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US sports agents fear Jay-Z will take their clients
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 21 June 2013
Two months ago, Jay-Z sold his stake in basketball team the Brooklyn Nets following the launch of his newest company, Roc Nation Sports. Owning part of a basketball team and a sportsperson management agency amounts to a conflict of interest, or so say National Basketball Association rules. But now that Jay-Z’s new company is up and running he’s facing a conflict of another sort.
According to a report in the Sports Business Journal, many other US sports agents feel that the attraction of working with as big a celebrity as Jay-Z could be too much of a draw for many top players in American football, baseball and basketball. They also feel that this advantage may be unfair, as there is some confusion as to what the rapper’s actual day-to-day involvement with the new company will be, compared to the input of his partner in the new venture, existing agency CAA Sports.
CEO of the Entertainers & Athletes Group, Denise, White told SBJ: “The confusion comes in with what Roc Nation is doing for each individual client. I don’t think it is clear who they are representing and what they are representing each player for”. Some have also pointed out that only one person at Roc Nation Sports is currently a certified sports agent, Kim Miale, who is registered with the National Football League Players Association and was seemingly brought in last month for that very reason.
Jay-Z, Roc Nation President Juan Perez and Vice President Rich Kleiman have all applied to the Major League Baseball Players Association to become certified agents, but have not formally applied to the NBA, despite basketball seemingly being a particular area of interest for the company and Jay-Z in particular.
Nonetheless, Roc Nation now lists three sportspeople on its roster, despite the fact that only one of them, New York Jets quarterback Geno Smith, is directly represented by the company, under Maile (the other two are actually with CAA Sports directly). And Smith’s signing is now under investigation by the NFLPA, following complaints from other agents who claim that Maile broke rules about not using non-certified agents to recruit players – ie she used Jay-Z as a carrot.
So, even if Jay-Z and his pals do get their certificates from the relevant sporting bodies, they might find the sports management domain more tricky and political than even the pop star world they are used to.
