🇪🇺Football Agents: Licensing, Fee Caps and the Litigation Against FIFA

The concept

What is regulated here is not the athlete but the intermediary. The FIFA Football Agent Regulations (FFAR) are an instrument of a private association that imposes entry to the profession through a licence and an examination, a ceiling on the price of the service, a prohibition on acting for both sides of a deal, and mandatory disclosure of transactions and sums. That is why FFAR turned into an antitrust story rather than a sporting one: the cartel division of the court in Dortmund, the preliminary reference from Mainz, interim relief in Madrid, a Rule K arbitration in London. As at 20 August 2026 there is no single regime: on 16.07.2026 the Court of Justice took the regulations apart article by article, England has lived without a fee cap since the end of 2023, and FIFA itself keeps the contested provisions suspended under circular 1873. The size of the stake is visible from the FIFA Football Agents Report 2025 of 18.12.2025: clubs paid agents USD 1.37 billion on international transfers in 2025 — up 90% on 2024 and above the 2023 record of USD 889.4 million; 3,010 transfers involved agents, England accounting for more than USD 375 million and Germany for USD 165 million.

What FFAR is and what is left of it on 20 August 2026

The licensing provisions of FFAR took effect on 09.01.2023 and the operative ones on 01.10.2023. The version in force was approved on 10.12.2024 and applies from 01.01.2025. Laid over that text is FIFA circular 1873 of 30.12.2023: application of the contested provisions is suspended — first for transactions with an EU connection, then worldwide — pending the ruling of the Court of Justice. The suspension caught the economic core: the fee cap (art. 15), the "client pays" rule (art. 14) and the ban on dual representation (art. 12). Everything else on the perimeter is alive: the licence, the examination, registration with the national association, the uploading of documents to the FIFA Agent Platform, and publication of transaction data.

The judgments of 09.07.2026 and 16.07.2026 do not lift the suspension automatically: the circular is an act of FIFA, and only FIFA can withdraw it. No new circular could be found as at 20.08.2026; on 16.07.2026 FIFA said publicly only that it intended to convene representatives of agents and reach agreement before the new transfer system starts on 01.01.2027. The working assumption today: entry and reporting obligations apply, the pricing rules remain suspended and contested, and the next reference point is a new circular or a new edition of FFAR by 01.01.2027.

The licence and the examination: art. 5, the platform, the 2026 calendar

Entry is governed by art. 5 FFAR: the application is filed through the FIFA Agent Platform, the candidate passes an eligibility check and sits the examination. The format is 20 multiple-choice questions in 60 minutes, with a pass mark of 75% (that is, 15 correct answers). The 2026 calendar: the application window ran from 20.01 to 06.03.2026, the examination sessions were held on 28–30.04 and 05–07.05.2026, and results were released on 04.06.2026. FIFA publishes no official figure for the examination fee and secondary sources disagree, so that line has to be confirmed with FIFA directly when budgeting.

The annual FIFA licence fee has been USD 600 for the first year and USD 300 on renewal since 01.10.2024. The licence is maintained through continuing professional development: 20 CPD credits over the period from 1 October to 30 September, with an assessment threshold of 80%. A FIFA licence is not the end of the road: working in a particular country requires separate registration with the national association on its own terms (in England, reg. 2.2 of the FA Football Agent Regulations 2025/26).

The money: the cap in art. 15 and "client pays" in art. 14

Article 15 FFAR, in its December 2024 version, builds a sliding scale off the player's annual remuneration. Acting for the player or for the engaging club: 5% where remuneration is up to USD 200,000 and 3% above that threshold. In permitted dual representation (player plus engaging club): 10% and 6% by reference to the same threshold. Acting for the releasing club: 10% of the transfer compensation. The base is computed narrowly: conditional payments (performance bonuses, appearance-based add-ons) do not enter the cap calculation, and compensation for breach of contract and sell-on amounts are excluded from transfer compensation.

Article 14 settles who pays: only the agent's own client. The single exception is that, where the player's annual remuneration is below USD 200,000, the engaging club may pay on the player's behalf, but only by agreement with the player. The payment mechanics are rigid: payment falls due after the registration period closes, then in instalments every three months over the term of the contract; for a contract of up to six months, in a single payment at the end of the term. Commission accrues only on remuneration actually received by the player, pro rata: if the player leaves after one year of three, the agent receives a third, not the whole sum up front.

Dual representation: art. 12

The general rule in art. 12 is that an agent acts in the interests of one party to the transaction. The only permissible departure is acting simultaneously for the player and for the engaging club, with the prior express written consent of both clients. Consent after the event does not cure the breach, and oral consent does not exist as a category. The term of a representation agreement with an individual is capped at two years.

The English overlay goes further: under reg. 7.11 of the FA Football Agent Regulations 2025/26, in dual representation the engaging club pays no more than 50% of the total commission — meaning the player must fund the other half from his own pocket, with all the tax consequences that follow. The tax side of that split is dealt with separately in the note on image rights and tax; that page also carries the UHY statistics on HMRC enquiries: 21 agents under enquiry in the year to 31.03.2024, against 55 agents in 2019/20.

