Imps Agent Fee Payments Fall By More Than £68,000

The latest figures have been released showing the cost of agents to each team in League One.

There’s some good news for everyone who feels agent fees are the scourge of our game. The Imps’ overall spend on agents has gone down from £213,775 in 2022/23 to ‘just’ £145,601 in 2023/24. That is still up from the £129,000 we spent in 2021/22.

The period covered is from the end of the winter window in 2023 to the same day in 2024, and it sees us 15th in the overall spend table.

Overall, there’s been a fall in agent fees across League One. In 2022/23, the overall spend was £5,694,614, but that has fallen to £5,127,913. The main culprits were Derby, who spend £1,064,645 in the previous period, but ‘just’ £434,465 this time out. That’s still the biggest spend in the division. Fleetwood also saw their spend fall, from £506,092 to £396,184. Value for money.

 

The Imps come out in the upper part of the bottom half of the overall spend. Kudos to Cambridge, who spent just £15,680 on agents, with Carlisle, Cheltenham, Northampton and Shrewsbury all coming in at under six figures. Stevenage, who we often hear don’t have anything like the budget of all the huge clubs around them, somehow managed to find just shy of £150,000 for agents’ fee – more than little old Lincoln City.

There were a few surprises in the division below us. Three clubs spent more on agent fees in the basement division than we did – Forest Green (£266,191), Salford City (£160,147) and, obviously, Wrexham (£347,027). Two clubs were within a few quid of us, Bradford City (£137,998) and Stockport County (£143,148). Overall, spending in League Two went up, from £1,671,168 in the previous period, to £2,421,036.

If ever a reminder of the gulf in money between League One and the Championship, only six clubs spent less than £1 million on agent’s fees in the second tier, with just one, Rotherham, spending less than half a million. Championship spending is also up, from £36,317,802 to £61,340,767.

Finally, as if you needed another pointer as to what is wrong with football, the Premier League balked at collectively handing £900 million over to the EFL as part of the deal for football. That figure would be split over six years, giving a total of £150 million per year. Between Feb 23 and Feb 24, Premier League clubs spent more than £409 million on agents’ fees, including £126,180,237 between just Manchester United, Manchester City and Liverpool.

Premier League agent fees have risen from £318,219,426 in 2022/23 to £409,592,929 in the current period. Still, it’s greedy EFL clubs that are the problem.