payments to agents

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Figures have been published regarding payments to agents for the period 1st October 2008 to 30th September 2009.



The figures published below are inclusive of:

• Fees paid to agents by Clubs in respect of acquiring and/or renegotiating Player Registrations.

• Fees paid to agents by Clubs on behalf of players in respect of acquiring and/or renegotiating Player Registrations.

• Fees paid to agents during the defined period relating to previous transaction costs (i.e. Player Registrations prior to 1st October 2008) that have been amortised over the length of a Player Contract.

• Fees paid to agents by Clubs to facilitate the outward transfer of Player Registrations.

Player Registrations (transactions) include:

• Domestic permanent transfers.
• International permanent transfers.
• Domestic temporary transfers (loans).
• International temporary transfers (loans).
• Extension of existing Player Contracts.
• First professional registration.
• Free transfers.

Premier League

Arsenal £4,760,241
Aston Villa £1,708,374
Birmingham City £974,982
Blackburn Rovers £1,610,885
Bolton Wanderers £3,166,611
Burnley £468,398
Chelsea £9,562,223
Everton £2,008,407
Fulham £1,469,258
Hull City £1,599,188
Liverpool £6,657,305
Manchester City £12,874,283
Manchester United £1,517,393
Portsmouth £3,184,725
Stoke City £716,042
Sunderland £2,007,040
Tottenham Hotspur £6,066,935
Wigan Athletic £5,527,548
West Ham United £3,576,972
Wolverhampton Wanderers £1,235,703



Total (across 803 transactions)




£70,692,513

http://www.premierleague.com/page/Headlines/0,,12306~1891147,00.html

some interesting stuff their

JPA

Interesting alright, some surprising, some not.
Man Uniteds is very low, (Probably why you were the one to post this!), I thought the agent(s) in the Cristiano Ronaldo deal would have made a bucket load.

Wigans is surprisingly high, Man Citys unsurprisingly high.

secman

Clubs should NOT make payments to agents, if a palyer insists on having an Agent, its his overhead and not the Club. Only players should pay Player's agents. Simple, sooner the better clubs get this crap in order.

Fools and their money easily parted.................. Man City
Secman

daithijjj

JPA wrote: »

Interesting alright, some surprising, some not.
Man Uniteds is very low, (Probably why you were the one to post this!), I thought the agent(s) in the Cristiano Ronaldo deal would have made a bucket load.

Wigans is surprisingly high, Man Citys unsurprisingly high.

Why would united pay fees to ronaldo's agent for a transfer to madrid?, i think you are mixed up a little bit there.

Edit,--- id say robbie keanes agent had a nice year.

Sheepy99

manchested united surprisingly low.

JPA

daithijjj wrote: »

Why would united pay fees to ronaldo's agent for a transfer to madrid?, i think you are mixed up a little bit there.

Edit,--- id say robbie keanes agent had a nice year.

Agent fess are screwed up. They aren't paid exclusively by the buying club.

daithijjj

JPA wrote: »

Agent fess are screwed up. They aren't paid exclusively by the buying club.

Id be interested to know how these agents pay taxes on one transaction with two clubs, of different countries, in different monetary denominations. Must be fairly intricate.

MementoMori

daithijjj wrote: »

Id be interested to know how these agents pay taxes on one transaction with two clubs, of different countries, in different monetary denominations. Must be fairly intricate.

Probably not all that complex - depends on where they are based/domiciled.
After that similar to any business trading abroad.

Given the avarage payment is £880,355.07 (£706,925,12/803 transactions), it does seem to be pretty well paid work. The phrase money for old rope springs to mind, expecially when you are considering that they probably get another wodge of cash from the players as well. :eek:

Sure the agents would be to easily afford an accountant.

Vurnon San Benito

City's are way above the rest.
Newcastle's was over the one million mark as well, was wondering why they were publishing them..

Mitch Connor

MementoMori wrote: »

Probably not all that complex - depends on where they are based/domiciled.
After that similar to any business trading abroad.

Given the avarage payment is £880,355.07 (£706,925,12/803 transactions), it does seem to be pretty well paid work. The phrase money for old rope springs to mind, expecially when you are considering that they probably get another wodge of cash from the players as well. :eek:

Sure the agents would be to easily afford an accountant.

you've added an extra zero. right maths is 88k, not 880k.

matrim

It would probably make more sense to view this with not just the agent fees, but also the amount of money spent on players by each club during the time.

jesus_thats_gre

Looks like United are going for value for money in the agent market too...

