Do Sports Agents Need a Law Degree? What Sports Agents Do

By Dr. Brittany Jacobs  |  04/29/2025

Do sports agents need a law degree? It’s a common question among aspiring agents, especially those individuals exploring the legal and business sides of the sports industry. While a law degree is not required to be a sports agent, it is often recommended based on the specialized and valuable legal training and negotiation skills that can be gained in law school.

What Are the Requirements to Be a Sports Agent?

The requirements to be a sports agent vary based on the organization representing clients. For example, the NFL Players Association (NFLPA®) has these requirements for agents who will represent athletes in the National Football League (NFL®):

• Application fee
• Background check
• Bachelor’s degree and a graduate degree
• Two-day seminar attendance
• Completion of the agent examination

These requirements help ensure that sports agents will possess a strong background in sports management, contract law, and negotiation tactics.

The NFL, like most professional sport leagues, does not require its sports agents to have a law degree specifically. However, the NFL does require a minimum level of education, such as a sports management degree at the bachelor's level or a degree in a related field.

To successfully serve clients, it is incredibly important for sports agents to have a firm understanding of sports law, intellectual property, collective bargaining agreements, and contract negotiations. For this reason, many sport agents are law school graduates who have not only attended law school but also practiced law.

Ideally, it is wise to check on the specific requirements that you'll need to fulfill to become a sports agent in advance. This strategy will help you pinpoint what skills and education you'll need to do to acquire to serve as a sports agent.

Do You Have to Have a Master’s Degree to Be a Sports Agent?

No, you do not have to have a master’s degree to be a sports agent. There is no universal education requirement for sports agents. However, most organizations require some level of educational experience – be it an undergraduate degree or the completion of graduate school.

In some cases, professional negotiation experience can replace the educational requirement. The National Basketball Association (NBA®), for example, requires its agents to have completed a bachelor’s degree from an accredited four-year institution.

However, the NBA may also accept relevant negotiating experience in lieu of formal education. This exception is unreviewable and fully controlled by the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA®).

The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (also known as FIFA® or the International Federation of Association Football) has regulations that are followed by U.S. Soccer®, Major League Soccer (MLS®), and the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL®). FIFA does not have any specific educational requirements, though it does require the successful completion of the FIFA agent exam as well as continuing professional development.

Newer leagues, like the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL®), do not currently have any regulations related to education or experience for player agents.

What Do Sports Agents Do?

Sports agents have several responsibilities to assist collegiate and professional athletes in finding professional success. These responsibilities include:

• Contract negotiation
• Marketing and promotion
• Compliance and legal management
• Talent evaluation
• Public relations
• Financial management

Contract Negotiation

Sports agents typically negotiate contracts for their clients. These negotiations may include media contracts, endorsement deals, and player contracts. For this reason, it is incredibly important that sport agents have knowledge of contract law, which is why many sports agents are encouraged to attend law school and pursue a law degree. An agent can also be a licensed attorney who has practiced law in a law firm and is experienced in resolving legal issues.

Marketing and Promotion

With the rise of social media and global broadcasting, sports agents help players build their personal brands. This type of marketing includes managing media opportunities and endorsements, as well as understanding intellectual property.

Compliance and Legal Management

Agents must navigate regulations that are unique to each league, often including collective bargaining agreements and professional codes of conduct. Even non-lawyer agents should possess a working knowledge of sports law and compliance.

Talent Evaluation and Talent Representation

To become an athlete’s agent, there is a significant amount of knowledge required in the areas of scouting and recruitment. The agent must understand what clients will bring value to their practice and how to effectively meet their needs. Ultimately, both the agent and the player should benefit from the relationship.

Some agents only work with professional athletes for particular sports, and some athletes are only willing to work with agents from specific agencies. As a result, working for an agency is a job where you must be willing to pursue clients in a competitive landscape.

Public Relations

Agents often manage a player’s image, handling both positive publicity and crisis communications. They may coordinate interviews or step in during media controversies to protect the athlete’s brand. It can mean mitigating damage from issues, having the skills to think and act quickly, or setting up the right type of interviews with media outlets to share information about an athlete that leads to greater public interest.

Ultimately, agents work to maximize the value of a player’s brand. As a result, they are also ensuring the success of their own career as an agent.

The agent’s role has expanded considerably with the development of streaming, social media, and on-demand information about players and teams. The use of agents became more popular in the 1960s and 1970s as professional sports became more commercialized. As a result, professional athletes' salaries increased significantly, opening doors to lucrative endorsement deals.

Financial Management

In addition to significant legal knowledge, a sports agent's job requires significant business acumen and financial skills. Agents not only negotiate contracts on behalf of their clients, but they can also help manage their money to ensure long-term financial health.

In addition to the enormous compensation packages for athletes, there are many ways that contracts can be structured. Intimate knowledge of these behind-the-scenes processes helps to ensure the financial stability of athletes for the long term.

In many cases, sport agents will work with a group of professionals that help service the specific needs of the athlete. However, those agents must have foundational knowledge to support their clients.

