over the business of those involved in the transfer market. Major reforms included a ban on double representation, a requirement for overseas agents to register with the FA when involved in a move to England, and the need to disclose the total amount of agent fees paid by clubs each year. In 2007, the FA also established a monitoring group that oversees and analyzes the player transfer market and payments to football agents made through the clearing house system, which collects transfer transaction data and is organized in partnership between PL and FL. The FA (Football Association) is responsible for monitoring and paying the commissions paid to agents who are also integrated into the clearing system. In December 2007, the FA worked closely with law enforcement authorities and developed a comprehensive guide to football clubs on money laundering with a dedicated law on false accounting and bankruptcy offences fraudulent. While all these measures provide only partial solutions, the UK transfer market is now considered to be one of the most transparent and rigorous, where agents are deemed to be promptly and reasonably remunerated compared to the other European transfer markets.
This reputation was confirmed when the PL (Premier League) decided to ban TPOs5 from the beginning of the 2008/09 season. In this historical context, where British football was struggling to find a regulatory framework capable of framing the figure of agents, now intermediaries, FIFA found fertile ground when it decided to introduce the 2015 regulation on intermediaries. Several vacatio legis left room for new rules and extensive interpretations of the same.
Articles 1.2 and 1.3 of the FIFA Regulations on working with Intermediaries of April 1, 2015, while requiring the individual national sports federations to implement and reinforce the provisions coming from Zurich, expressly reserves the right to “Go beyond these minimum standards/requirements.” In February 2015, the FA, aware of how little has been done until then, was one of the first federations to publish its own supplementary internal regulation, called “the FA Regulation on Working with Intermediaries.” In England, to date, the matter that regulates the activity of the intermediary (the FA intermediary) can be divided into three independent sources but which interact with each other:
UK legislation: Although there is no specific sector regulation that directly regulates the activity of football intermediaries, there are nevertheless a number of statutes that directly impact the conduct or the freedom to act of the most generic intermediaries. “The Bribery Act” of 2010 is a relevant legislation that all intermediaries, without distinction, must bear in mind given that this legislation establishes two criminal offences:
(1) Bribing another person6
(2) Being bribed
Instead, it is provided for in paragraph 4 of the Bribery Act that
[I]mproper performance is performance or non-performance which breaches expectations of good faith or impartiality or breaches a position of trust. The penalties under s.11 of the Bribery act are potentially serious: an unlimited fine or imprisonment for up to 10 years.
Most agencies in the UK, especially the most powerful in terms of clients, will also have to pay attention to the provisions of paragraph 7 of the Bribery Act, which states that a commercial organization will itself be found guilty if an associated person including an intermediary hired by the organization, bribes another person with the intent of obtaining a business advantage for the organization.
Other relevant regulatory acts that emanate directly from UK legislation are the Fraud Act of 2006, the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Business Regulations of 2003 and the Employment Agencies Act of 1973, all united by setting minimum standards of ethical conduct and professional respect, which essentially follows the FIFA regulation on intermediaries of 2015.
The common law: the definition of the agency from the common law is
[T]he fiduciary relationship which exists between two persons one of whom expressly or impliedly manifest assent that the other should act on his behalf so as to affect his relations with third parties, and the other of whom similarly manifests assent so to act or so acts pursuant to the manifestation.7
The common law duties that an intermediary must comply with in the performance of its profession include, not exhaustively, the duty to use skill and care, to act in accordance with the legal terms and not to act in a conflict of interest.
The 2015 FIFA Regulations on working with Intermediaries: The assumption from which FIFA had started deciding the deregulation of the agents, which it created itself, was that the FIFA licensing system for agents, which in reality had to be used to catalog and therefore control the work of the same, in reality it turned out immediately not exhaustive. In fact, only 25 to 30 percent of market transactions were officially concluded by internationally licensed agents.8
However, this was not the case in England. Over the years, the FA has promulgated a considerable number of rules governing the activity of football agents operating in England, arousing general consensus among all British Football Stakeholders. The regulatory shield raised by the FA is so strong that it is important to emphasize that the FA Regulation expressly states that in the event of a conflict between the FA’s internal regulations and the FIFA regulations, federal regulations have the upper hand. This supremacy of national laws over FIFA ones is also and above all important for intermediaries who are external to the FA who want to operate in the UK who must expressly accept federal internal regulations, as well as of course the generic FIFA regulations.
Finally, for those who do not comply with federal legislation, there is the possibility of being sanctioned by the FA, and disputes between two intermediaries, or between intermediaries and players/clubs will be resolved by a federal arbitral tribunal of the FA as the “Rule K of the FA’s Rules of the Association.”
The Market for Agents and Intermediaries in Italy
The transfer market in Italy is unique considering that it happens in realtime and as such has always been followed by media, fans, and professionals. The event is organized by the Italian Football Federation, the FIGC, in collaboration with the professional leagues and consists of a real “physical” football market in which agents, players, football directors, and club owners meet in a hotel to arrange the transfers during the winter and summer transfer windows. Normally this so-called spectacularized market is held twice a year, in three days of events in Milan, the city strategically chosen as the location of the transfer market, because it is well connected to airport networks for international connections. Both in the summer and in the winter, the best hotels in the city center, in turn, compete for the organization of the transfer market event, which obviously brings millions of viewers to follow the latest purchases live on national television networks of this or that company. Several supporters crowd the common areas of the hotel, also accessible to journalists, where we agents, sports directors, football players, and presidents struggle between the floors of the hotel. Each club gets a room, a suite. In order to negotiate a transfer, the agent often has to go directly to a gallant transfer market match. The culmination of the event is certainly marked by the clock countdown that marks the end of market operations for that session. All the contracts deposited after that time will not be considered valid. I still remember when Inter managed to buy David Suazo, a player then in force at Cagliari, by blowing him to Milan, literally throwing the contract into the basket of contracts, from outside the secretariat’s door. The Inter secretary and the agent in question were praised for their sporting skills as well as for having really concluded the operation at the last second. Historically, Italy is recognized as “the most South American nation in Europe,” the one that lives on football seven days a week. As a result, the country with the largest number of licensed agents in the world is precisely Italy with almost 1,000 agents. Until the early 2000s, these high numbers of participants also corresponded to the highest parcels. The best commissions were in Italy, and it was always said that if you wanted to be someone in the world of football, your footballer had to come and play in Italy. Unfortunately, a series of scandals, Calciopoli above all, where Juventus was relegated to Serie B, and Milan together with other clubs, heavily penalized for match-fixing, have destroyed the image of Italian football in the media, which took more than 10 years to again attract world champions of the caliber of Cristiano Ronaldo, now registered with Juventus, or Romelu Lukaku, currently in force at Inter. Famous is the phrase of Mourinho, in 2010, the year in which as a coach, he won the treble with Inter, when a journalist had invited him to have a more relaxed attitude in the race for the championship, precisely against Juventus:
Should we tone down? Let’s lower the tone ... that’s how you Italians build a story that made me a terrible shame as a football professional, as a person who earns from football. I was working in Portugal at the time, but when I learned about Calciopoli it made me ashamed to feed my family with football money. But now ... let’s tone it down. And I’ll tell you another thing: I arrived in Italy an honest man, I will leave Italy a honest man.