Fenix

jesus_thats_gre wrote: »

Looks like United are going for value for money in the agent market too...

Looks like liverpool are ****ed.

RasTa

Fenix wrote: »

Looks like liverpool are ****ed.

Those figures are wrong, they don't count the agents fees from the players who left.

CantGetNoSleep

Is there any agent school around? Think i'm off there soon...seriously how would you become one?

I think I remember during the whole Ashley Cole nearly crashing his car (if only) was due to Arsenal not giving him an extra £5,000 a week which was for his agent Jonathan Barnett's wages - he could easily have 10 clients - and then the extras each time he negotiates a transfer / new contract etc

MementoMori

Mitch Connor wrote: »

you've added an extra zero. right maths is 88k, not 880k.

Maths fail by me. I thought the figure seemed ridiculously high (even for agent fees) but didn't check. Oops:o

matrim wrote: »

It would probably make more sense to view this with not just the agent fees, but also the amount of money spent on players by each club during the time.

Probably the best way to look at it, would be the number of agent transactions, in the period mentioned. As an aside, anyone find it kinda odd the time period covered.

CantGetNoSleep wrote: »

Is there any agent school around? Think i'm off there soon...seriously how would you become one?

If you do come accross this, let me know. Fingers crossed the maths entrance section aint too tough.

MementoMori

Two different articles from the Guardian on agent's fees.

I think it would be a good idea if details of all the individual transactions were published (like Utd were doing). By shining a light on these transactions it would give clubs more of an incentive not to use agents.

As to the claim that agents add value to the game, I don't really buy that at all.

Impoverished grass-roots facilities pay the price for agents' riches
The £70m that Premier League clubs paid to middle men for player deals is a gross measure of football's loss

As the aftershock settled on Monday night's revelation that England's 20 Premier League clubs had paid £70.7m in fees to agents this year, thoughts flooded in of other areas which could benefit enormously from so generous a slug of football's wealth. This is a league shimmering with riches, laying justifiable claim to be the world's most watched, yet in the neighbourhoods around most clubs' grounds are patches of playing fields, many without changing rooms or drainage, which would be transformed by a drop of that agents' bounty.

The Premier League agreed with the government in 1999 to share a fraction of its television windfalls with the impoverished grassroots and, together with the FA and government, currently pays £15m to the Football Foundation for investment in the facilities on which millions of enthusiasts are expected to play the game. That, then, is £55m less for the grassroots nationwide, than the £70.7m paid to a small clutch of individual agents.

Financial difficulties at the FA following the collapse of Setanta have meant the governing body has been forced to defer £3m of its payment to the foundation this year; the Premier League has refused the FA £5m towards the bid to bring the 2018 World Cup to England; all clubs have a duty to make ends meet but the £70.7m does show the £308,000 tax bill which almost sent Accrington Stanley out of existence earlier this month in stark relief. The volunteers mostly running clubs at non-league level fret about the cost of turning floodlights on during these leafless months or replacing balls booted out of sight. The list is truly endless.

Malcolm Clarke, the chairman of the Football Supporters' Federation, reacted to this first publication of the Premier League's payments to agents by saying there were "dozens of areas any fan could think of" where the money could have been better spent.

"Just think what fans have to pay in high ticket prices to watch matches," he said. "It is mystifying that so much of supporters' money is paid out to agents. It is not clear to fans what work agents actually do or why they have to be paid such high fees in commission."

The Premier League's list and club-by-club breakdown was revelatory, although not accompanied by much in the way of explanation, but Mel Stein, of the Association of Football Agents, presented his own.

"I don't think these figures are unreasonable," he said. "Think of the value agents bring to clubs. There are people in football, such as at the leagues, who do not earn much and they are jealous of agents earning a decent living."

Jerome Anderson, a leading players' agent for almost 30 years since he first represented a 21-year-old Charlie Nicholas and a 15-year-old David Rocastle at Arsenal in the early 1980s, mounted a spirited defence of his profession. He argued that football today is a complicated global industry, in which the Premier League clubs collectively earn billions, and agents help deliver the players whose popularity fuels the league's attraction.

"Clubs pay agents freely because we have the experience and knowledge to identify players, or conclude deals," Anderson said. "It's easy to look at these figures and think they're excessive but people should appreciate the expertise, genuinely, which goes into the work."

