Intermediaries are increasingly more important in the transfer market operations. This is what FIFA has recently unveiled focussing on negotiations from January 1, 2013. According to the FIFA rules, three parties are active in a transfer (the buyer, the seller, and the player). These parties have the possibility to get the services of one or more intermediaries officially registering them when documents relative to a deal are transmitted to FIFA.
From 2013, 19.7% (13.672 out of 69.505 international transfers) of all international transfers involved at least one intermediary. Intermediaries representing the players are the most common (10,282 transfers since 2013), followed by intermediaries representing the buying clubs (4,854) and those representing the selling clubs (1,154). In 2017 alone, 1,190 international transfers were made in which the buying club relied on an intermediary: an increase of 4.9% compared to 2016, as well as a new record.
The use of intermediaries is decidedly less common in case of transfer of a player: in 2016 “only” 318 transfers of this type were completed.
Total fee expenditure for commissions has been $1.59 billion since 2013, of which 97.2% are from UEFA clubs, which have spent a total of $1.54 billion, while the rest of the world spent only $45 million.
