If you wonder where all the money earned by the Barclays Premier League goes, quite a lot ends up in the pockets of agents. They paid a total of £77m to them in the year ending September 2012, a rise of £5.1m or 7 per cent compared with the preceding year.
Manchester City lead the way for the second successive year having paid just over £10.5m to agents. Liverpool are second with £8.6m followed by Queens Park Rangers, Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea. Did QPR get value for their outlay of £6.8m which represented a trebling of the amount they spent last year?
If you wonder where all the money earned by the Barclays Premier League goes, quite a lot ends up in the pockets of agents. They paid a total of £77m to them in the year ending September 2012, a rise of £5.1m or 7 per cent compared with the preceding year.
Manchester City lead the way for the second successive year having paid just over £10.5m to agents. Liverpool are second with £8.6m followed by Queens Park Rangers, Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea. Did QPR get value for their outlay of £6.8m which represented a trebling of the amount they spent last year?
Newly promoted Southampton spent less with just under £650k paid out. West Bromwich Albion, Swansea City, Norwich City, Stoke City and Wigan Athletic were able to keep their payments to agents below £2m. At West Brom and Swansea there has been a deliberate policy to limit spending on agents’ fees. It does not seem to have hurt them too much this season so far.
Fulham’s spending trebled, admittedly from a low base, to £2.6m. In contrast Newcastle United and Sunderland managed to cut their payments by between 40 and 50 per cent.
Of course, intermediaries in any market are never popular (think estate agents) but they do perform a necessary function in making the market work. However, at least with estate agents you can shop around, whereas with football agents if one is representing a player you want you are forced to deal with him.