Podcast Sport Agents Olav

This is a transcription about the impact of sports agencies. It explores the question of whether sports agencies prioritize profit over athletes' well-being and discusses examples of illegal activities by some sports agents. It also touches on the role of media in shaping public perception and the experiences of student-athletes working with sports agents. The transcript concludes with a discussion on gender disparities in sports agency representation. Welcome to the Impact of Sports Agency, where we embark on an enlightening journey into the in-character role of sports agency. Today's sports stars aren't just players on the field, they navigate a labyrinth of contracts, sponsors and media scrutiny. Join us as we explore the pivotal role of sports agency, the architects behind athletes' career, crucial in securing deals and crafting public images of the athletes. Now let's delve into the heart of the matter. Do sports agencies prioritize profit over athletes' well-being? This is a central question, we will guide our discussion and unveil the complexities of an industry that often operates in the shadows. Do the sports agencies really care about making money or taking care of the athletes? And how does this affect the way athletes are treated in the sports today? There is no correct answer for this question. We have sources saying yes and we have sources saying no. And it's most definitely some agents which is going for the money. But at the same time we can't blame them, because it is their job and their way of making money for a living. The thing that is questionable about the sports agencies and how the sports agencies work is how they make money, because some of the ways that they are handling different situations is probably not the right way ethically. Especially in the last two decades we have seen agents who have used their athletes to earn money and often the agents are going to college athletes who often don't know the rules about how a professional contract works and some agents have done something illegal. I asked my professor Joel Blanco in sport and rec management class I'm taking about some examples of different cases which sports agents have done something illegal and someone has found out about it. So he comes with a couple of different sports agents and we can start with Tank Black. Tank Black was a former sports agent who was convicted in the early 2000s for defrauding NFL players. He was found guilty of stealing money from his clients, including embezzling funds from their own bank accounts. We can move over to Josh Lux in 2010, who was a sports agent. Josh Lux revealed in a Sports Illustrated article that he had provided illegal benefits, including cash payments to college football players, in violation of the NCAA rules. This addiction led to significant controversy and raised questions about the ethical conduits of sports agents. If we move on to the last one, this was an agent he came up with in class, his name was Andy Miller. He was an NBA agent and he had his certification revoked by the Players Association in 2018 due to his involvement in the FBI's investigation into college basketball corruption. He was accused of providing improper benefits to college players, which is not allowed at all. Since I was talking to my professor here in the US, he obviously came up with a lot of different sports from the US. Soccer is not this big in the US, and back in Norway, soccer is really big, and we have a sports agent which is called Mini Raiola. He has sold players for over 400 million dollars in total, and he has made a lot of big soccer names and clubs angry with how he talks and acts. A really big reason for why some people are not the biggest fan of him is because the way how he talks and how he acts in the public, and he doesn't always necessarily say what people want to hear, but what they need to hear. And as a sports agent, that has shown us that helped him to become the most successful soccer agent in the world. Sports agents like Mini Raiola are occasionally involved in contentious negotiations and contract disputes that may be viewed unfavorably, such as controversials that can lead to public perceptions. We will try to dive a little bit more into the media and how this is affecting the sports agency, and the relationship between sports agents and the media introduces another layer of complexity, and without the media, the sports agency would never be nowhere near where it is today, and analyzing how the media portrayals shape the public's perceptions influence negotiations and potentially exacerbates conflicts at depth to understanding the intricate web these entires navigate. When we understand how the media narratives are constructed and the impact on the public opinion, we will get a better picture of how all of this is working. I have also some own experience with sports agents, and sports agents were a really big part of my college recruiting process. When I was graduating high school in Norway, I knew that I wanted to continue playing soccer, and I was scrolling on social media one day, I come over a soccer showcase in a nearby city, so I signed up and got accepted. After the showcase, I talked with some coaches from the U.S., and all of them said that I have opportunities to play soccer at a college here in the U.S. It was a big company in Norway that is called CSUSA, which arranged the whole showcase, and they are like a big company with around 20 agents, and their job is to get scholarships for their athletes in the U.S., and they are helping people from Sweden, Norway, and some other countries nearby, Sweden and Norway. I had two different agents who helped me get plenty of different coaches for me, and I asked one of them to answer some questions. He wasn't able to do a phone call, but I wrote him an email, and I will just tell you a little bit about him first. His name is Truls Jusset. He did also play college soccer 10 years ago, which gives him a lot of experience to help other athletes today. So my first question for him was about his college process, and how he started his college career. He answered that he also used CSUSA's agents to help him get into the States and college, and he played his first year in Bunker Hill Community College, and he got all-conference team and regional champion his first year, and after that he traded to Plymouth State University and was there for three years, and then he graduated and went to Norway and started working for CSUSA. So that's a little bit about his college process, and we can move over to my next question for him. That was about how he ended up as a student athlete and why he chose CSUSA to help him. He answered, the fact that I ended up