EU Football Agents: Promoting and Supporting Good Governance in the European Football Agents Industry (ERASMUS+)

The focus of this proposal is to undertake evidence based research in order to promote and support good governance in the context of the regulation of football players’ agents (now referred to as ‘intermediaries’) in the EU. Our research will result in meaningful policy impact by informing how private actors (the football stakeholders) and public actors (national and EU level policymakers) will approach the issue of agent regulation in the future. By extension, our research will inform the approach taken by other sports to the question of player agent regulation. The issue of good governance is relevant due to longstanding concerns regarding the operation of the player agent industry. As acknowledged by successive EU documents, these concerns tend to be of an ethical and legal nature including financial crime and the exploitation of young players. These issues threaten the fairness of sporting competitions and the integrity of sportspeople. The issue is of particular current relevance given recent changes to the way in which football agents are regulated. In response to concerns that the then current regulations were not working effectively, in 2015, FIFA introduced the Regulations on Working With Intermediaries replacing the previous Player Agent Regulations. The repealed regulations placed qualitative requirements on access to the profession of an agent, such as acquiring a license following an examination. In contrast, the post-2015 system has dispensed with this licensing system, opening up access to the profession, and thereby causing some good governance concerns regarding standards of professionalism. At the same time, the new regulations have further shifted the regulatory emphasis from FIFA to the national associations, which necessitates an enquiry into the functioning of the market including the consistency, enforcement, and compatibility of national association regulations with EU law.