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Contract Negotiation Soccer

Major League Soccer Beckham

On January 12th, Chris Lesley was talking about the “milestone in sports,” which was David Beckham’s supposed contract that he was going to be signing with the L.A. Galaxy [Earn it like Beckham].  Hell, every sports news service was going crazy about the $250 million that Beckham was going to earn over 5 seasons.  Sorry Chris, but it seems like A-Rod still has Beckham beat when it comes to money made while actually playing the game (we will see how Beckham does when endorsements are considered as well).

Please do not get me wrong here.  Beckham is still the man, and is making 10 times more than any other MLS player (when you start with the 7th highest paid player).  He will make $6.5 million guaranteed, which is still not too shabby [Beckham’s salary revealed; Reyna top U.S. earner].  And AEG, which is the company that owns the L.A. Galaxy, can decide to give Beckham money beyond whatever his contract guarantees

Throughout all of this Beckham talk, I have been trying to see if the value of soccer players would rise enough to make the market strong enough for more agents to want to get involved in the sport.  If you are lucky enough to represent a Beckham, you will make good money on the contract representation side and definitely the marketing end.  But unless you are going to look overseas and import players to the MLS, you still will not be making much on representing a soccer player in contract negotiations.  The highest paid American player is Claudio Reyna, making $1.25 million guaranteed.

As the ESPN article states, “only the top six players in the league have salaries above the major league baseball minimum of $380,000” and “seventy four percent of the players have base salaries of $100,000 or less.”  Enjoy your small percentage commission on that.

-Darren Heitner 

By Darren Heitner

Darren Heitner created Sports Agent Blog as a New Year's Resolution on December 31, 2005. Originally titled, "I Want To Be A Sports Agent," the website was founded with the intention of causing Heitner to learn more about the profession that he wanted to join, meet reputable individuals in the space and force himself to stay on top of the latest news and trends.

Heitner now runs Heitner Legal, P.L.L.C., which is a law firm with many practice areas, including sports law and contract law. Heitner has represented numerous athletes and sports agents as legal counsel. He has also served as an Adjunct Professor at Indiana University Bloomington from 2011-2014, where he created and taught a course titled, Sport Agency Management, which included subjects ranging from NCAA regulations to athlete agent certification and the rules governing the profession. Heitner serves as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Florida Levin College of Law, where he teaches a Sports Law class that includes case law surrounding athlete agents and the NCAA rules.