This heavy, harsh statement by the neroazzurro coach immediately photographed the idea that Italy had given of all the Italian football. The Calciopoli scandal also affected football agents, as it revealed the dominant position of the GEA World agency9 in the Italian transfer market with an average market share of 10.2 percent from 2002 to 2006 and its representation of players whose transfer values equaled 18.9 percent of the entire market: double the second-largest agency, PDP according to the AGCM10 report, dated 2006. Recognizing that the football industry was completely corrupt, in February 2007 the FIGC introduced an already mentioned new agent regulation. Reform guidelines have been adopted with the aim of widening access to the profession and controls have been put in place to prevent the establishment and abuse of a dominant position on the market by a small group of prosecutors, as was the case with the GEA. More specifically, controls have been implemented in the following areas: (1) integrity of persons admitted to the profession of football agents, (2) standardization of contractual relations between agents and players. The reform focused primarily on combating establishment and subsequent abuse of dominant positions by agents, introducing numerous prohibitions and regulatory incompatibilities to prevent potential conflicts of interest. These included specific clauses relating to the presence of family ties and the number of clubs and players represented by the same group. Paradoxically, the restrictions on the practice of the footballing agent have increased. Provisions aimed at preventing conflicts of interest, in particular, ended up effectively hindering entrepreneurial activity, reducing the freedom of choice of players and clubs and creating obstacles to the competitive development of agents’ businesses.
Among the first Italian agencies, PDP was probably the first to transfer Italian players abroad, starting with the transfer of Gianluca Vialli to Chelsea. Funded and managed by veteran agent and lawyer Claudio Pasqualin, its client list includes 184 players such as Sebastian Giovinco, Domenico Criscito, Alberto Aquilani, and Salvatore Bocchetti. The lawyer Giuseppe Bozzo, former collaborator of the PDP agency for the Southern Italy market, has also become a leading agent, creating AGB Sport Management. He began his career assisting Antonio Cassano as a client, from the Bari Calcio youth sector and has grown to become one of the most influential agents, earning an international reputation. His portfolio is worth €67 million and includes players Fabio Quagliarella, Federico Peluso, and Leandro Greco. He was actively involved as a club agent in the transfer of Martin Caceres and Alvaro Morata to Juventus and Mateo Kovacic to Inter.
Personally, I got to know the lawyer Bozzo, through my previous dominus, the lawyer Franco Campana of the “Football Leaders,” who among others had collaborated with champions such as Franz Beckenbauer. Two professionals with a capital “P.”
Ten years after the GEA World case, the market representation of agents has become increasingly competitive and it is possible to see that the series of reforms introduced with the subsequent agent regulations have had a positive impact on the level of competitiveness among the football representative agencies. Undoubtedly, the market is strongly linked to the current condition of Italian football, which has partly lost its attraction. In this context, Italian agencies are expanding their business in emerging markets such as the United States and Asia.
For years, Italian managers have denounced state aid to Spanish clubs, beneficiaries of the so-called Beckham Law, which we will discuss in the next paragraph, and which lowered taxes on the paychecks of foreign players. With the 2019 Growth decree, a Beckham Law was also effectively enacted for Italian football. And the roles have been reversed, with La Liga president Javier Tebas saying, with an exaggeration, that “in Italy, players pay 10 times less taxes than in Spain” and the newspaper “El pais” entitled “Calcio es un paraiso fiscal”—the italian football is a tax haven.
And they are right.
“The new law is a bomb,” summarize in chorus Antonio Tomassini and Antonio Longo, expert lawyers in tax and sports matters of the international law firm DLA Piper. But what exactly is this bomb? We are talking about the law converting the Growth Decree which, among the various stimulus measures, has dedicated a chapter to the return of brains by introducing specific tax breaks for professional sportsmen (therefore athletes, coaches, technical-sports directors, and athletic trainers) who have worked abroad in the last two years and transfer their residence to Italy falling within the notion of repatriated workers, be they Italians or foreigners. For them, the taxation for Irpef purposes is applied only on 50 percent of the taxable income produced: in essence, they will pay taxes only on half of their income. In truth, the measure is even more advantageous for other workers, taxed only on 30 percent of income. But in the end, Parliament decided not to reward the subjects of a golden world such as football to such an extent, also providing a sort of solidarity contribution, equal to 0.5 percent of the tax base, intended for the strengthening of the youth sectors. Peanuts compared to the savings obtained.
The fact is that consequently to the application of this decree, and also the result of new wealthy foreign presidencies in recent years, for the richest clubs (FC Internazionale is owned by the Suning group, Fiorentina owned by the Italian-American Rocco Commisso, Dan Friedkin, another American for the Roman capital, AS Roma side), Italian football is back, a phenomenon on the rise so as to return to having dedicated thematic channels even across the Channel, with the task of broadcasting C. Ronaldo & Co.