That would be easier to do if clubs and agents were more open about the deals done and for what the money was paid. Agents' work is still generally shrouded in darkness – or commercial confidentiality – which in recent years has been opened to only chinks of light. For a brief period following the exposé that Sir Alex Ferguson's son, Jason, worked as an agent on several United deals, the club published all payments it made to agents, deal by deal. That produced precious insights, including the £500,000 paid to the agent Pini Zahavi to coax Fulham's chairman Mohamed Al Fayed into considering selling Louis Saha to United for £12.8m in January 2004. Ruud van Nistelrooy's agent, Rodger Lindse, was paid £1.339m for renegotiating the Dutch striker's contract in 2004, and £1.5m was payable to Paul Stretford's Proactive agency for working on Wayne Rooney's move from Everton to United for £20m in August the same year.

However, after a few years of being the only ones practising such openness United, under the new ownership of the Florida-based Glazer family, stopped doing so. Since then we have made do with the odd scrap where a club or agent has confirmed a payment or a case has reached the spotlight of the courts. In 2005 we learned that £3m was the maximum potentially payable to Zahavi when Yakubu Ayegbeni moved to Middlesbrough, and Zahavi was also paid £900,000 by Chelsea this January when Wayne Bridge moved to Manchester City – one of the deals covered by the figures released this week.

As for what agents do for this money, the Premier League made it clear that they no longer act solely as the advisers to players. The £70.7m was earned in a number of ways, including being employed by clubs directly, to help sign a player, or assist in selling one. Agents were also paid for representing players when signing with a club or renegotiating an existing deal.

Both Stein and Anderson confirmed that agents are generally paid 5% of the value of deals, either of a transfer fee when acting for a club or of the overall sum of a player's pay during the course of a contract where an agent represented the player. Some critics argue that, like other professionals, agents should be paid a fee according to the time taken to do the work – stories of agents making a few phone calls for a £1m fee make the eyes water. Anderson, though, argued that clubs are willing payers of a system which has helped to transform the Premier League into the spectacle it is.

Long-held suspicions that some of the fortune paid to agents finds its way back to managers or club officials in "bungs" was given credibility by the proven case of George Graham. As Arsenal's manager he received £285,000 from the agent Rune Hauge after signing the midfielder John Jensen as long ago as 1992. Since then the Premier League has held its inquiry by Quest and the City of London police marched into an investigation of football "corruption" but no "bungs" have been found. Up to 30 cases have been referred to Fifa by the FA for sundry alleged irregularities in the past two years but, to the FA's intense frustration, nothing has yet been concluded on any of them.

The FA, which pushed for the Premier League to publish agents' fees, hopes that exposure may lead to reform, to the extraordinary £70.7m reducing over time, as the Football League's total has since its clubs began publishing their total payments in 2004-05.

Many questions remain about which agents are paid how much, by whom, for doing what, and where the money goes, but the sum of public knowledge did take a welcome, £70.7m step forward this week.

Five big agencies: Who advises whom in the Premier League
Stellar Group

Leading clients
Peter Crouch, Ashley Cole, Ledley King, Kolo Touré, Carlton Cole Agent: Jonathan Barnett

Background
Jonathan Barnett, Stellar's chairman, is a cricket rather than football fan. He set up Stellar in 1994 after Brian Lara, one of his clients, introduced him to
a property developer called David Manasseh. The late Les Sealey was its first football client and over the past decade the business has snowballed, with Stellar having offices in Africa and South America and a client base of more than 500 sportsmen and women

Base Soccer

Leading clients
Aaron Ramsey Agent: David Baldwin
Tom Huddlestone Gary Porter
Aaron Lennon Leon Angel
Gilberto Silva Frank Trimboli
Arsène Wenger Leon Angel

Background
Established in 1997 and run by Leon Angel, who is also a chartered accountant, Base Soccer has continued to grow and now represents more than 100 players, both at home and overseas, and also works on behalf of managers and clubs

Wasserman Media Group

Leading clients
Jamie Carragher, Robbie Keane &
Steven Gerrard Agent: Struan Marshall
Michael Owen Rhodri Burgess
Joleon Lescott Simon Bayliff

Background
WMG acquired SFX and its enviable list of football clients in 2006, with the US Sports marketing giant going on to play an influential role in many of the deals involving leading Premier League players, including Joleon Lescott's move to Manchester City and Michael Owen's transfer to Manchester United in the summer