What Are the Biggest Sports Agencies?

A successful sports agent may work for a company and specialize in a specific sport.

Some agencies are incredibly large from both a commission and contracts-under-ownership standpoint. Other agencies represent athletes from multiple sports and manage billions of dollars in athlete contracts:

• Creative Artist Agencies (CAA)
• WME Group
• Excel Sports Management
• Octagon
• Boras Corporation
• Klutch Sports Group
• Wasserman

How Much Do Sports Agents Make?

The salaries for both players and sports agents have increased over the years. According to the NFLPA, the average NFL league salary in 1968 was around $9,000 for rookies and $10,000 for veterans. Today, the league average is $3.2 million, and the shift in compensation for athletes necessitates the support of a highly qualified agent.

The amount of money that can be made as a sports agent can vary dramatically. Top sports agents can earn hundreds of millions of dollars a year. However, earning millions of dollars as a sport agent is not the norm.

Most of the compensation for agents comes from the commissions that they earn on their players' contracts or negotiated endorsement deals. As a result, there is an incentive for the agent to negotiate well-structured, high-paying deals for their clients. There is also the motivation to recruit clients with high earning potential, be it through their sport performance or through the marketability of their personal brand.

Emerging Areas of Growth for Sports Agencies

Sports are changing and athlete representation continues to evolve, which means new opportunities are emerging beyond traditional professional leagues. Two areas that are experiencing significant growth – and requiring increased attention to regulation and agent specialization – are collegiate athletics and esports.

Collegiate Athletics

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA®) has been an interesting landscape regarding the need for agents. With the passage of NCAA v. Alston in 2021, collegiate athletes are now able to hire marketing agents in order to negotiate their name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals.

However, these agents are still excluded from negotiating player contracts. One exception is Men’s Division I basketball, which allows players to hire a certified agent for professional preparation,

These agents are vitally necessary. Without universal regulations at the collegiate level, players may enter deals with marketing agents or corporations who do not have the best interest of the player at heart.

Esports

As the field of esports continues to become both more commercialized and controlled, the need for regulations around agents has also come to the forefront. In 2020, the Esports Integrity Commission® began the process of creating a global regulatory framework for esports agents.

In 2024, the League Championship Series Players Association (LCSPA) and the Americas VALORANT Players Association (AVPA) created a voluntary agent certification program. This program sets uniform standards for agents serving players in these organizations and is an important step forward in professional regulation.

The program also offers a database of certified agents to help players find trustworthy representation. In addition, it requires teams to provide potential players with a list of agents to ensure those players are fairly represented during negotiations.

Esports agents often manage negotiations, public relations, and athlete brand but may also serve as a personal assistant to the player. In this capacity, an esports agent manages scheduling, travel, and other personal business for the athlete.

Much like their counterparts in other sports, the regulations and requirements for esports agents vary by title, competition, and league. Consequently, new agents must be sure to do their research to ensure they are adequately qualified for any industry sector where they intend to work.

The Education Needed to Become a Sports Agent

So, do sports agents always need to become law students and obtain a law degree? The answer is not necessarily – sports agents come from diverse educational and professional backgrounds.

A bachelor’s degree in sports management or business, however, is a strong starting point if you want to become a sports agent. Internships or entry-level roles in sports or entertainment are also helpful for building industry experience.

Pursuing a law degree or graduate program in business, marketing, or sports management can further strengthen your skills and knowledge. That is especially helpful if you want to pursue career paths in leagues that require advanced education or legal knowledge.

Once you become a sports agent and choose to work with players from a particular league, the league will post a list of approved agents so that all players are aware of the agents’ existence. For instance, U.S. Soccer posts their list of registered player agents annually.

Sports Management and Esports Degrees at American Public University

For adult learners interested in sports management or esports, American Public University offers several degrees:

• An online Bachelor of Science in Esports
• An online Bachelor of Science in Sports Management
• An online Master of Science in Sports Management

Taught by experts, courses in these programs feature topics such as contemporary issues in esports, esports event and facility management, and esports player development. Other topics also include the foundations of sports management, principles of sports marketing, and sports law, risk, and regulation.

Also, the sports management and esports degree programs have received specialized accreditation through the Commission on Sport Management Accreditation (COSMA). This specialty accreditation ensures the high academic quality of these programs. 

For more information, visit APU’s nursing and health sciences program page.

NFLPA is a registered trademark of the National Football League Players Association.
NFL is a registered trademark of the National Football League.
NBA is a registered trademark of the National Basketball Association.
NBPA is a registered trademark of the National Basketball Players Association.
FIFA is a registered trademark of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association.
U.S. Soccer is a registered trademark of the United States Soccer Federation.
Major League Soccer is a registered trademark of Major League Soccer, LLC.
National Women’s Soccer League is a registered trademark of the National Women’s Soccer League.
PWHL is a registered trademark of PWHL Holdings, LLC.
NCAA is a registered trademark of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
Esports Integrity Commission is a registered trademark of the Esports Integrity Commission.