The Market of Agents and Intermediaries in Spain
The transfer market in Spain is decidedly polarized toward a combination of clubs, Real Madrid and Barcelona rarely interspersed with the presence of a third inconvenience, often Atletico Madrid or Sevilla. Historically, the Spanish league, except for these two top clubs, does not boast other internationally appreciated realities such as England and Italy. Here, the Spanish government has deemed it appropriate to give a boost to the football sector, with the establishment of ad hoc legislation rewritten to facilitate the purchase of talent from abroad—the so-called Ley Beckham,11 passed in 2005 and operational until 2010 until its reintroduction, with profound changes and restrictions, in 2016. The law earned its nickname after David Beckham became one of the first expats in Spain to take advantage of the opportunity to be subject to a flat rate of tax of 24 percent. The intent of the Spanish legislator was clear: to make Spanish football more attractive and competitive for foreign talents. Thus, the best clubs have been able to maximize their revenues thanks to the massive push of television rights to finance their expenses. The same idea, as already mentioned, was given to the Italian clubs, which, with a strong push to the government, have achieved what they have been fighting for: the growth decree mentioned in the previous paragraph.
However, starting from the 2015/2016 season, in Spain, there has been a reversal of the trend regarding the sale of TV rights, compared to the rest of the Big Five, where the rights deriving from the reproduction of the matches on television are sold collectively, as it happens in many other leagues, and therefore, there will be a tendency to reduce the revenue gap between top clubs and low-middle-range clubs, with the intentional consequence of improving the competitive balance between the Spanish clubs. With the previous system of individual rights sales, Barcelona and Real Madrid have earned more than 140 million euros each year from the proceeds from the TV broadcasts of their official matches, thus having an unrivaled competitive advantage at national level from clubs of lesser status. However, the Spanish government pushed for a new law that gave the Spanish league control over the collective sale of broadcasting rights in a move to improve the finances of smaller clubs, collect outstanding taxes, and increase competitiveness. The new legislation brings Spanish football in line with PL and Serie A. General economic conditions in Spain have also impacted the transfer market over the past decade, with some clubs hit hard by the post-2008 financial crisis and where several of these have been forced to seek financial protection from local credit institutions, to avoid bankruptcy. However, this situation was exacerbated by the critical conditions in the banking system on which the clubs relied for financial support. Back in 2003, the Spanish government enacted a new insolvency law, the Ley Concursal, 12 which allowed companies to defer their outstanding payments to keep their business going.
The general economic situation of the country led 27 Spanish clubs to renegotiate their debts between 2003 and 2014. It is no coincidence, in the light of the above, that in December 2013, the EC took a series of disciplinary actions against seven Spanish clubs for possible favorable tax treatments received from the state, aid for the construction of new stadiums and loans and bank guarantees from regional administrations. In these conditions, where financial solidity has sometimes been difficult to ensure, new sources of financing have come to light. In particular, the TPO agreements already supported by investment funds have proliferated enormously in Spain, operating as an entry point into the football transfer markets, for investors using innovative forms of investment such as the DSI fund, a subsidiary of “Doyen Group,” which in the first phase of its activity, invested about 100 million euros in the football sector, becoming the most recognized private investment fund in the sector. DSI’s investment strategy has increased brand awareness in the average football player, enabling it to position itself as a serious and credible financial player for the football industry, working closely with many teams including: Atletico Madrid, Benfica, Porto, Seville, and Twente FC.
The Market of Agents and Intermediaries in France
France, among the five sisters, is certainly the one with the least media impact and competitiveness of its internal championship. This role of Serie B was placidly accepted by factual evidence until the end of the 80s, when the French clubs eliminated the old system of making the market protectionist, and therefore, exclusively internal, to open up to the rest of Europe. With the proliferation of more and more international operations, the FFF produced the first national sports agents regulation in 1992.13 The first national regulatory framework, however, soon proved ineffective because it was able to function exclusively hand in hand with the FIFA license, of international derivation. This necessary regulatory duplicity has led to its rapid application complexity in practice, so much so as to push the French national legislature to issue a second and much more complex regulation for agents in 2000; the Code du Sport. Its articles regulate the sports agency, in particular article R131-18,14 and incorporate a licensing system organized by the FFF, with further rigorous reviews in 2010. In a survey carried out by the FFF itself, in 2018, only 15 percent of prospective agent candidates were able to obtain the FFF license to act as official agents. as evidence of the extremely technical origin of the profession; rules of international law, civil and community law, follow and intersect very frequently with each other. The eye of the reader must be trained to pass easily to their application in practice. In line with a stringent and careful regulation of the figure, the FFF has finally expressly obliged each individual agent to report the list of all the operations and all his clients to the federation. In 2014, the official census recorded 338 official agents in France. With the approval of the FIFA brokerage system wanted by Blatter, with the domino effect of de facto opening access to the profession in the 2015 to 2017 two-year period, the FFF has decided to adopt an internal protectionist system, trying not to demean the high quality standard required until shortly before for access to the profession of agent, attributing to the French licenses already issued, valid until the summer of 2020. While foreign agents helping top clubs have previously been an anomaly in this transfer market, the current trend is changing and looks set to continue. According to Bertrand Gardon, president of the UNFP15 football association, “the fact that the market is completely open favors the arrival of stronger foreign intermediaries, who earn exorbitant commissions.” In June 2013, before the Council of State, the two associations of French agents filed an appeal against the cap on commissions of 6 percent imposed by the Executive Committee of the FFF, under pressure from the association of clubs UCPF16 (France Football, 2013). For the first time, the UASF and SNAS17 worked together and the fee limit was removed. However, a similar 10 percent limit for gross wages below €1.8 million per year remains today.
The Market for Agents and Intermediaries in Germany
Let’s start with an assumption: the Bundesliga is the most followed football league in the world. For years now, German clubs have established a special bond with their supporters, so much so that their supporters are an active part in their way of doing football business. A bit like in England, supporters are very anchored to geographical criteria, often cheering on the club in their city or in the main urban center closest to them. Unlike English football though, where ticket prices are often similar to what you buy to go to the theater, in the Bundesliga Ticket prices are kept low with an effort by clubs to support their local football communities.
One of the secrets of the profitability of the German league is due to strict ownership rules that guarantee a solid local community to be able to assert their ideas in decision making with the management. A sort of popular shareholding. This mentality is typical of German professional football, where the will is to prevent a single person from being able to control the fate of an entire club, of an entire community, therefore, without worrying about historical relationships and ties between clubs, fans, and players themselves. The legal formula chosen is that of registered nonprofit associations, and as such, the so-called verein, that is, some clubs, are required by law to hold at least 50 percent plus one of the club’s voting rights. Vereins, such as Hamburger Sport-Verein to name one, are run by representatives elected by members, who are usually fans, of the local football community. This results in a special structure that is not authorized to distribute any profits to representatives or members of the club or even less, to sell individual club membership rights. However, there is a strong tendency for club representatives to reinvest all available funds.
