Agents – A Right of Reply

Agents have a bit of a bad reputation in football. I thought it was about time to give them a right of reply to the notion that they are all the same. All I needed was to find to an agent who would be willing to talk about their role and who appeared to be one of the good guys.

I was scrolling through stories on Instagram when a signing announcement picture popped up. It was a typical new signing, ‘holding up a shirt’ image. That isn’t unusual considering how many football people I follow. One thing that stood out was that it wasn’t one of the many players or clubs that I follow who posted the signing news. It was in fact actor Ray Winstone. As it turns out, Ray is the co-founder of the agency Integral Sports Management along with business partner Gary Pettit.

Massive stigma

When I asked to speak with Gary for this article, it didn’t take long for me to realise that he wasn’t in-keeping with the reputation of ‘dodgy’ agents.

“My model at this agency is young players. I set it up with Ray Winstone three or four years ago. It was always the idea to nurture and bring through young talent. I’ve always done that in my career. My background is in the city. I’m a CEO of a broking company whilst running this business. Agents have a massive stigma around them. A lot of the time they have brought that on themselves. An agent’s job is to be an extension of the player and an extension of the parents. The idea is to allow the player to concentrate on their football.

Where the bad name has come in is that there are a lot of these agents who only appear at deal time. It’s not everyone but there are some who will only turn up for the deal. I’ll give you a classic example. I know of a young keeper; I won’t name his club. The agent did a three-year deal for him there and to this day, the player hasn’t seen the agent again. He just did the deal, got paid and that was it. That right there is where the stigma comes from.

I’ve read over the summer about two or three big deals that haven’t gone through because the agents weren’t getting paid enough, which I find incredible. There have been multiple times that I’ve actually sacrificed fees to get my player a move. It’s been for the greater good of the player.”

Making a difference

A broker and an actor seem an unlikely pairing to run a sports agency, so I was keen to know how the business began.

“I used to have a box next to Ray at West Ham years ago at the old Boleyn ground. I became good friends with him. We started this together because he came to watch my boy, who was in the West Ham academy at the time. We watched games together and we saw agents and how they operated. I thought we could make a difference. I wanted to see if and how we could do things differently. We looked on from afar at the industry and we thought we could have a go at taking young boys and girls through. If not, could we help them get out of the game and into something else. The idea was to make a difference in what was a bit of a shark infested pool.”

Working with the family

One thing that comes across when talking to Gary is the emphasis that he puts on looking after players off the pitch. He talks about dealing with a player’s family and not just the individual. He has also found some parents that were not necessarily looking out for the best interests of their child.

“I like to make the analogy that we are the extension of the player’s family. That is purely and simply working very closely with the family. We’ve had a broad spectrum of parents in terms of their involvement, some of them don’t even want to know. The common denominator is the player. We’ve come up against parents who have got their hand out asking for part of the fees that we might get. It’s terrible but it goes on and I just won’t do anything like that. We’ve actually walked away from a few deals where a player’s dad has asked for a bag of cash. We just said, ‘if that’s how you want to be then, see you later.’

When we go and pitch to the parents of a player, Ray comes into the pitch with us. We have Mark Arber who is our Head of Football and Freya Clothier as Head of Women’s Football, me and Ray. We pitch to the parents and see how things go from there.”

Brown paper bags

The notion that brown paper bags full of money get passed around may be something of a joke aimed at agents. In reality, there is some truth to the idea that back-handed deals go on.

“I’m a heavily regulated person in my industry in the City of London. If I were to suddenly get investigated for a bag of money being involved in a deal, then I would lose all my licences. That’s where the agent world can get murky, but I can’t and won’t have anything to do with it. The profession is getting a lot tighter in terms of regulations, but that sort of stuff still goes on.

