FIFA Football Agent Review! My thoughts on the new regulations...

Hey everyone!

I hope you’ve all enjoyed your week, and are looking forward to a fantastic weekend! For those that have been following our Reapers basketball team, the season has now ended with the Young Goatz being crowned as Champions! We extend our congratulations to them, and are looking forward to running it back in the next season!

This week I am going to talk about the new Football Agent Regulations that have just recently been announced by FIFA, with the main objective of these new regulations being to improve the transparency and accountability of the football agent industry. These new regulations were announced by FIFA during the 2022 World Cup, and since then have come under a fair bit of scrutiny from agents and agent organizations around the world.

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So in a nutshell…

FIFA got rid of the agent exam in 2015 and the term ‘agent’, and bestowed the regulation of ‘football intermediaries’ onto the national football associations of each FIFA member country. To work as an intermediary, you would have to register with each member association country you wanted to do business in. I stuck with England given that it was the market I was most familiar with and Bermudians are British citizens so it made it easy for players to travel to trials and play/live in the country.

I won’t go through each and every new alteration to the regulations, but in a nutshell FIFA will now be regulating football agents again and overseeing this area of football going forward. Existing intermediaries and anyone aspiring to become a football agent must obtain a license from FIFA which will be done via an online exam. Agents who have previously passed the exam before the 2015 cut off is able to qualify as a ‘legacy agent’ and will not have to sit the exam. Additionally, all agents/agencies must complete a mandatory amount of CPD hours and also pay an annual fee to FIFA to maintain their license.

With the new regulations coming into effect on October 1st, 2023, all current intermediaries will have needed to pass the exam before then in order to maintain their clients - or risk their representation contracts becoming null and void. This has quite obviously caused some concern among existing small to mid-sized agencies, who fear losing their clients to larger established agencies should they not pass their exam between now and October. However, with two exam dates before the deadline (in April and September), therefore two opportunities to pass, that should be plenty of time for these individuals to pass and get their affairs in order.

What I don’t like…

I’m going to try to keep this brief, but my main issue with the implementation of the new regulations is the annual fee. Agencies are businesses, football is a business, whether we like it or not those are the facts. I agree that for filing and administrative purposes there needs to be some form of licensing fee that FIFA can charge agents to register, however the reported USD 600 fee seems a bit excessive. For context, to register as an intermediary with the England FA initially was GBP 600, and then GBP 250 to re-license every year after that. Now, given the exchange rate that seems a lot more doable and was what I was initially expecting. For a lot of smaller agencies, USD 600 could be a lot to pay each year, which could have a lasting financial impact on those businesses.

What I think works…

Without going on a tangent, I like the fact that FIFA has brough the exam back. I think this brings a bit more professionalism to the role, and even though it is an open-book online exam, you’ll still have to study to hit the 75% pass mark. I think the introduction of CPD is very important, and will ensure that agents are constantly up-to-date with best practices and industry intel. Contrary to many other agents, I actually agree with the commission cap, simply because it is common practice in professional American sports, and I don’t think an agent should be able to charge more than 10% commission to represent any athlete of any sport. Some will argue it goes against basic law in that you are restricting how much someone can make (I see the frustration there), but it is important to remember that the agent gets paid because the athlete gets paid, from the athlete’s contract.

I’ll be taking the exam on April 19th, 2023 at the Bermuda Football Association. I really just want to get it over with so I’m not stressing all the way through to September! But also taking it early will allow me to re-take it in September while acting as an intermediary, in the event I do fail on the first attempt - I won’t, but still good to have the option!

Thanks for reading this week, until next time!

Peace,

Jason