Football agents are beginning to find life harder. Loans are likely to predominate in the transfer window and for those agents that do broker deals fees may be heavily squeezed.
In the 2009-10 season the total outlay on agents’ fees in the Premier League was £67.1m, a drop of £3.6m compared with the 2008-9 season. There is considerable variation in the amounts that clubs spend on such fees. Chelsea and Liverpool each spent over £9m, but the amount spent by Manchester City fell from £12.9m the previous season to £5.9m.
Football agents are beginning to find life harder. Loans are likely to predominate in the transfer window and for those agents that do broker deals fees may be heavily squeezed.
In the 2009-10 season the total outlay on agents’ fees in the Premier League was £67.1m, a drop of £3.6m compared with the 2008-9 season. There is considerable variation in the amounts that clubs spend on such fees. Chelsea and Liverpool each spent over £9m, but the amount spent by Manchester City fell from £12.9m the previous season to £5.9m.
Just behind City came Spurs with spending of £5.3m and Sunderland with an outlay of £4.4m. At the other end of the scale was West Bromwich Albion with £614,000 and Blackpool (admittedly only in the Premier League for four months of the period) with £45,000.
Chelsea’s figure may seem high given that in the 2009-10 season they made only two big purchases and allowed several players to leave on free transfers. However, they reflect fees paid to agents, in some cases over a number of years, for renegotiating the contracts of John Terry, Ashley Cole, Didier Drogba and others.
However, the hard times for agents are relative. Just as you rarely see a poor bookmaker, the same applies to agents. Intermediaries in any market are never popular even if they facilitate its operations as buyers and sellers think they are getting something for nothing.