First Artist

Leading clients
Andrey Arshavin, Marco Materazzi, Pedro Mendes
& Harry Redknapp Agent: Phil Smith

Background
Jon Smith set up First Artist in 1986 and now runs the company alongside his brother, Phil. It also has interests in media, events and entertainment management. First Artist represents Arsenal's Russia forward Andrey Arshavin and the Tottenham Hotspur manager, Harry Redknapp. It was involved in the summer transfers of Emmanuel Adebayor, Niko Kranjcar and Sébastien Bassong among others

SEM

Leading clients
Eduardo da Silva & Kieran Gibbs Agent: Jerome Anderson

Background
Jerome Anderson formed Sport Entertainment and Media Group (SEM) in 1984, when he began representing Charlie Nicholas. Anderson has been well connected at Arsenal ever since and in the past he looked after the interests of Thierry Henry. SEM also works for clubs and Anderson was a key figure during Manchester City's spending spree under their former manager Sven-Goran Eriksson

Agents are useful scapegoats for the public's double standards
There are worse excesses in other entertainment industries than the £70.7m paid to football's middle men

Like putting in a good word for swine flu or banging on about the relaxing effects of smoking, the spirited defence of the football agent is not a good idea at any time but it is an especially bad idea at this time, in the week it was revealed Premier League clubs had handed over £70.7m to middle men. Or, as most people would rather have it, parasitical hucksters.

The outcry has been predictable and, in some ways, justified. Seventy million is a lot of money, even by the standards of the Premier League. It might even buy you the services of Wayne Rooney (although another lump of cash will be needed to pay the player's wages). It could definitely be used for a range of purposes we would all place higher on our Christmas wish list than a new BMW for some under-educated, shifty conman – a Football Association that actually functions properly; better facilities for junior football; reduced ticket prices; cheaper visits to the club shop. Who does not want to pay less for a replica Chelsea or Manchester United shirt?

The answer, of course, is everyone does. The reality, however, is that, if every agent in the country was rounded up today and put on a boat to Bolivia, we would all still be paying a ridiculous amount for a football shirt and the FA would still be a shambling bureaucracy.

That is because the finances of football are not a zero-sum game. The £70.7m paid to agents is not money that is "lost" to football's better causes because football's better causes never had the money in the first place and never would have. To argue otherwise is understandable – nothing feels better than giving football agents a rhetorical kicking – but it is also naive or, less kindly, misleading.

Even worse, it is ignoring football history and the reason agents exist in the first place. Footballers, faced with greedy club owners who had little respect for their intellect and talent, had no other option but to take hired help with them when they went to the negotiating table. The alternative was not penury (not after the pioneering efforts of Jimmy Hill) but it was almost certainly being denied your true worth.

The arrival of the Premier League, and the flood of money that came with it, added more zeroes to the figures and spawned more football agents, some of them reputable, some of them useless and some of them downright crooked. Has there been excess? Has the balance tipped too far in favour of the players?

Well, it is hard to look at Wayne Bridge's £4m-a-year salary (and the £900,000 Chelsea paid to the agent Pini Zahavi to "finalise" the sale of the player to Manchester City) and not feel queasy. But one could say the same of every entertainment industry. The music business is populated with wealthy mediocrities and multi-millionaires who have been compensated way beyond their talents. Yet the next opinion piece I read criticising Cheryl Cole's risible contribution to the canon of popular music will be the first. Ashley Cole, meanwhile, could wallpaper his mansion with newspaper columns calling him low-life scum.

Likewise Simon Cowell's tentacles stretch across the music industry in ways that Zahavi can only dream about. The X Factor producer and judge runs his own record company which, coincidentally, signs lots of acts that appear on the X Factor. He profits at both ends. There is nothing inherently wrong in that but you have to wonder about the concentration of so much power in the hands of one man and the long-term effect that has on the British music industry. Alas, no one does wonder, at least not from what I have read.

What has any of this got to do with football? Nothing, except to point out the double standards that apply when it comes to judging the behaviour of football agents and, by extension, their clients.

The current system is not perfect – more transparency would be one obvious improvement – but do we really think football's biggest problem is that the likes of Bridge and Zahavi get paid too much for their services? Anyone who cares to spend an hour or two reading up on the finances of Fifa or revisiting last week's criminally under-reported revelations about the extent of match-fixing in European football must surely know the answer to that one.