I am a sports agent, and I am going to tell you something people in my job rarely say out loud. Most young athletes do not need an agent yet, and hiring one too early can cost a family more than it helps.
Here is the honest version.
An agent has one primary job: to negotiate and protect real deals. Professional contracts. Transfers. Meaningful NIL agreements. That is the work. If your kid is not at the point where any of those is actually on the table, what you need is guidance, and guidance is not the same thing as representation. Paying someone a percentage to "build the brand" of a fourteen-year-old is, almost every time, the wrong spend.
I want to be specific about the right time, because "when you need one" is too vague to act on. You bring in an agent when there is a real transaction to manage, or real money and rights on the line, and the cost of getting it wrong is bigger than the cost of getting it right. That is the whole test. Until then, an agent is not solving a problem you have. They are a cost you have taken on in exchange for feeling further along than you are.
Let me tell you about one of the first players we ever signed. He was fifteen. His family came to me because another agent had been working on them, and the pitch was confident. He could get their son a big multi-year deal, but they needed to sign with him first. So I asked one question. Is there actually an offer? Not interest. Not a projection. An offer. I called the club directly to find out. There was nothing. No offer, no negotiation, no terms. Just a story built to get a signature.
The family did not sign with that agent. The player kept developing. And later, when the club was genuinely preparing a professional contract, when there was finally something real to negotiate, that is when representation made sense, and that is when they signed with us. The difference was never who talked the biggest game. It was timing. Before there is something real on the table, there is nothing to represent.
That story is the whole newsletter in one example, so here is the test I actually use. Two questions. Is there an offer? And is there a decision to be made? If the answer to both is no, you do not have an agent problem. You have a development phase, and development does not require a commission.
Before you hire anyone, ask one more thing, out loud, to their face: what specifically will you do that I cannot? A good agent has a clear, concrete answer. They will name the deal, the counterparty, the leverage, the risk they are managing. If the answer is vague, if it is about exposure or relationships or getting your kid "in front of people," keep your money. Vague is what people say when there is no transaction to point to.
None of this means agents do not matter. At the right moment they matter enormously, and getting representation wrong when real money and rights are on the line is a far more expensive mistake than paying a fair commission. But the right moment is defined by the deal, not by the dream. The dream is yours to chase for free. The agent is for the day the dream turns into a contract.
And if your kid is young and someone is telling you that signing now is how you protect their future, slow down. The thing that protects a young player's future is development and minutes, not a representation agreement. There is no deal to lose yet. There is only a fee to pay.
Talent gets you seen. Decisions get you signed.
So, do you actually need an agent yet? Run the two questions. If there is a real offer and a real decision, let's talk. If there is not, keep building, and keep your money. Put your situation in the comments or send it over.
See you next week.
Mario