The agency Proformance Baseball is attempting to change baseball’s agency commission model by charging their clients significantly less than the industry standard, Darren Heitner of Forbes.com writes. Usually, agency commissions cost 4-5% of the salaries of players with negotiated contracts worth more than the MLB minimum, but Proformance now says that it will take just 1.5%.
“We saw a fiercely competitive landscape where everybody looked the same,” says Proformance co-founder Jeff Beck. “The agents basically offer the same services, pretty much the same fee structure whether it is 4% or 5%, and I could literally hear the sound in my ear from a meeting a couple of years ago where a guy was saying, ’You guys are all really the same.'”
Proformance’s services will be different from the typical agency’s, Beck says. Proformance will see its clients less frequently than a typical agent might, and instead will focus fairly straightforwardly on negotiating deals. There will be little “hand-holding,” as Beck puts it, and Proformance will turn its attention away from minor league players. Such a limited approach might serve a non-superstar veteran who earns a reasonable salary, Heitner notes. “We are taking the album and saying you can buy your two favorite tracks like iTunes,” Beck says.
Proformance has represented players such as Vladimir Guerrero, Billy Wagner, Jose Bautista and Ervin Santana. It recently lost Bautista and Santana when agent Jay Alou left the agency.
Literary agents almost always get 15%. I wish some of them would follow baseball’s standards.
Wow, that’s insane. I agree! How do they get away with that?
Industry norm. They justify it by token of how many submissions they have to sift through, but they’re becoming less important in the grand scheme of things.
The difference is interesting since the overwhelming majority of MLB players negotiate through agents. The money dealt with is a tad larger though.
Good idea.