Agent Fees.

Key Figures

Annual range (2019–2025)

~£24–£34M

Reported Feb–Feb periods

Typical PL ranking

3rd–4th

Behind Chelsea, Man City

PL total (2019–2025)

~£1.9Bn

All 20 clubs combined

Chelsea record (2023–24)

£75.1M

Highest single-year PL total

Global fees (2014)

\$236M

Licensed system, final year

Global fees (2019)

\$653.9M

Post-deregulation: 4× higher

Overview

Agent fees constitute payments to registered representatives who perform services in connection with player employment contracts and transfer agreements.¹ Manchester United's disclosed agent fee totals show the club consistently ranking among the Premier League's highest spenders, typically in third or fourth position, with reported annual totals ranging from approximately £24 million to £34 million between 2019 and 2025.²

The Premier League established voluntary disclosure from 2009/10, with mandatory publication taking effect from 2015 following FIFA's introduction of intermediary regulations.³ Published figures use a February-to-February reporting period and combine both club-paid and club-on-behalf-of-player payments into a single total.

Regulatory Framework: Three Phases

Licensed Agent System (2008–2015). FIFA operated a licensing regime requiring agents to pass an examination and maintain professional indemnity insurance.⁴ Global agent fees totalled $236 million in 2014, the final year before deregulation.⁵

Intermediary System (2015–2023). On 1 April 2015, FIFA introduced Regulations on Working with Intermediaries, abandoning the licensing system.⁶ The FA implemented mirroring regulations on the same date, with registration requiring a £500 initial fee and £250 annual renewal.⁷ FIFA introduced a recommended 3% commission cap, but the FA clarified this was "non-binding" guidance, leaving "clubs and players free to remunerate intermediaries as they wish."⁸ By 2019, global intermediary fees had reached $653.9 million - four times higher than in 2015.⁹

Re-regulation (2023–present). FIFA re-introduced a licensing regime through Football Agent Regulations effective October 2023, with service fee caps of 10% of transfer fees for selling clubs and 3–6% of salaries for players or buying clubs.¹⁰ On 30 December 2023, several crucial provisions were suspended pending the outcome of an injunction granted by the Dortmund District Court in Germany.¹¹ The FA Football Agent Regulations came into force on 1 January 2024.¹² From 2026/27, agent fees became a component of the Premier League's Squad Cost Ratio regulations.¹³

Premier League Context

Manchester United's relative position among Premier League clubs fluctuated: third-highest in 2019–2020, third behind Chelsea and Manchester City in 2020–2021, second behind Manchester City in 2021–2022, fourth behind Manchester City, Chelsea, and Liverpool in 2022–2023, and third behind Chelsea and Manchester City in both 2023–2024 and 2024–2025.²

One analysis documented that Premier League clubs paid £1.9 billion in agent fees across the 2019–2025 period.¹⁴ Chelsea set the single-year Premier League record with £75.1 million in agent fees for February 2023–February 2024, a figure that exceeded the entire EFL Championship total of £61 million for the same period.¹⁵

Impact of Deregulation on Fee Levels

The 2015 deregulation of football agents produced a pronounced escalation in global fee levels. In the final year of the licensed agent system (2014), global fees totalled $236 million. By 2019, with the deregulated intermediary system in place, global fees had reached $653.9 million - a 177% increase in four years.⁹

Governance Concerns

In April 2024, FIFA president Gianni Infantino stated that "English clubs paid $530 million in fees to agents from February 2023 to February 2024 - while paying just 6% of that amount - $32 million - to foreign clubs that trained and developed the players signed."¹⁶ Infantino characterised the disparity by stating "Most of this money is leaving football."¹⁶

A 2018 FIFA task force report described player agents as the central figures in a "plague" of conflicts of interest.¹⁷ Regulatory attempts to control fees through caps have faced legal challenges: the Dortmund District Court injunction of December 2023 suspended key FIFA fee cap provisions, calling elements of the regulation a "hardcore cartel."¹¹

Summary

Manchester United's annual agent fee spend of approximately £24–34 million between 2019 and 2025 places the club consistently among the top four Premier League spenders. The regulatory framework governing agent fees has shifted from licensed agents (pre-2015) to deregulated intermediaries (2015–2023) and back toward re-regulation (2023–present), with key provisions currently suspended pending German court proceedings. From 2026/27, agent fees will be incorporated into the Premier League's Squad Cost Ratio financial controls.