The FA have released details of the fees paid by every club in England to agents and intermediaries for the year up to February 2023.
In total, Arsenal spent the fifth highest amount in the Premier League; £16.75 million in total, a figure that’s slightly down on 2022’s £18.65 million.
Arsenal were big spenders in both the summer and winter transfer windows recruiting Oleksandr Zinchenko, Gabriel Jesus, Fabio Vieira, Marquinhos, Matt Turner, Jorginho, Jakub Kiwior and Leandro Trossard.
In the same period, 37 players embarked on loan moves elsewhere while 12 left the club on a permanent basis.
In total, Premier League clubs parted with more than £318 million as they looked to recruit and sell players. That includes a whopping £51.5 million by Manchester City, the majority of which is thought to have lined the pockets of Erling Haaland’s representatives.
Last week, the BBC reported that financial experts have estimated Premier League clubs may have avoided paying £250m in tax over a three-year period.
It’s claimed that HMRC is investigating a number of clubs for use of so-called “dual representation contracts”, which sees an agent paid for acting for both the player and the club involved in the deal.
Arsenal intermediary fees since 2016
2016 – £3.13 million
2017 – £10.15 million
2018 – £10.56 million
2019 – £11.18 million
2020 – £13.55 million
2021 – £16.46 million
2022 – £18.65 million
2023 – £16.75 million
Frantically googling “how do I become a football agent?”
Broken sport in a broken world. Broken, as always, by billionaires.
Of course its repulsive but the only reason the premiere league is so good is because it has all the billionaires.
Seria A in the 90’s used to be where the money was and hence was the best in the world.
Crazy how much agents are paid, I’d ban them if I had the choice. They are negotiating for themselves as well as the players (who could pay their bills for their whole life on just a few years of playing), pushing the cost of football up for us, the fans.
A maximum wage for footballers is recommended, say £100k a week, thoughout the world. They will still do fantastically well for themselves, earning more in a year than most do in their lifetime.
I agree with you, I think it’s obscene. Sort of related to this, I just saw a sneak preview of the movie ‘Air,’ which details how Air Jordans came to be. The numbers and statistics they present at the end of the movie are truly disgusting, to me anyway.
Agreed, even with a minimum wage there will be other ways for players to get money.
if you want to have a league minimum wage that would require a players’ union with actual teeth, so perhaps advocating for that would be a better course of action.
Yes – you can only legally make 100k/week with your club, but do your endorsements on the side, that’s your business. Your top athletes would barely notice the difference they make so much money outside their clubs. I mean, 100k/week! And I don’t buy the “but they only have a small window to do this!” line of sympathy; so what? So they had a small window to get obscenely paid to play a game and be worshipped and lauded by millions of people. They’re incredibly fortunate to do it for a single year. I know they have to pay guys… Read more »
Soooo, let the chairman who has invested for profit, not charity, draw money out of the club, and re-circulate in Monaco, while lower tax revenue is generated over here for key workers.
Free market.
How much do you earn? It’s obscene by standards in other countries. What would you like your new salary cap to be?
There are other ‘well rewarded’ professionals that also have more of an influence on society, especially kids.
The problem is the number. If you told Saka he would play for a club that loved him and he loves and he would get £200k a week, he would take it.
If his agent tells him that he can get £300k and go to Chelsea and that is the best move for him (and the agent as he gets a big fee from it…) then you can start to see the problem. It’s all about the number, the money, rather than anything else.
Well, on the other hand, these players generate the cash the clubs make. Without them, some clubs would be skirting bankruptcy. It is only fair they are rewarded accordingly.
Exactly. I don’t want to see these grubby ‘owners’ take the profits earned by the players. Viewers pay , whether on TV or in person, to be entertained by footballers. Look at the kicking Saka gets. On agents, how many do you think actually make this sort of money? I doubt it’s more than 5% of them. The Haaland stories are gross but this isn’t the norm.
salary caps are foolish, as is a ban on players having representation.
agents are not driving the cost of players up, or their wages, whats doing it are cash rich clubs owned by nation states (and others cooking their books).
players are workers and entitled to wages for their work.
if you want to talk about bans, the ban should be on the private ownership of the clubs themselves, as thats the root cause of cost increases.
Fair points, but agents were fleecing clubs for tens of millions before nation states entered the game. They’ve always been sinister. There’s a reason they are always depicted as soulless creeps haha. This is just my opinion, but the “players are workers” theory is tricky. Nobody on the planet does 250k/week worth of “work.” Not in any industry. And in fact millions of people do a lot more “work” than any of these guys and are paid crumbs by comparison. To me, the idea that obscenely paid athletes are “workers” is hugely subjective – it feels insulting to people who… Read more »
If players want a Jorge Mendes, Kia and co. to represent them, they should pay for their services. Not the club
And entrepreneurs?
Bollocks.
In the “good old days” footballers were cruelly exploited by the clubs and had the piss taken out of them. There was a maximum (low) wage and, pre-Bosman, players couldn’t leave a club even after their contracts had expired: the clubs simply hung onto their registrations. Outrageous.
If I were a footballer I’d definitely want someone on my side who could get me the best deal possible. Remember: most players are not too well educated. Without agents the club CEOs would massively take advantage of them.
And football is a multi-billion pound sport: a few million quid is nothing.
With you all the way, Fats. 👍🍺🍺
Took an eternity to upvote this post Fats. Was beginning to wonder if your upvote button had simply stopped working from lack of use.
Absolutely fats. Putting this on the players is simply wrong. Sure many of them have become entitled shits. But it’s the owners and their greed and exploitation of everything that is the source. We live in the world that has seen high income tax bracket %s plummet since the 50s and now the elites pay less tax than the rest of us and corporate tax is basically zero, all in the name of trickle down economics, which is nothing but an empty publicity stunt to steal money from the public. Billionaire philanthropy is the biggest fraud in the world today.… Read more »
Has to be a cap on every other profession then.