A positive aspect, in some ways (as long as the German football economy works) and negative in others, is given by the structure of most German clubs, which therefore heavily discourages external investors and foreign properties that in fact in other leagues, as already mentioned (e.g., Italy), have often saved historic clubs from bankruptcy. These aspects could lead German clubs to adopt more moderate transfer strategies than other leagues, favoring the domestic market with the exception of Bayern Munich, which usually buys foreign players and coaches (FIFA TMS 2014). With an almost always internal management, a very geo-localized market and a club with popular shareholding, it is easy to understand how the world of representation in Germany is absolutely hostile to the entry of foreign intermediaries. But not for a discriminatory reason; simply because there is no reason to consult very often, for example a French agent, for a player who plays in Germany. On the other hand, however, the birth of the new league led to the expansion of the profession of intermediaries within the national market.
The player representation market is highly transparent and agent information is more readily available than in other markets. German agents tend to provide reliable information on their agencies’ activity through their social media. For most of the top agencies, you can check the list of their up-to-date clients and how they are organized internally in terms of work teams, functions, and responsibilities of individual employees. In addition, agencies tend to demonstrate which partnerships are established with different service agencies and other football agencies. It is therefore not surprising that the German representation industry has been relatively immune to scandals in the transfer market, suggesting that collaboration between clubs and associations in terms of governance could minimize the impact of opportunistic behaviors on the football brokerage side for agents.
On the other hand, a sector of strong interest for this profession in Germany is the bridge that the nation itself represents between the Eastern European and Western European championships. Consequently, it is quite common to see football agencies developing Central European networks to facilitate player transfers. The agencies “ISMG” and “Soccer Talk,” for example, are both linked to the Croatian market through their founder and main agent, Gordon Stipic and Alen Augustincic, respectively. Another example is the “Stars & Friends” founded in early 2005 by the merger of the Austrian “Star Factory” and the German agency “Strunz & Friends.” The company operates in Central European markets with offices in Austria, Germany, Slovakia, Norway, and Hungary.
Agents with the Highest Market Power Worldwide. Conclusions
Concluding the analysis now carried out, we can mention some of the most famous agencies worldwide, using once again the numerical data obtained from the research carried out by Rossi, Semens, and Brocard in their work “Sports Agents and labor Markets.”
England, as mentioned, is the most economically important nation in terms of commissions for agents, with the first British agency is the “Stellar Group,” ranked third in the ranking of the top 50 agencies worldwide, with a potential transfer of income of around €200 million. On the Forbes list, the agency ranks 10th with a portfolio of 143 athletes, worth an estimated €392 million in transfer fees and around €40 million in commissions. The other major British agency, “Base Soccer,” is ranked sixth with players worth around €145 million in the market. Their clients include Brazilian internationals Felipe Anderson and Norberto Neto. In fourth position with 198 million euros is the American “WMG.” The company is a global agency representing 410 athletes in 20 sports around the world. According to Forbes, the entire company ranks fourth in the top 50 sports agencies with around €2.1 billion in contracts for athletes and around €101 million in commissions. The Italian agencies are the most numerous, with a diversified market. In Spain, the agencies are strongly influenced by Real Madrid and Barcelona, carrying out in the other cases a series of operations in a minor tone, which, however, does not see them as protagonists on the international scene. In Germany, on the other hand, we are witnessing a peculiar phenomenon, in sharp contrast to the rest of Europe where, except for the bridge with Central European countries, the German agent market remains decidedly closed to international trade.
Historical Excursus on the Figure of the Football Agent
The sports agent, and in particular the football agent, in the light of the analysis just concluded has become a very significant figure in the business of contemporary sport. The key role played by the agent is essential to our understanding of labor markets and employment relationships in an increasingly globalized sports industry. Offering analysis from historical, economic, and social perspectives, this final part of the chapter explores key topics such as:
• The history of sports agents
• The emergence of the modern agent in the current football sport model
The development of football as an industrial model led, in the 20th century, to the creation of completely new professional categories and roles. Among these, football agents have undoubtedly emerged as the most powerful entrepreneurial category among the various stakeholders in the sector, operating as the negotiation bridge between players and clubs. In controlling players and in some cases also having control over certain clubs, football agents are certainly responsible for a significant part of the creation of the modern football economic landscape. Although football agents have been socially recognized as representatives since the early 20th century, their role (and regulation) didn’t formally crystallize until 1994, when FIFA issued its first rules to govern them. Since then, public authorities and government bodies have tried to identify and control this profession from a legal and economic point of view.
With the formal recognition by FIFA, a classification and a more rigorous definition of the roles, duties, and responsibilities assumed by those who seek to take care of the interests of professional footballers in a 360° management in which to be protected has arrived, they are often also profiles of an athlete’s social security, welfare, and entrepreneurial nature. To understand how and why the modern football industry has developed also thanks to the professional figure in question, it is good to first remember what is meant by the term agent. In fact, the words agent and intermediary are often used erroneously interchangeably in the common football language, but in reality, between the two denominations, there have traditionally been subtle differences, already detailed in the previous Chapter 1, under the civil law aspect and regulate. This distinction, however, can again help us explain the development of the football economic sector. Professor Frenkiel,18 of the CIES institute maintains in its paper (of which a free English translation of the original text in French is shown) that:
[I]n the business context, both terms are defined as professionals who act with or between two or more commercial parties for legitimate economic activities, offered by a supplier to a consumer. However, while agents are legally authorized to act on behalf of either party by concluding a specific contract, intermediaries mainly carry out only material actions (establishing contracts, organizing meetings, etc.) in order to bring the contracting parties together and, as such, they tend to have a less formal relationship with their clients.
