What started as a few ideas shared over a braai between two mates is now the reigning ‘Young Agency of the Year’ at the Hollard Sport Industry Awards, with over 30 clients and plenty of ambition.
ProAthlete Management Agency was first registered in 2016, but only started operating in 2020, when a former insurance executive and a project manager at Eskom came together to realise their dream of running their own player management agency.
“We weren’t happy with the industry at the time and we wanted to do something a bit different than just the normal player management,” says Warren Swartz, who takes care of the day-to-day running of the agency and is more hands-on that his partner Bradley Taaibosch, who still holds down his job at Eskom.
From the start, Swartz and Taaibosch set out to change the way athletes were managed in South Africa, using a rather interesting combination of related skills and experience.
Swartz is a former professional footballer with Wits University, but a serious knee injury cut short his career and he ended up in the insurance industry, starting out as a financial planner, but then going on to carve a niche for himself by building an insurance product specifically tailored to professional footballers.
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“I saw the gap, in terms of footballers not saving for retirement or getting themselves any sort of cover,” he says. “That’s because some of the stats are scary. Through our research we found that, in the UK, high-profile pro footballers who don’t save go bankrupt after about two years, whilst in South Africa, it’s the very next month after retirement.”
This dovetailed nicely with some of the strings to Taaibosch’s bow. An Eskom project manager he may be, but he also had an interest in pro footballers and how they managed their affairs, to the extent that he linked his studies to the field, completing a Masters thesis at the University of Johannesburg in 2019 with a paper titled “Factors contributing to bankruptcy amongst retired professional soccer players”.
No surprise to hear, then, that this remains a key focus of ProAthlete Management Agency, who aren’t the first industry members to lament the fact that many local footballers don’t set themselves up for life beyond the game. However, they might be the first agency to address this issue as a key part of their offering.
“We look at things holistically and we call ourselves an ‘agency with a difference’,” says Swartz. “We are trying to change things and prepare these players for life after football. That is the key difference we have over other agencies.”
That includes all new ProAthlete Management Agency clients, once they’ve signed their professional contract, sitting down with financial planners and starting to save for retirement. To this end, the agency has partnered with insurance broking group GIB, whilst it is also working with one of South Africa’s major banks to develop a car-leasing product, again, specifically tailored to professional footballers.
Education is another area of interest, with ProAthlete Management Agency encouraging its clients to use their time wisely between training and games, thanks to a partnership with Boston City Campus.
Those clients now number about 30 footballers – mostly youngsters – with young Mamelodi Sundowns goal-scoring star Jerome Karelse making the most headlines at the moment.
“He’s banging in goals right now and is one of the hottest strikers in the country,” says Swartz. “His future is very bright.”
They’ve also got a couple of rugby players and a triathlete on their books, and Swartz and Taaibosch are keen to grow into other sports, whilst also taking on interested coaches.
They’re also keen to debunk the myth that all sports agents are money-grabbing leeches, who don’t have their client’s best interests at heart, although Swartz concedes that his industry hasn’t done itself any favours.
“With most agents, you’ll hear from them when they’re doing the deal, when the agent gets his commission, and you won’t hear from them again until it’s time to renew the contract and time for them to earn commission again,” he says.
Swartz and Taaibosch want to change that with ProAthlete Management Agency.
“We’re trying to make the lives of our athletes better, so they don’t stress about the day-to-day stuff and they can focus on what they need to do on the field.”
Fair play.
Dylan Rogers
