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Payments to agents hit record highs in men’s and women’s football
A thriving men’s transfer market has led to clubs spending a record $888m (£700m) on fees for intermediaries in 2023 while women’s football paid more than $1m in agents fees for the first time, to a total of just under $1.4m.
New statistics from Fifa report a 42.5% increase in the total fees paid this year, with the Premier League leading the way. The English top flight was responsible for more than a quarter of all spending on agents, at $280m. Saudi Arabia, which made headlines for its recruitment drive this past summer, spent $86m in fees, though the Saudi Pro League recruited agents only to help facilitate the purchase of players, rather than their sale.
Related: Women’s football must be wary of following men’s game into financial cesspit | Jonathan Liew
Fifa’s Football Agents in International Transfers Report identifies the fees spent and the total number of international transfers conducted over the calendar year. Their figures show that the number of deals involving an agent grew by 8.4% in 2023, corresponding to 15.4% of all transfers, another new record.
The figures come at the end of a year in which Fifa introduced new regulations for agents (FFAR), which required individuals to take examinations and log every transfer deal at an international clearing house.
FFAR also sought to impose new caps on the amounts of fees any agents could earn. But a series of legal cases have successfully challenged the caps, with an independent tribunal in England publishing its written reasons for overturning the new rule on Thursday.
The tribunal found that the introduction of a fee cap would go against competition law in England. It also noted that Fifa’s decision to introduce a cap had been motivated by concerns that the size of fees being paid to agents was too high, especially compared to the amount of money being used to sustain solidarity within the game.
After doubts were raised as to the legality of such a move, the tribunal reported, Fifa subsequently went on to argue for the cap as a means of preventing “market failure”, by “reducing the agents’ pecuniary incentive to stimulate transfer acivity”. The tribunal went on to rule, however, that it had “not been able to discern any justifiable connection between the fee cap and the claimed abuses and market failures”.