In many ways, without knowing the technicalities of the relationships in place, it is impossible to distinguish the work of the two figures and to a certain extent the terms are therefore used interchangeably. Whatever the position prior to FIFA’s creation of the intermediary in football, the roles of the new intermediaries and old agents cannot be distinguished from each other in practical terms. This paragraph explores the circumstances through which the football agent industry has developed globally, through a transition of football agents from a practical and improvised activity, devoid of any official status, to a coveted, legally recognized profession, central to the operations of world football markets. This parable can be traced through three periods, which reflect respectively the birth, the exponential growth, and in parallel, the liberalization of the labor markets and the transfer of players.
We can thus highlight a first period that goes from the end of the 19th century to the end of the 1950s, characterized mainly by scouting and brokerage activities on behalf of clubs;
A second moment that instead starts from the early 60s and arrives in the mid-90s, where the representation of footballers as known today under different profiles was born.
Up to a third historical phase, which starts from the mid-90s up to the very recent topicality, which has already been extensively treated in the first chapter of the book, characterized by a real professionalization of football agents, obviously saving the brief as unfortunate parenthesis of the cd Liberalization of football agents, following the declared will of the now former president (following the corruption scandal) of FIFA, Joseph Blatter.
From the end of the 19th century to the end of the 1950s: scouting and brokerage on behalf of clubs
Market intermediaries, or football agents, have existed since the beginning of the game of football, originally playing scouting and recruiting roles for clubs. In a phase immediately following the beginning of this activity, the clubs decided to try to reduce commission costs, therefore salary with much lower salaries, figures capable of performing the same service but as employees of the club. In this way, the scouting networks inside the clubs are expanding, almost eliminating the role of intermediaries from the international football scene. These changes in the market, operated unilaterally by the clubs, have led intermediaries to seek new ways to recycle their job position, starting to work as a bridge between players and clubs. The component relating to the intimate, individual, informal knowledge that the agent will assert against the clubs that intend to acquire the professional sports performance of an athlete will be increasingly greater. A first formal recognition of the figure, albeit a contrary was obtained in 1936, precisely at the 23rd FIFA Congress, which prohibited the use of intermediaries in transfers, believing that they could encourage the development of illegal practices against clubs, for the sole purpose to increase the net salary of their clients. This gloomy vision of intermediaries, resisted until the 1960s, when this figure became in effect an agent, as it is known today, radically changing the approach to a profession, which was previously based on the spasmodic search for a compromise that basically satisfied all the parties to the contract, that is, player, club, and obviously intermediary, was now based on the direct and exclusive representation of the athletes, with the well-declared objective for the agent, to try to reach the best economic solution for his client, no longer caring about the interests of the club than with his athlete, he was negotiating. Sports agents, mind you, not football, emerged even before the 23rd FIFA Congress, in the most profitable U.S. sports.
At the time of the American Civil War 19 (1861–1865), professional baseball teams, one of the most popular sports in the nation with stars and stripes, were itinerant, and not having a private stadium were promoted by various intermediaries, managers, men of experience, and contacts, who offered wealthy entrepreneurs the idea of starting their own professional baseball team, acquiring the rights of one of the existing touring companies.20 Although their role was specific to each particular case, they typically financed the production of a particular tour or event in order to generate future revenue from tickets and commercial sales. In contrast to the developing football market in Europe, agents in the United States have been recognized as facilitators of these new and popular forms of entertainment and, as such, their role has been widely accepted. The U.S. government, as we will see in Chapter 3 below, has given the sport a certain level of autonomy by choosing not to intervene and has allowed individual promoters and organizers to enjoy considerable independence. This space offered entrepreneurs, agents, the opportunity to profit from initiatives that were very avant-garde for their time. Against the backdrop of increased commercialization in sport, athletes realized they could potentially earn more if they had the help of an experienced negotiator. A man who knew of extra sporting dynamics, who had ties almost everywhere. One more weapon. This is how the sports agent is seen in the United States.
A pioneer, if not the founder of the figure of the sports agent in the sense we give him today, is Charles C. Pyle, commonly known as “Cash & Carry” Pyle, credited as the first sports agent. He, a theater promoter, had managed in 1925 to negotiate a contract worth about $3,000 for each single event for Harold “Red” Grange with the Chicago Bears, along with over $300,000 in film rights and additional bonuses. Pyle represented other major athletes in the 1920s and 1930s21 and is an icon of the multifaceted profession of the sports agent.
But if we want to give further prestige, perhaps in a decisive way, to the figure of the sports agent, mind you, not yet football, Christy Walsh, a sportswriter, a calm person, thought about it unwittingly. Certainly not a practicing lover of games to raise, Walsh was hired by New York Yankees baseball player “Babe” Ruth as his advisor—yes, but with a predominant focus on the financial side, to help him with contract negotiations, and this marked a shift in the way agents were viewed in the landscape. Professional sportsman. Thus, while U.S. sports agents, acting as promoters and intermediaries, were able to openly exploit commercial opportunities in the creation of leagues and other competitions, gaining ground, the same path was not viable in the UK, where football was born and immediately became the most popular sport strictly controlled by the existing state football authorities, of which there are still traces today with the FA (the English Football Association, the oldest world football federation). As in many revolutions brought by the Americans, so also in this case, it took about twenty years compared to the American “cousins,” to see the birth of the sports agent, first in England until it took hold throughout the European continent. Their role was initially largely limited to advising clubs on how to find new football talents, an activity that was then split and currently still carried out by the scout. 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 tried to curb the birth of professionalism until 1885, when at the end of a strong debate between all the interpreters of the game of football, reluctantly sanctioned its professionalization. In this way, we quickly passed from a recruitment still based on referral fees, to literally sponsored recruitment on the press media. As we will see in the last chapter in more detail, the link between agents and the fourth estate that of the media has always been complementary. These two figures, journalist and agent, seem so to speak, made to work hand in hand. J. Paul Campbell from the city of Liverpool is remembered, as quoted in his 1999 writing by the historian Taylor, for being the first agent to promote some players in clubs through newspaper advertising, starting this unusual and effective sponsorship of his assisted, in March 1891. The type of intermediaries that was created was mostly made up of small entrepreneurs, people who had a second job at the beginning of the profession, who recognized and were able to exploit the lack of corporate organization in the first professional clubs.