And think about all the lost tax revenue. Nurses wages and ish.
We all don’t like these shysters taking money from our clubs but that’s the way it is, you would like all payments to said agents on the transfer price but it obviously doesn’t work that way, the £16 mil + will go up on nailing down Saka/Salibas contracts which without blaming those two important players to not sign their advice i expect is to lets wait to see if we win PL when there will be more on the table, business is business, i wouldn’t compare these two players with Ozil/Auba when after signing their lucrative contracts they’re form dipped… Read more »
We are the people that are paying for the agents. No agents means cheaper tickets etc. Having agents forces costs higher and higher.
Saving £17m on agents fees means free tickets for about 5 or more matches ie £50 times 60,000 fans is £3m. More than 5 matches if we only include Arsenal fans. So let’s ban them, for the fans.
You’d still have to pay stewards, police, and match day staff for these extra matches.
Also I don’t see anyone grumbling while queuing up to pay £8/9 for a shandy or north of £10 for a burger and chips.
Do you think clubs would give tickets away for free in that scenario, or charge the same and do something else with the £15m?
It’s just putting the numbers into context. Over a quarter of the 19 PL matches could be free without agents. I’m not saying they should be free, just trying to put the numbers paid to agents in context to show how much money agents are taking from us, the supporters.
Sorry, C.B., but your argument sounds a lot like “trickle down” economics, which has been demonstrated to be a massive load of bollocks.
Correct me if i’m wrong but when was the last time any premier league or first division club ever gave free tickes in such a big and regular basis?
Maybe read my comment ‘I’m not saying they should be free…’
I’m just trying to demonstrate the size of the agent’s fees we are paying each season in comparison to ticket prices. Something is badly wrong given the size of the fees, there has to be a better way.
I understand that but, not defending agents here, but their work is necessary and their fees only reflect how much money is being exchanged.
It happens in any and every single economic transaction, from supermarkets to state agents to head hunters, there is always a middle man (agent) taking their cut.
Das Kapital mein Fruend
oof, might want to lay off the slurs there
Too lazy to do it, but might be interesting to know how much different clubs pay to intermediaries per deal (who gets swindled the most).
That would be Chelsea 😂
remember, these are the *reported* figures so payments made off the books in less than normal circumstances aren’t included. i would argue that chelsea’s 25m payment (or whatever it was with mudryk) to the government of ukraine is an agent’s fee, as it was used to grease the wheels on a transfer (basically helping shaktar avoid taxes on the deal)
It wasn’t to the government, it was apparently to an independent charity that supports survivors from Mariupol and was clearly used to blackmail the player into signing for Chelsea. The owner of Shaktar was also pretty quick to say it was a personal donation and totally unrelated to the transfer, after people started raising questions. Hmmm. That whole deal stank, and I’m sure there were more “intermediary fees” involved too.
Fucking Inland Revenue; they’re almost as bad as the FA.
Nine times out of ten when they try and screw you for money you supposedly owe them, the employment of a half decent accountant usually renders the situation to be false – and more often than not, they end up actually owing YOU.
Fucking cowboys.
Why don’t clubs just say to players you want an agent that fine but it comes off your money. That’s what any normal person would have to do pay for a service.
That’s how it used to be in the U.K. but you’d need worldwide agreement and a lot of clubs are run by unscrupulous types who prefer things as they are.
Essentially, that’s what happens. The agent’s fee is taken into account by the buying club; Agents field the offers from however many clubs are interested, and they gin up interest when there isn’t any. The player is training and playing and has no time for this, even if it were a good idea. The players are the talent and the fans are screaming to buy the best talent they can. Playing careers are relatively short, and of course injury or loss of form could happen at any age. Every club could refuse to deal with agents if they chose. They… Read more »
That all makes sense, but James Milner has got through his whole career without an agent and he’s not exactly done badly for himself.
Sure, but someone like Milner (or Rabiot, who I think is usually represented by his mother) can gauge his demands according to a scale that has been established by other players–and their agents. In a sense, the Milners of the world are getting a free ride–if everyone acted like Milner has, then Milner would have made much less money.
Just fucking lol at the chelski shit show. Imagine paying over the odds for literally every transfer you’ve ever made only to get held over a barrel by the agents on top. 8 years for Mudryk! They should get transfer banned for basic ineptitude and harm done to the global transfer market.
Jeez we really shafted them over the winter window. 15M quid for Felix loan – 10 games, 2 goals, 0 assists, 1 red (3games suspension). Stolen transfer due to “Arsenal interest” 90M quid (with addons) – 8 games, 0 goals, 1 assist. Stolen transfer due to “Arsenal interest” 105M quid for Enzo Fernandez – 8 games, 0 goals, 2 assist…most dribbled past midfielder in the EPL since his arrival. Transfer associated with Jorginho going to Arsenal as a backup and potentially some “Arsenal Interest”. Should we add-in Auba?…lol! Hilarious club. I mean it takes some special level of mismanagement to… Read more »
Felix is the cherry on top. Paying that much money for 6 months. And no chance he wants to stay at that circus. Absolute clown car of a club.
Mudryk reminds me a lot of the New York Mets and their Bobby Bonilla contract. It’s become a running gag among baseball fans here. The Mets gave Bonilla a very bad contract. They owe him 1.1 million a year until 2035… he is 60 years old. Been paying him since 2011, which was actually a contract buyout negotiated in 2000. Only 22 more years Chelsea 😂😂😂
It’s funny, but it’s also sad. Pro sports completely broken by money. Those fuck heads Chelsea are a huge part of that comprise in football.