1. Legal action against the FIFA Football Agent Regulations
The new one FIFA Football Agent Regulations, approved on December 16, 2022 and partially entered into force on January 9, 2023, significantly restrict the freedoms of football agents. Multiple legal proceedings have been launched in national courts, with European critics questioning the legitimacy and proportionality of the rules.
Despite the fact that many agents took the FIFA exam on April 19, 2023, the implementation date of October 1, 2023 is uncertain. The Dortmund District Court has suspended the application of the FFAR in Germany, meaning that the commission restrictions do not apply there during the suspension period.
The German precedent may inspire other judges in other countries to make similar decisions, delaying or preventing the full implementation of the current regulations. However, the suspension does not constitute a final legal ruling; the procedures continue but signal serious objections to FIFA.
2. What the FIFA Football Agent Regulations change for agents
The regulations rewrite the framework in which an agent works. Three elements carry most of the weight: a licence obtained by examination rather than by simple registration, a cap on the service fee expressed as a percentage of the remuneration of the player or of the transfer compensation, and a restriction on acting for more than one party in the same transaction. Alongside those sits an obligation to disclose the engagement and the fee to the governing body.
The objections raised against those elements are competition objections. A fee cap fixes a price in a market, and a rule adopted by the body that also organises the competition is a rule adopted by an association of undertakings. The defence is that the restrictions pursue legitimate objectives, namely contractual stability, the protection of minors and transparency of payments, and that they go no further than those objectives require. That is the argument the national courts have been asked to test.
3. What an agent should do in the meantime
Uncertainty about a rule is not a reason to ignore it. An agent who works across borders is in practice subject to whichever framework applies where the transaction is registered, and a suspension obtained in one jurisdiction does not travel with the file. Assume that the rules apply unless you hold a decision that says otherwise for your own situation.
Put the engagement in writing before the work starts, rather than after the deal closes. State who the client is, what the mandate covers, how long it runs, how the fee is calculated and when it falls due. Where the client is a minor, check the additional conditions that apply before you sign anything at all. Keep the correspondence, because a commission dispute is decided on what can be shown, not on what was understood.
Finally, watch the interaction with national rules. A licence at international level does not replace an authorisation required under regional legislation for paid placement, and the two regimes impose separate conditions. Meeting one and ignoring the other leaves the same exposure as meeting neither.
4. Where a dispute about the fee of an agent ends up
The forum depends on what the parties agreed and on who the parties are. A dispute between an agent and a club with an international element normally goes before the competent body of the governing association, with an appeal to arbitration. A dispute between an agent and a player resident in Belgium, based on a mandate governed by Belgian law, usually belongs before the ordinary courts unless the contract validly points elsewhere. Read the dispute clause before you rely on it, because a clause naming a body that has no jurisdiction over that type of claim simply delays the case.
Deadlines are the other trap. Claims before sporting bodies are subject to short limitation periods, counted from the moment the fee fell due and not from the moment the relationship broke down. A claim that would succeed on the merits is regularly lost because it was filed after that period expired.