In the early 20th century, agents suffered a drastic blow to their profession, which almost cast doubt on their survival: in fact, clubs began to take responsibility for recruiting players for their club, giving rise to the figure of the football observer (or scout), and the activity of the agents decreased dramatically. Furthermore, the FA believed that the agents were against an ethical view of football, turning it into a race for the best bargain and did not approve of their profession, to the point that the activities of individuals attempting to profit as intermediaries for clubs and players so officially prohibited. However, although the clubs were regularly advised not to deal with agents, there was still a strong demand from the companies for their services precisely because these figures were recognized as having an effective ability to evaluate the best hidden gems on the national territory. Regardless of their controversial image, the growth, and increasing openness of the international transfer market has given agents the opportunity to start gaining both visibility and prominent positions in the development of football. Since their inception, all the professional leagues have imported foreign players in accordance with their respective domestic transfer market restrictions. In Europe, however, restrictions on the import of foreign players were particularly widespread. In 1933, the German federation imposed a general ban on foreign players and managers, while in Italy, only foreign players with dual citizenship from South America, the so-called oriundi, could play. Since 1931, foreign players in England must have lived in the country for at least two years, before the FA recognized them as residents. Their number has therefore remained limited and for those few, there was often a space of mere amateur football, far from the blazon and the salaries of professionalism in which most British footballers resided. French football saw strong growth after World War I, with the spread of amateur leagues. As its popularity grew, the revenue from matches also increased. It has gradually become established practice for clubs to reimburse expenses and award prizes to players based on their sporting achievements. Gradually, football has taken hold in traditionally working-class areas with many players from mining regions and with a strong contingent of Polish and Italian migrants. At the time, players could change clubs at will, thus giving a very strong propulsive boost to the creation of a role similar to that of the agent seen in England in supporting the recruitment of clubs by British agents. The recruitment of players from abroad has also started to spread in stark contrast to the English case.
A phenomenon that has given a decisive boost to the overtaking on the football scene of the figure in question is given by the international football and non-football governments, which begin to allow clubs, as happened in France in the late 1930s, to being able to field up to five foreign players in each match. This and other similar regulations throughout Europe, contribute significantly to the hiring, by the most important clubs, of intermediaries from abroad to find players wishing to emigrate. In turn, the clubs giving away athletes in France have seen a clear utility in the activity of intermediaries in helping them to make the most of by transferring the most talented players to other clubs for adequate payment. This asymmetric information that was created at the beginning between the French clubs (in possession of the professional services of foreign agents, advisor of the real qualities of a player at the time of purchase) and the foreign club of purchase of the player (unaware of the real potential and/or physical condition of the athlete) has also allowed some intermediaries to make money by transferring players from France to foreign clubs, well below the minimum quality level required to play in such a league.22 At the end of the Second World War, intermediaries were widespread in all major European football markets. However, most of the players were not yet officially followed by an agent in the transfer operations or in the contract renewal phases. Players at that time were seen exclusively as bargaining chips, pawns to be moved at the club’s will, without adequate labor legislation to protect their welfare and social security rights. Competition from foreign leagues with a strong desire to contract the highest-profile players has offered tempting alternatives to local football. This tendency to expatriate was also aggravated by the presence of a salary cap, present both in France and in England, which remained in force until 1961 and in fact, made it more difficult for the clubs of these countries to excel in race to grab the best talents mainly from South America. Consequently, in the 1950s and 1960s, the most promising or established players often moved to Italy, where similar regulatory constraints were not present, and did so through agents who became increasingly closely involved in the negotiations between clubs and players, to mostly British. These include John Charles’s move from Leeds United to Juventus in 1957, due to the involvement of Teddy Sommerfield, whose other clients included television celebrities such as Eamonn Andrews, and show business personalities. It was the first time a British player had hired an agent to facilitate his move overseas. At that time, the most famous broker was Gigi Peronace, referred to as the real agent or Italian man in England, he worked part-time as a scout and broker in the Anglo-Italian transfer market for several clubs, such as Chelsea, Manchester United, Lazio, Turin, Juventus, and Milan. The clubs thus began to see their bargaining power eroded, given the increasingly frequent push of agents in favor of their clients, but above all, the figure of the agent began to become in great demand (and still is today) in the categories of players, less well-off, those who certainly cannot afford a serious or trivial injury, to remain a year without a team.
This information in itself would not be so relevant for historical purposes were it not that this category of players represents about 90 percent of the entire global athlete landscape. From the early 1940s, intermediaries began organizing friendly matches between clubs or tournaments that served as a showcase for their clients. All the clubs that have identified a potential transfer target in one of these matches therefore negotiate directly with the club that holds the player’s sports rights, the possible amount of the deal. Since player representation was still prohibited, intermediaries were paid fees in connection with the organization of the match and for this reason, in 1969, UEFA decided to create a license for match agents, that is, organization of matches recognized as official, and monitoring their activity by giving life to the figure of the UEFA match agent. In Spain, the first generation of football intermediaries started operating in the 1940s and 1950s. Again, asymmetrical information, this time with South American clubs, implied that some intermediaries were exploiting the transfer market with scandals like “el timo de los orioundos,” in which South American players had to forge their passports to obtain Spanish citizenship. and, subsequently, moving to Spanish clubs.
In Italy, the so-called Calciomercato, the official transfer market for footballers, was founded by the Prince of Trabia, Raimondo Lanza who, at that time, in the 1950s, was president of Palermo Calcio. It has turned into an annual gathering where club owners, club directors, and brokers meet to hold player buying and selling meetings at the Hotel Gallia in Milan.23
From the early 1960s to the mid-1990s: the representation of footballers
By 1960, it had become apparent in England that labor market restrictions were not conducive to retaining the best players. The salary cap, an idea that sounds dated in today’s football world, shouldn’t come as a surprise when you think about the current NBA salary cap. In any case, the players union, the PFA was using its political influence to try to arrive at a rule that at least put England back in a position to counter Italy’s excessive power in the field of acquisitions of the best players on the world scene. The British FA’s 1961 decision to abolish the maximum wage balanced the bargaining power between players and clubs to the point where most athletes began negotiating their contracts with the assistance of personal agents. In making player transfers more flexible, leagues and football federations have legitimized the use of intermediaries. However, there were still important restrictions on the free movement of players from one club to another as clubs, at the time, could unilaterally extend player contracts as long as they are offered economic terms equal to their previous contract; in essence, it meant tying a player to the club for as long as the player was willing to pay for his services, regardless of whether the player wished to stay in that club. In France, a similar reform process was underway, led by Just Fontaine who, following the examples of his English colleagues, founded the French footballers’ union, the UNFP, in 1961 and immediately began negotiations with representatives of the clubs that led to the signing of the first collective agreement, which as a corollary introduced the reform of the pension system in November 1964. In 1969, the UNFP had given rise to a real revolution; challenging the consolidated legal framework of the labor market of the time, he was able to negotiate for the first time the possibility for players and clubs to enter into fixed term contracts. Under this system, a player can only be registered with a club for a limited period of time, which may be the subject of future negotiation and which cannot be less than three years for an amateur player who signs his first professional contract and not even a year in any other case, which meant that at the end of his contract, a player could negotiate with any club without the opposition of his former home club.
