Black agents compete for blue chip athletes - sports agents - includes an article on football player Mike Singletary - Cover Story

Black Enterprise, July, 1992 by Bobby Clay

More black agents are negotiating contracts for superstar athletes. But the real money is in cutting endorsement deals and providing financial services.

Their clients read like a who's in professional team sports. Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing. Bobby Bonilla and Dwight Gooden. Herschel Walker and Randall Cunningham. Pick a player, any player, among the 10 highest-paid black athletes in the National Basketball Association (NBA), the National Football League (NFL) or Major Legue Baseball, and 29 out of 30 have an agent who is anything but black.

In basketball, total rejection: not David Robinson, not even Hakeem Olajuwon. In baseball, a complete shut-out: not Barry Bonds, not Cecil Fielder. Throw in football and except for 1988 Heisman Trophy winner Barry Sanders, black sports agents would be 0-for-30 in their bid to represent the cream of the crop.

But oh, the times are changing. Just ask Los Angeles-based sports agents Leigh Steinberg and Marvin Demoff, who in the past three years have lost out to black agents in the race to represent Sanders, whose estimated $700,000 in annual endorsements makes him one of the hottest properties in the NFL, and Raghib "Rocket" Ismail, the kick return specialist from Notre Dame who now pulls in a guaranteed $4.55 million per year with the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League. Or try asking Chicago-based agent Steve Zucker and Orange Country-based agent Barry Axelrod, who last year received word that their services would no longer be needed by two-sports star Deion Sanders of the Atlanta Braves and Falcons, the heir apparent to Bo Jackson.

Go ahead and bet the bank on this one: More black sports agents are negotiating contracts and providing financial services for the superstars of sports, where the real pot of gold is in endorsement packages. But it remains an uphill battle--despite the fact that team sports are dominated by black athletes. Of the roughly 3,000 athletes in professional team sports, 50% are black, but less than 15% are represented exclusively by black sports agents.

"Unfortunately, some of the star black players have swallowed the line that you've got to have a white agent and maybe a white, Jewish agent to get the very best deal," says Raymond E. Anderson of five-year-old Anderson Reynolds (AR) Sports Inc.

"For the most part, they're indoctrinated from the time they're in high school," adds R. David Ware, a partner with Atlanta-based Thomas, Kennedy, Sampson, Edwards & Patterson, who co-negotiated Barry Sanders contracts with agent Charles Lamont Smith and also represents Mark Clayton of the Miami Dolphins. "They're pretty much told it's the white agent and white attorney who can get you the most money," he says. "Like all black business people, we not only have to be good to get a client, we have to be great."

Despite these and other obstacles, the profit motive has inspired more blacks to dare to be great. "As long as the sports industry itself is thriving, the opportunity is going to be there for black sports agents," says Fort-Wayne, Ind.-based Eugene E. Parker, 36, whose clients include Tim Brown of the Los Angeles Raiders, Rod Woodson of the Pittsburgh Steelers and "Prime Time" himself, Deion Sanders.

And boy, is the industry thriving--thanks in no small part to black athletes. However, even as they excel on the courts, diamonds and gridirons of the world, African-Americans continue to be largely excluded from the executive suites and boardrooms of the multi-billion-dollar sports industry. Thus, African-Americans still do not enjoy an ownership stake that is representative of their contributions as loyal consumers and reliable, often highly specialized laborers in the industry. In this, first installment of a special report examining black progress in the business of sports, BLACK ENTERPRISE looks at the gains made by African-American sports agents.

Getting A Piece Of The Action

In 1990, sports-related companies, stadiums and performers produced over $60 billion in revenues, making sports the nation's 22nd largest industry, according to Martin J. Greenberg, coauthor of Sport$biz: An Irreverant Look At Big Business in Pro Sports (Leisure Press, Champagne, 111., $19.95) and director of the National Sports Law Institute at Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee. Approximately $580 million came from professional athletes' endorsement contracts, of which agents typically get 20% to 25%--as much as $145 million annually--in commissions. Throw in the 3% to 5% (potentially $70 million a year) in commissions that represents the agents cut of the $1.4 billion in salaries that team-sport athletes earned in 1991, and it's easy to see why sports agents outnumber athletes virtually two to one. "It can be a lucrative field because you're taking a piece of the player's income, a piece of his action," Greenberg observes. "If you represent a guy who's making $5 million over four years, that's $200,000 in commissions. Fifty thousand dollars a year is a living for a lot of people."