Reporting and transparency: arts. 16 and 19

Article 16 FFAR requires the upload to the FIFA Agent Platform, within 14 days, of details of the conclusion, amendment and termination of a representation agreement, of the provision of other services, and of every payment. Article 19 turns that into publicity: FIFA publishes the names of agents, their clients, the transactions and the commission amounts. It is this block that generated the GDPR argument — whether a public register of sums is compatible with the data-processing principles in art. 6 GDPR; the question formed part of the reference from Mainz.

Two circuits that are routinely confused should be kept apart. The FIFA Clearing House is not the payment channel for an agent. The Clearing House regulations approved on 17.12.2025 and in force from 01.01.2026 confine its perimeter to training rewards and the solidarity mechanism. Article 14 FFAR contemplates the involvement of the Clearing House and reg. 7.13 of the FA rules cross-refers to it, but it is not confirmed that agents' commissions actually pass through it as at 20.08.2026. The cash route in a contract is best planned around direct settlement rather than around the Clearing House.

The legal attack in four forums

The regulations were taken apart piece by piece, in several jurisdictions at once.

The divergence of outcomes is no accident: CAS assessed FFAR against sporting rules, the national courts against competition law. The same split between forums shows up in other disputes around FIFA and FA regulations — for instance in a player's clearance to work in England through the GBE route, examined in the note on athlete visas.

Luxembourg 2026: C-428/23 and C-209/23

The Court of Justice spoke twice in eight days. The judgment of 09.07.2026 in Case C-428/23 ROGON and Others (press release 99/26, on a reference from the German Federal Court of Justice): association rules on agents are capable of falling within the general-interest exception under the Wouters test, provided they are appropriate, necessary and proportionate to the objective pursued. That is a framework, not an absolution.

The judgment of 16.07.2026 in Case C-209/23 RRC Sports (press release 110/26) applied the framework to FFAR. Two provisions were held to be restrictions of competition by object: the rule on forfeiture of unearned commission, and the ban on approaching a client bound by an exclusive agreement outside the two-month window before that agreement expires. The rest of the core — licensing, the dual-representation limit, the percentage cap and the disclosure obligation — the Court considered capable in principle of justification, but it left the proportionality assessment to the court in Mainz. Sources report the article numbering in the operative part differently (art. 14(12)(a), art. 16(1)(b)–(c) and art. 19(d)–(e) are variously cited), so any citation in a document should be checked against the official text of the judgment. The outcome of the resumed proceedings in Mainz, Dortmund and Madrid was unknown as at 20.08.2026.

The correct reading is this: the pricing architecture of FFAR has been neither struck down nor upheld — it has been sent for a proportionality test in a national court, while two conduct rules have been struck out outright.

England as a separate legal order

The English track developed autonomously and earlier. The Rule K arbitration (panel: Collins, Vajda KC, Dyson), on a claim by CAA Base, Wasserman, Stellar and Arete, held by an award of 30.11.2023 as amended on 12.12.2023 that the fee cap and the pro rata rule infringed the Chapter I and Chapter II prohibitions in the Competition Act 1998, so that the FA cannot introduce them.

The result is embedded in the FA Football Agent Regulations 2025/26, in force from 01.06.2025: there is no fee cap (reg. 7.1), but a FIFA licence and FA registration are both required (reg. 2.2); in dual representation the engaging club pays no more than 50% of the total commission (reg. 7.11); a declaration of remuneration received is due within 7 days (reg. 7.14(c)); and the annual return within 30 days (reg. 8.5(c)). England, in other words, has kept entry control and transparency but abandoned price regulation.

The comparative frame: what actually applies

Typical mistakes and what to put in a representation agreement

Five mistakes recur. The first is treating the FFAR cap as being in force in England: it has not applied there since the end of 2023, and a reference to art. 15 in an English contract creates a term the regulator does not require. The second is dual representation without the prior written consent of both parties under art. 12: consent after the event does not cure the breach. The third is missing the 14 days for uploading a contract or a payment under art. 16. The fourth is including conditional payments in the calculation base: bonuses do not count towards the cap base, and an inflated base is a dispute about overpayment waiting to happen. The fifth is conflating the FIFA Clearing House with the payment channel to the agent.

Six positions belong in the agreement itself: the term (no more than two years with an individual, under art. 12); the calculation base, with express exclusion of conditional payments, compensation for breach of contract and sell-on amounts; the instalment schedule and the pro rata rule by reference to what is actually received; the parties' consents in dual representation, documented before the transaction; the allocation of responsibility for platform deadlines (14 days for FIFA, 7 and 30 days for the FA); and the choice of law and forum — bearing in mind that a Rule K arbitration, a German cartel court and CAS produce different results on the same text. Adjacent models for controlling an intermediary's access to an athlete's money — the NFLPA financial adviser screen, with its USD 2,700 fee, CFP/CFA requirements and prohibition on holding a player's funds — are described in the athlete cluster map.

Questions and answers