With the growth of the European system both politically and as a commercial market, it was necessary to create a homogeneous and standard transfer system, which did not prejudice rights obtained in this or that nation. This need gave rise to a confederate system, that of UEFA, which was able to allow the free movement of players nationally and internationally.
This UEFA system has set a maximum transfer fee limit. On February 23, 1978, in Brussels, the football federations of various European countries and the Executive Committee of the EEC met to establish the principle of free movement of players within the borders of the EEC member states. At the same time, with the opening of markets to all of Europe, media interest in sport as part of regular television programming has expanded very rapidly, bringing huge amounts of revenue to leagues. As the activities of sports agents have begun to become more widely recognized, their numbers have increased exponentially and individuals from diverse backgrounds and professions have entered the industry. Similarly, the increase in revenue available to players has resulted in a change in the type of advice required, as legal and financial support has become necessary. These new services, which tended to be available only through personal consultants, became a necessity, so as to increasingly favor the arrival of professionals from different economic sectors not previously involved in the world of sport.
1 Cfr. https://fifatms.com/data-reports/reports/2015
2 The Premier League, also known as the English Premier League (EPL) outside of England, is the top flight of the English football league. The Premier was born in 1992, after the 22 teams affiliated to the First Division (the then top English league) decided to leave the Football League for economic reasons.
3 Cfr. The indipendent.co.uk, “Top managers identified in ‘bung’ scandal” By Sam Wallace Tuesday, September 19, 2006.
4 Cfr. http://thefa.com/football-rules-governance/lawsandrules
5 TPO: (Third Party Ownership): See www.diritto.it, the TPO agreements in professional football. “Third-party ownership (TPO) agreement is a type of investment that third parties, not part of the sports system (e.g., investment funds, private entities), make by acquiring all or part of the economic rights of professional sportsmen, in order to profit from any future transfers of such athletes. These practices appear to be widespread especially in football. The rapid spread and not always transparent use of TPOs has been discussed at various levels within the international football community. FIFA coordinated the discussions on an international level, which took place in various standing FIFA committees, such as the Football Committee, the Committee for Club Football and the Players’ Status Committee. A working group was therefore created with the aim of further studying the phenomenon of OPT. Various football organizations in the world have come to prohibit TPOs (FIFA, but also the FA Premier League), considering these practices a threat to the integrity of competitions, to the development of young players and to the too strict and not very transparent constraint establishes between the players and the third party owner of the card. In the FIFA headquarters, Circular 1464/2014 was published in which FIFA communicated to the various national football federations associated with it that the Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players (RSTP - Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players) would be amended to include new provisions on TPO and players’ economic rights (Article 18 ter) for which no club or player may enter into agreements with third parties for which the third party may receive compensation for the transfer of a player from a club to another, or to enter into agreements for which the third party may be the beneficiary of an economic right on the future transfer of a player. The TPO ban entered into force on 1 May 2015. The new provisions are binding and must be included without modification in the regulations of the national football associations associated with FIFA. Previously, in the RSTP Regulations, a rule had been inserted concerning the relations between Third-party and football clubs, in order to exclude any type of interference by the Third-party on corporate decisions. Article 18 bis of the Regulations on the Status and Transfers of FIFA Players provides that ‘no company may enter into contracts that allow any other party included in the contract or third parties to acquire the ability to influence employment relationships and on issues relating to transfers, his autonomy over political choices or the activity of his own team.’ In March 2016, four different professional clubs, Santos Futebol Clube (Brazil), Sevilla FC (Spain), Club K St Truidense VV (Belgium), and FC Twente (Netherlands), were sanctioned by FIFA for having violated the articles 18 bis and 18 ter of the FIFA Regulations on the Status and Transfers of Players. Recently, in March 2017, the TAS (Court of Arbitration for Sport) based in Lausanne issued a very important ruling on the subject of TPO. The CAS rejected the appeal of the Belgian football club FC Seraing recognizing the legitimacy of the prohibition on Third-party ownership (TPO) provided by FIFA in the Regulations on the Status and Transfers of Players, as this prohibition is perfectly compatible with the rules Community in the field of competition. Previously with regard to the specific case, in September 2015, the FIFA Disciplinary Commission had condemned the Belgian second division club FC Seraing with the blockade of the market and a fine of 150 thousand Swiss francs for violating the Regulations on Status and Transfers of the Players on the prohibition of TPO.
The Belgian club for FIFA would have transferred part of the economic rights of several players to a third party, having signed contracts that allowed it to influence the decisions and independence of the club in matters of transfers. The decision of the FIFA Disciplinary Commission was confirmed later in 2016 by the Court of Appeal, rejecting the reasons presented on appeal by the Belgian club. The issue of the TPO was also the subject of debate in the European Parliament. On November 11, 2015, the European Parliament presented a ‘Written declaration, submitted pursuant to article 136 of the regulation, on the prohibition of the ownership of third parties on the cards of players in European sport’ with which it strongly condemns the ownership by third party investors of a sports card. The reasons for this Declaration are manifold in nature. The Declaration notes, first of all, that this type of agreement represents a practice contrary to one of the cardinal principles of the European Union, namely respect for human dignity (Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union): in the specific case The European Union aims to effectively address human trafficking and also to guarantee the integrity of professional sportspeople. Secondly, this type of contract represents a strong limitation for professional athletes, some of them very young, who cannot freely choose their professional career as their card is owned by third party/private investors. Finally, the European Union affirms that Third-party ownerships represent a real danger to the validity of sports competitions. These practices are often not very transparent and are fertile ground for criminal activities of various kinds, from the manipulation of sports scores to money laundering. The debate on Third-party ownership still appears to be extremely important and topical given that this type of mechanism is still widespread in South America where European football clubs are looking for new talent and new business.”
