Sports agency grew out of a need to protect athletes from tyranical owners and leagues. It’s birth created an union where players were governed by a collective bargaining agreement between all parties–owners, players, and league–and not just rules set forth by a league or owner. There in lies the birth of the sports agent.
The sports agent represents an athlete’s interests to owners, teams, leagues, sponsors, the media and so forth. Those interests could include salary, endorsements, reputation, second career interests plus personal and charitable interests. The agent weighs those interests along with the player’s abilities in regards to talent and skill to present a marketable package to above said folks (e.g., teams, sponsors).
Sports agency started with Major League Baseball which vigorously fought to keep agents from negotiating contracts with its players. Those fights include MLB outright refusing to negotiate with players that had agents to claiming an antitrust exemption to blacklisting players. It is the latter that did MLB the biggest disservice as the Courts and eventually Congress stripped most of baseball’s antitrust exemptions away from them.
Before the birth of sports agency, players were (and some would say still (e.g., Larry Johnson–former NBA player for the Charlotte Hornets and New York Knicks) merely slaves as some would call them. A team could play, trade or dismiss a player without any input from the player. With the creation of sports agency, competition and salaries grew for players. Opportunities became available to endorse products and services adding more income to a player’s nest egg.
However, the biggest benefit of sports agency–if done correctly–is the the piece of mind it can give a player to focus on his craft without worrying about impasses with management or others.
*In my humble opinion, the 40 million dollar slaves are not just Black athletes but those “enslaved” mentally whether Black, White, Asian, Hispanic/Latino, Native American or Jewish to the power of their team or league. It deals with conditioning athletes receive of acceptability and the imbalance of power.