Basketball agency

A lot of times, especially in Eastern Europe players don’t understand what an agent or an agency is doing.

We will try to explain this!
 

An agent is a kind of lawyer with a license from FIBA, who negotiates and will make the contracts between the player and the club.

He also advices the player, how to plan his carrier and he will try to solve all the problems,
which the player might run into, during his contract period with the club.

He will give financial advices upon request as well.

Stories that the agent will sell players are nonsense!!!

Agents don’t own players at all.

A team, which is looking for a player is only interested in the player and does not care which agent he has.

Clubs don’t like agents most of the time!

Only clubs, which are genuine have no problems with an agent.

The club knows, that if an agent is involved they will deal with a professional.

All kind of tricks to cheat on the money of a player will become more difficult,
than when the club can deal with an inexperienced player directly.

Unfortunately, there are still a lot of countries where clubs try to cheat the players out of their money.

It will not be smart for us to mention these countries, because than we generalize too much.

And also genuine clubs in these countries will maybe not deal with us so easily any more.
With all clubs in these unreliable countries we will always ask to pay half the salary of the player before the player arrives in the country.
The other possibility is to get a bank guaranty for the total  salary.

One thing is very important to understand.

The agent is just an adviser and the player makes the final decision.

And not the other way around!!

There is however one strange rule in most of the European countries!

The fee, which will be paid to the agency or agent, which is normally ten percent of the fixed salary, has to be paid by the club.

And not by the client of the agency!!!!

This is different than in the USA in the NBA for example.

There the client is paying the fee, which is much lower than in Europe.

In Europe the agency has to split the fee most the time with an agent in the country where the club is residing.

These local agents know the law in their country much better than the outside agent of course.

Plus the local agent is always in the neighborhood of the player if there are problems to solve.

A lot of times the agency does not receive the fee for their work from the team.

Most teams pay the agent very late or not at all.

The agency can start a court case against the club, but these court cases can be for some years sometimes.

The agency can win the case, but the club is already out of money and there is nothing to gather any more.
The agency should use contract based on the FIBA rules.
If a team does not like to sign this contract with FIBA  rules, it means that you can expect problems

In Eastern Europe most of the clubs are not used to pay any fee and to start court cases in these corrupt countries is a waist of time.
So always sign a contract with the standard FIBA clauses in it and this court cases will be avoided.
With the FIBA rules the case will be solved in three weeks maximum.

For the player it is a must to have a professional, to represent her or him, otherwise it will cost the player a lot of money.