How Long Does It Take To Become A Sports Agent?

In the evolving world, sports have become a major part of the world. Becoming a sports agent is an extremely rewarding and challenging career. With an intense passion for sports and athletics, sports agents work in the industry to shape an athlete's career. 

A sports agent works hard to achieve their goals. Their roles include assisting the athlete's career, finding the right matches and teams, negotiating contracts and settlements between athletes and sports franchises or event promoters, managing their finances, handling public image issues, and others.  

Even though the career is full of challenging situations, it is surely worth working on. Becoming a sports agent does not technically require education but your experience in the field is valuable to get hired. To estimate the time to become a sports agent, it highly depends on what career path you choose. We will discuss this further in detail. 

How long does it take to become a sports agent? 

Sports agents are responsible for managing the professional athletic client’s career, finance, future life, and legal matters. The time you usually invest in becoming a sports agent is more on gaining experience rather than education. Usually, to become a sports agent, it takes about 8 years or more to gain education and experience of 5 years long before gaining the first position as a sports agent. 

A bachelor’s degree is a minimum requirement to land on this job, however, to advance your career you can continue higher education. 

Bachelor’s degree: 4 years

With fewer education requirements, typically to become a sports agent you could get a bachelor’s degree with majors to become a sports agent in sports management, sports administration, or sports business. However, the three major categories are law, business, and sports management. Under this 4 years program, a student is allowed to complete coursework in sports psychology, business law, sports business strategies, and sports marketing.

Experience: 5 years or more

Once you complete your education, you are required to gain experience. According to how the sports industry works, your experience is important to enhance skills and practically learn to manage tasks. 

An internship program gives you the opportunity to learn management skills, exposes you to prospective clients, and trains you under a specialized sports agent. After completing your internship program, you could also gain experience by earning a part-time job, online training programs, workshops, and others. 

Higher education: 2-5 years

After gaining experience you could land a job, but some students also choose to continue their higher education to gain higher earning potentials. Generally, an experienced sports agent charges about 10% while a fresher charges about 4%. Hence earning a master's and doctoral degree gives you career advancement and in-depth knowledge on the courses such as management for organizations, public relations practice & promotional writing, sociology of sport, interscholastic athletics, sports marketing, sports leadership, sports medicine, risk management, or the psychological. 

Conclusion

While pursuing any career, you must be well aware of the requirements and what the industry expects from you. Training yourself accordingly will give you an upper hand among the others in the competition. Gain experience and start off your profession to hike your rates gradually and earn better. The time you commit to learning new will be worth the wait.