as a student athlete in the United States is only because of CSUSA. I was reasonably aware that I had to study in Norway like all my other friends, but that was before I contacted CSUSA. The four years I spent in the U.S. are by far the best years I've ever experienced so far, and I've had a chance to experience more than many people experience in a lifetime. You become a part of an immovable environment, and you get a perspective on a life sure to change you. I got to experience 40 to 50 states, made friends from countless nations, and got the chance to combine soccer and studies, which was my dream. Truth and other agents at CSUSA is not helping professional athletes today. Many of the players that they help have a lot of potential to become professionals in the future, but at the time when CSUSA are in the process and are helping them, they're not counted as professionals. So I also asked him a little bit about my own college process and how they typically get offers from different colleges, and the answer he sent me was, this is a process that is really long, and it all starts with you making the highlight video. I had to make a highlight video and send it to him so he can show me how I play to the college coaches in the U.S. So he is trying to send this video and contact as many coaches as possible. So he is sending a lot of emails, and CSUSA is a really big company that has been there for many years, and that has given them a really good network to talk with coaches, and as we've seen here in the U.S., the same colleges often have plenty of players from European countries, and when we play against soccer teams here, you can see like in North Park, which have like 20 people from Scandinavia. So if a college is recruiting a player from Scandinavia, there will probably be other options for Scandinavians later to also go to that college, and that was a big reason for why I chose Milliken as well, because they had three other players from Scandinavia, and when the player from Scandinavia is performing, the coaches want more of that, and I think that is a big reason for why Milliken also wanted me, because they already had three Scandinavians that performed really well on the soccer team. But this company has been getting some critique as well, because it takes a lot of money for their services, and as a teenager athlete, it can be hard to pay for their services, and without them, it can be really hard to be getting those scholarships from the different colleges, and this is a company that is doing everything legally, and in my paper, I've been talking a lot about the dark side in the sports agency world, and with CSUSA, everything is like doing 100% after the book, and there is no risk of any mistakes being done, or anything illegal happening, and I think that is the reason why so many are choosing to use them, and it's not only males, but it's also female athletes that are using them, and in today's society, females and males are treated differently, there is a really big difference in the sports world, as well in the agency world as well, and I'll try to come up with some examples of that, and we can see like, we are always working towards making things fair for everyone, whether you are a guy or a girl, but when it comes to sports agency, there is a bit of a challenge, because you see there are more male sports agents, and usually they are representing male athletes as well, this is because, let's use soccer as an example again, male soccer players is making a lot more than female soccer players, and to make things better, we need to change how we think about it, because we should be focusing on skill and abilities, not just if someone is a guy or a girl, and like not stick to the old ideas about what gender can do what, and the goal is to make sports agency more equal and diverse than it is today, and we need to break down the old beliefs, and be more inclusive, and give everyone a fair chance, because in today's society, everyone is not having a fair chance, but it is easy to see how the agency is thinking about it as well, because when they are having a client male, they are making a lot more money than if they have a female as their client, but having different voices in sports agency will make it more creative and innovative, and I think in the long term it will most definitely be more successful as well, and the fight for equality in sports agency is all about creating a better and more exciting future for everyone, not just males. So to sum this all up, sports agency are like a library and always changing the world of sports, they are about talking, making choices, and dealing with money and rules in the sports business. It is a place where athletes do it closely tied to how good their agents are at helping them. Looking forward, the future of sports agency will be influenced by new technology, rules that might change, and the all going effort to keep things fair and honest in sports, which it has not always been with agents and in sports in general. People often wonder about sports agency because there have been some not so great things happening. I got some example with Andy Miller earlier, and especially when they are like using the younger college athletes to make money on them, which is not allowed because they are not registered as professionals yet. Agents sometimes dance on the edge of what is allowed, and taking risks and doing what things that might not be totally ok and 100% after the book. Whether you are a fan or not, sports agents play a big role, and they are not going to go away anytime soon. They are too important for that. They are a part of the sports scene, and we will keep seeing how they shape the future of the game. To being able to make this podcast, I have used a lot of resources. I have been seeing ESPN documentary about sports agency, which is called The Dotted Line, which goes through a life of sports agents, and how they are going through a day when the NBA draft was ongoing. As well, I have contacted my own agent in Norway. He answered some quick questions to help the podcast out. I also talked with my professor, Blanco, who has been giving me a lot of information about this team, and he knows a lot about it as well, which helped I have been using some resources like sportslaw.com, and some Norwegian sites, and CSUSA's own site, when they explain about how the college recruiting process is working, because it is a big difference between how sports agency works in the professional world and in the non-professional or semi-professional world. I think there was a good part of the podcast about both, because there is agency in both places, and there is most definitely importance in both places as well. The Dotted Line