Legal Principles Of A Sports Agent

Legal principles play the most crucial role in an agent’s career. In fact, an agent’s entire job is built upon the legal concept of “agency” – a principle so crucial that it has been adopted as the professional description of those who represent athletes. According to Principles and Practice of Sport Management (2012), the definition of legal agency is “a consensual fiduciary relationship in which one party acts on behalf of and under the control of another in dealing with third parties” (p. 85). By extension, this definition also serves as a broad description of a sports agent’s profession. An agent’s primary responsibility is to negotiate and execute contracts on behalf of their athletes. The book goes on to state “every aspect of the sport
Richard Busch, an intellectual property and entertainment lawyer, writes that “California’s Talent Agency Act (TAA) [is] the law enacted in 1978 that requires a person to have a license if they are acting as an agent… the TAA defines a talent agent as ‘a person or corporation who engages in the occupation of procuring, offering, or attempting to procure employment for an artist’ ” (Forbes, 2013). In this context, “artist” also refers to athletes represented by talent agents. The TAA effectively restricts any other entity from legally representing athletes in any compensation negotiation. In fact, there have been numerous lawsuits against non-agency personnel who negotiated employment contracts for their clients, almost all of which have stripped those personnel of what they considered to be their rightful commission. To become a licensed agent, one must go through a process that includes a vetting of personal records and an affidavit of character – not dissimilar to some of the requirements to become a lawyer. It can be assumed that the law was enacted to provide some regulation and protection of clients when it comes to contract negotiation. As it has been legally defined that an agent is the only entity entitled to negotiate contracts on behalf of an athlete, it becomes obvious that an athletic agent has a duty to be well versed in the subsections of law that govern those negotiations; lawsuits derived from poorly negotiated contracts can be extremely costly to both athletes and their agents. On the other hand, well-executed lawsuits by an athlete and his representatives based upon a breach of contract or other factors can be extremely lucrative for the player, and may change the manner in which the league operates in the future. We can take as an example Spencer Haywood’s