David Falk: A Sports Agent

David Falk

David Falk is a sports agent who mostly works with the NBA players. He has worked with more than 100 NBA players including famous players, such as Patrick Ewing and Allen Iverson. His significant career was representing Michael Jordan for his entire career. In 1990’s, he was considered the second-most powerful person in the NBA because of his impact on the NBA. 

I found out an old interview of David with Charlie Rose, which was taken place in 1996. In the interview, David talked about how he achieved the success with Michael Jordan. When I heard about his story about the “Air Jordan” brand, I thought David is not only an agent but also a great businessman. He explained that there was no African-American role model in the team sports who can sell shoes. However, as David described, Michael was the guy who can break barriers. So, David tried to lead him to the next level by breaking the barrier of selling shoes. He also mentioned in another interview that he chose Nike because Nike was very small at that time. He believed Michael can change the shoe company, and he knew he had to differentiate from others to be successful.

Besides the success of “Air Jordan”, he influenced a lot on the relationship between the players and the teams. He was the key person in the 1995 NBA lockout. He contributed to increase the players’ share of the league revenue from 52% to 57%. Also, he brought the idea that the players, who make more fans to come to see the games, can get more salary than other players. Even though basketball is a team sport, David has been seeking ways to make more benefit to each individual player.

            

In the last part of the interview, David talked about an interesting opinion about young athletes. That was young athletes should stay at school as much as possible. He explained if a potential athlete were able to spend 2 more years at school, his would have more opportunities to choose. Also, he would be mature enough to start his career as a professional athlete. I was surprised when I heard this opinion because I had thought he wanted to collect money as much as possible even if his clients were immature or less experienced in the field.

            
What I learned from David Falk were sports agent has to be a businessman to bring the clients to the different level, and how much sports agent can earn depends on how much they market their clients. However, sports agent has to patiently wait until young potential athletes are mature enough to last their career for long time. 


Another Resource: Marantz, S. (1996, October 14). The man with a plan | Sporting News, The | Find Articles. Find Articles | News Articles, Magazine Back Issues & Reference Articles on All Topics. Retrieved October 26, 2011, from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1208/is_n42_v220/ai_18764598/?tag=content;col1