Capstone Blog Post #6

My Capstone is now coming to a close and I am really happy with how it turned out because it is good. Also because I put so much work into this project on Sports Agents. I choose to do a ted talk which is a live presentation.

First I finished my research and that was a lot easier then I thought I got so much research from a book, my interview, my site visit, a database, and a lot of websites. After that I had to decide if I was going to do a ted talk video or ignite I knew I did not want to do an ignite because I did not want to have a time limit on each slide so not that and then I had ted talk or video I choose ted talk because I wanted to do a live presentation and a video most of the time sounds choppy which means the voice is loud then quiet then loud the quiet Then after I finished my research I started working on my essay with all of my research and that took me a few days. Then I had to write my script and that was pretty easy because I had my essay so I pretty much just took that and made it shorter and more personal. Then I had to make a slideshow to present to everyone that was a little hard I started with one slide for every sub question. But  I realized that was not a great idea because then people watching would get bored so I made a couple slides for each sub question and I realized that more slides was more entertaining to the audience and just a lot better. Then I needed to memorize my script which was a lot easier than I thought.

So overall I am really happy with my project I think it turned out great and I hope that other people like it.

See below for my script for my Ted Talk presentation:

Hi, I am Spencer. I am here to talk about Sports Agents. My main inquiry question is what is the role of a Sports Agent and how do they impact a player’s success. A Sports Agent is pretty much a player’s assistant. An assistant is someone who helps someone else. Being a sports agent you have a lot of responsibilities. One  responsibility that a sports agent has is negotiating contacts. Being a good contract negotiator is hard you have to have skills. Agents can help their clients get deals and contracts. If you have a good contract negotiator you will get good deals but if you have a bad agent who is not good at contract negotiating it will be hard to get a good deal. One example that you have to be a good contract negotiator is that Nike’s first offer to Michael Jordan was $250,000 but Adidas was already offering $500,000. So a good Agent like David Falk who is MJ’s agent  would do something about it. And Falk did he demanded more and Nike agreed to give more. According to my interview “agents also have to speak on behalf of the player” this is to keep a player of the spotlight if they are in a bad mood. For example if your player loses a game they will be emotional and not in the mood to be interviewed then the player can ask his agent to speak for him and the player can tell the agent what to say. It is also the agent’s responsibility to always look out for their player by always meeting with coaches, teammates, and companies that are looking into doing deals with their player.

So why do player’s sign with agents? Players sign deals with agents because of many reasons. One reason is that an agent is a role model to a player. A good agent helps a player be polite and nice. This is because businesses would want to endorse in them if they are polite and nice. The reason for that is because if the face of a business is a nice guy more people would like the businesses and they would make more money. Also agents give advice, agents give their clients advise if you are not happy with playing time or you are in a fight with a coach or a teammate. Another thing is that, if their advice does not work the can go talk to players and coaches for you. However, some people say that agents are not helpful. New york times says that “responsible agents exist but they are rare.” That is pretty much saying you are better off not having an agent. But I don’t agree if they were rare then their would not be so many players in professional sports and not a lot of people would be endorsed but there are a lot of players and a lot of players do get endorsed.

Agents are really good at helping players sign endorsement deals. One of my interviews said that to help negotiate contracts for players they have to be a mentor to the player and try to get them in the best place to succeed. The first thing you have to do is brand your client. This is so that people can learn about you. Next you have to find potential endorsers. This means the agent has to find people that may endorse and gather some different ideas. After that the agent should make sure the player is motivated. Because then the agent can get the players prospective. Like MJ, his agent did not do all the work he got some ideas from MJ and tried to negotiate them in the deal. Next, the agent has to negotiate with people looking into his player. An agent will look at what a brand / company is willing to offer and then try to make the deal better but they don’t want to push it. My other interview said that they need to find as many endorsers that is the agents primary goal. Agents can not only help you get a deal with something related to sports. They can try to get you a deal with whoever you want the agent will do anything to help their player make money because that is their job.

Agents can also help you get contracts on a new team. One thing that they do to help you with that is look at what the player wants and they also look at what the team is willing to offer and then tries to make both sides happy. Also agents have to know how good their player is so that they can find out what teams want him and use the knowledge that he knows about the player skill level. For example MJ’s agent knew he was good but he was underrated nobody knew how good he was so his agents convinced people he was good and he got picked in  the draft. One of my interviews said,  “the agent has to express  the team how good the player is in all aspects on contributions. Do they make team better and stuff like that so an agent’s  job is to speak on behalf of players and help players make a case.”  In long term contracts agents usually make sure that the player gets paid immediately.

All of this shows how agents impact a players success in different ways  because of helping with contracts and helping them with things when they need it. Thank you for coming I hope you learned a lot about sports agents.