Listen, I’m not running a charity. Let’s be clear about that. But at the same time, I don’t want to be taking money off young boys and girls. Usually, the first deal they make with us, we don’t take anything from the deal. If they are happy with us, they’ll usually sign again. We’re entitled to take a percentage of the player’s salary. That is usually paid by the club rather than the player. We are also able to take a percentage of any commercials that we bring to the player like a boot deal or modelling job. We’ll negotiate those deals too and usually it’s five percent of the salary and twenty percent of commercial deals that we get. We don’t usually take anything on the first deal that we do with a player.”

650 League appearances

Neither Gary nor Ray has a background in football agency work, but they put people in place to ensure they have that covered.

“Mark Arber who runs my football side has over six hundred and fifty league appearances. He played at Spurs and Barnet. There is no real difference in what we do and what I’ve been doing in the brokering business for thirty years. We’re creating deals and getting commissions on deals. Where I’m dealing with banks in one space, I’m dealing with football clubs in the other.

We act on behalf of clubs now as well. We’ve got three girls at Newcastle Women now. They’ve came up the leagues recently and we we’re one of the only agencies that helped them out in the early days. Now they are able to spend a bit more everyone wants a bit, but they’ve worked with us from the start. We’ve got a few players in there over the years.

On the women’s side we’ve done some work with Nottingham Forest and Newcastle, they are massive clubs. They are spending proper money in the women’s game now. The money they get won’t be on parity with the men in the next three years, but they will definitely be getting more than they do now. Freya Clothier is my head of women’s football. She fits in great with what we try to do, and she is always out and about visiting her players.”

The women’s game

I wanted to talk to Freya too. The women’s game has moved on greatly in the past few years, particularly in England after their Euros victory in 2022. The financial deals and professional contracts are a relatively new concept to many in the women’s game. The need for an agent is probably even greater to ensure players are properly advised. That’s where Freya comes in.

“I was at Bristol City doing media work and Gary came to me and asked if I would take on the role full-time. I’d never been an agent, but I got on with a lot of the players. I asked them about what their experiences of agents were, the good and the bad. Some hadn’t heard from their agent since they signed their contract. The agent hadn’t ever been to any of their games. I’m a people person so that aspect really attracted me.

I’ve had to learn a lot on the job but at the same time a lot of it is common sense. You need to pick up contacts in order to move players and pick up players. I had a few friends in the game and players I knew at Bristol that were looking for an agent. The one thing that the players I had spoken to wanted was trust. That helped me as I knew a lot of them from Bristol City and they knew they could trust me. That in turn has helped me get more clients through word of mouth. I’ve been doing this for a few years now and I think after a couple of transfer windows I have a good understanding of it all. Saying that, I feel like you still learn every day in this industry.”

Infectious personality

Clothier has an infectious personality, and you can tell that she loves her job. At the heart of our conversation about players it was clear that looking after the person rather than the player was important to Freya.

“If I see a player or someone gives me a name, then I’ll go and watch them play. I’ll ask around about them and look for someone who has coached them or played with them to get a feel for what they’re like. The mantra that we try to work to is that it doesn’t matter if your player goes on to play for at the very top or if they never get far in the game. They know that we’ll be with them for their career. I’ve got twelve clients now. All twelve have become good friends and I’d like to keep that closeness so I wouldn’t want too thirty plus clients all on my own.

It’s different at different ages. I’m not going to text or chat to a 35-year-old in the same way I would a nineteen-year-old. I believe it’s important to get to my clients’ games and I’ll be sitting with my clients’ parents watching the match. We like to say that we sign the family rather than the player and when I’m at the games it’s the parents I’m spending time with as the player is on the pitch.”

The ‘good guys’

It was good to dispel some of the stigma around agents, despite the reality that some if it is there for a reason. I’m certain that Gary and Freya aren’t the only ‘good guys’ in the industry, but they certainly set a good example. The final word should perhaps go to ISM’s co-founder Ray Winstone from his introduction to the company on their website. https://www.integralsportsmanagement.co.uk/

“We’re not saying we’re going to change the world overnight. But if you can help twenty or thirty kids to realise their dream, what a fantastic thing to do”.