6 Bribery Act 2010 s.1.
7 Bowstead, B., and F.M.B. Reynolds. 2010. Bowstead & Reynolds on Agency, 19th ed, UK, Sweet and Maxwell.
8 FIFA Director of legal Affairs Marco Villiger “FIFA actss to protect core values” fifa.com, July 15, 2009.
9 The GEA World Agency was founded by Alessandro Moggi son of the then Juventus manager Luciano Moggi, at the center of the Juventus corruption scandal in 2006. This clear connection between father and son signaled to Italian football the clear existence of a serious situation of conflicts of interest within the Italian transfer market system.
10 Cfr. Antitrust definition (AGCM), Treccani: “Antitrust (Competition and Market Authority, AGCM) Public institution responsible for the protection of competition in the Italian national law. Created by the l. 287/1990 (Rules for the protection of competition and the market), of explicit EU inspiration, has the function of guaranteeing the correct functioning of the market so that economic operators are allowed to access it freely and compete with equal opportunities. Underlying the discipline that the authority is delegated to apply is the idea that, in a free market system, free competition (value directly attributable to articles 41 and 117 of the Constitution): promotes innovation, cost reduction and the qualitative improvement of products; favors the differentiation of products, enriching the alternatives available to consumers; urges inefficient companies to innovate, under penalty of exclusion from the market; prevents an excessive concentration of economic power, setting the conditions for access and affirmation of the most deserving operators. In this way, the efficiency of the economic system and the well-being of consumers are guaranteed.”
11 The Lay Beckham: “from” Fisco e Tasse 2017. The “Beckham” law is a Spanish tax law that was approved in 2005 (Real Decree 687/2005). The law owes its nickname to the football player David Beckham, one of the first foreigners to take advantage of the possibilities offered by the aforementioned. The Decree, subsequently repealed with an amendment starting in January 2010, provided for a tax rate of 24 percent (24.75% from January 2012) for foreign workers residing in Spain for a well-defined period of time. It was reintroduced by the Rajoy government, but with an important difference: the decree is now applicable exclusively to those who earn less than 600,000.00 Euros. In 2005, the main beneficiaries were precisely those who declared revenues far exceeding €600,000.00 per year. The Spanish tax reform (Ley 26/2014 of November 27) has profoundly changed the special regime for “neo” residents in Spain (or “Impatriados”), provided for in Art. 93 of Law 35/2006. The decree now expressly excludes professional footballers from its scope. Previously, any foreign worker who had been present in the country for more than 183 days in a tax year was considered resident from a tax point of view, which meant being subject to the payment of Spanish taxes on income earned in both Spain and abroad. With the introduction of the Beckham Law, an expatriate worker can apply to be taxed as a non-resident under the Spanish rules relating to income taxes for non-residents: this means that the aforementioned worker will only be taxed on income produced in Spain and not on income generated abroad. If the expatriate can take advantage of the above regime, he will be subject to a fixed tax of 24 percent (Fiscal years 2015 and 2016), rather than subject to the progressive tax rates applicable to Spanish residents. If taxed as a resident, the expatriate would be subject to Spanish income tax which is usually levied at source at a rate ranging from 24 to 45 percent. The exemption applies in the year of arrival of the expatriate and the following five tax years, for a total of six years.
12 Ley Concursal(or Bankruptcy law): “The insolvency law is the name used to designate the set of substantive and procedural rules governing the insolvency procedures of all types of debtors (natural or legal persons).”
13 For the Regulation: “https://fff.fr/la-fff/agents-sportifsfff/agents-autres”
14 Code du sport, FFF, 2000, Article R131-18: “La durée des missions de conseillers techniques sportifs ne peut excéder quatre ans. Ces missions sont renouvelables. Le ministre chargé des sports peut mettre fin à ces missions avant le terme fixé, de sa propre initiative ou, le cas échéant, à la demande de l’agent ou du président de la fédération, sous réserve du respect d’un préavis prévu dans la convention-cadre mentionnée à R. 131-23. Toutefois, en cas d’urgence, il peut être mis fin sans préavis à ces missions.”
15 The National Union of Professional Footballers or UNFP is a union formed on November 16, 1961 by two footballers, Eugène N’Jo Léa (then a young law graduate), Just Fontaine, and a lawyer, Maître Jacques Bertrand. It is the main union of French professional footballers. Its current president is Philippe Piat. He shares the presidency with Sylvain Kastendeuch.
16 The Union of Professional Football Clubs (UCPF) is a union of the presidents of professional football clubs. The UCPF was created on February 28, 1990 as an association law of 1901 under the name of Union of Professional Football Clubs.
17 SNAS is an acronym that stands for the French “National Union of Sports Agents.”
18 International Center for Sports Studies: “has its registered office in Neuchatel, Switzerland, and is an institution that conducts research mainly on the cost of international transfers in the football field. Born from a joint venture between FIFA, the city of Neuchatel and its university.”
19 The American Civil War, known in the United States as the “American Civil War,” was fought from April 12, 1861 to April 9, 1865 between the United States of America and the Confederate States of America.
20 Zeiler. T.W. 2007. “Basepaths to Empire: Race and the Spalding World Baseball Tour.” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 6, no. 2, pp. 179–207.
21 Cfr. Masteralexis, L.P., C.A. Barr, and M.A. Hums, III ed. 2009. Principles and Practice of Sport Management. Jones and Bartlett Publishers.
22 Cfr. Whal, D.N., and M.P. Lanfranchi. 1995. Les footballeurs professionnels:Des années trente à nos jours. Ed. La vie quotidienne actuelles.
23 Cfr. “have to dance” by Ottavia Casagrande, Raimonda Lanza di Trabia, Ed. La Feltrinelli 2017: “He has a unique way of conducting his negotiations: Immersed in the bathtub of a suite of the Hotel Gallia in Milan, with a jug of coffee on one side and an immense crème caramel on the other, he received the presidents of the other teams, negotiated, gave in, exchanged. He thus ‘invented’ the transfer market.”