Super agents - How the rich and powerful are growing ever more influential

At the end of Paris-Roubaix, as Tadej Pogačar was escorted from the velodrome by his entourage, his agent Alex Carera briefly walked away from the superstar to shake hands with a longtime team manager who was standing nearby. That boss then turned to Cyclingnews and said: “There are very few people who are making as much money from cycling as Alex is.” There’s no way to verify that statement, but it’s almost certainly true.

Agents have had an increasingly powerful role within professional cycling since the turn of the century, but in recent years their influence – and personal wealth – has skyrocketed. 

According to the UCI’s latest figures, there are 103 registered agents worldwide in 2025, but out of the 1,322 male and female professional cyclists, an estimated 576 riders – a whopping 43.5% – are managed by one of the 13 agencies that have at least 30 riders. That’s a lot of contracts and futures controlled in the hands of a small number of people.

As the biggest agents are becoming richer and more powerful, teams are becoming more reliant on them in determining transfer policy and future direction, while the smaller and individual agents are being pushed aside. Cycling has truly entered the era of the super-agents.

The big operations

Anyone can become an agent – all they have to do is sit and pass a UCI exam, or be a close family member of a rider. For a long period of time, most agents presided over the careers of only a handful of riders and did everything themselves. 

Nowadays, however, the big management companies have multiple associated agents and talent scouts in a number of nations, and employ lawyers, accountants, tax experts and social media managers – they’re truly big operations. 

“The biggest difference is that small agents have one or two people working in the company, but we have agents in many countries and multiple people in various roles in our headquarters,” said Carera, who was 22 when he started the A&J All Sports management agency with his brother Johnny in 1997 when there was only a small number of agents. The longest-running agency still in existence, today they represent around 100 riders, among them Pogačar, Jasper Philipsen and Biniam Girmay.

SEG Cycling is the sport’s other mega-agency. It was also founded by two brothers, Eelco and Martijn Berkhout, and in fact, they were still at university studying sports management when they set up their agency in 2005. 

“Managers thought we were neo-pros, not agents,” remembers Eelco, three years Martijn’s senior. Today, more than 80 riders – including Olav Kooij and Tobias Foss – are managed by the Dutch siblings. 

In his two decades in the sport, the older Berkhout has noticed the increased responsibility he and his colleagues have taken on. 

“In the beginning, not every rider had an agent, but now it’s very uncommon that you find a rider without an agent,” he said. 

“The second thing that’s changed is that teams need us more, especially to build their roster, and because we’re a big agency, we can help a team go in a certain direction. If a team wants to go from a GC to a sprint team, we can help them out not only with a sprinter but with the support riders and building a leadout.”

SEG was crucial in Astana becoming a sprinting team to support Mark Cavendish’s successful ambition to win a 35th Tour de France stage.

“Those are great projects to work on, and it’s easier for teams if they cooperate with bigger agents rather than agents who only represent one or two riders,” Berkhout continued.

“It works both ways, but often teams approach us directly, and will tell us what they want, and then we’ll come up with options to make it happen. Team managers are very busy people, so they choose carefully who they speak to, and it’s more likely to be the bigger agencies.”

In recent years, the World Association of Riders’ Agents (WARA) has been created to ensure that agents’ voices are heard and consulted in discussions surrounding the governance of the sport – another sign of their growing power.

“Ours is the most expensive UCI licence and we get nothing in return,” Berkhout said. “The UCI say it’s an obligation; otherwise, we can't do our job, but we don’t get any say in the sport’s regulations, despite us representing the riders. We think that has to change as we are more and more respected as a job group within cycling.”

Agent wars and the cost of doing business

In an attempt to secure the right to manage a rider’s career – battles that have intensified in recent years – some agents, like Carera, point to their experience and catalogue of managing hundreds of riders over several decades, while others, like the Berlin-based TeamVision, dominate their home market. The Berkhouts and SEG go about it in a different way. 

Between 2015 and 2021, the SEG Racing Academy was a Continental development team that gave racing opportunities to riders from across the globe. 

“Around 10 years ago, we realised that the focus was turning from young pros to U23 riders, so we created the SEG Racing Academy because we wanted to have an influence on the development of riders and our future clients,” Berkhout said. 

“In seven years, 36 riders from our academy turned pro, so it worked out well, and that was our recruitment strategy for youngsters.” 

The blueprint for enticing riders evolved, however. 

“But after seven years, we saw more WorldTour teams investing in U23 development teams, and we didn’t want to compete with teams that we also deal with for riders, so we stopped,” Berkhout went on. 

“Now we focus our recruitment more on U17 and U19 riders, and this year we have started partnerships with three U19 clubs, who between them have 40 riders. We think of it as SEG Racing Academy 2.0.”

The salaries of cyclists continue to increase, with more than 60 riders now earning more than one million euros per year, as Cyclingnews reported in February. 

Cyclingnews has been told of some agencies dropping their fees below the typical 5%-7% marker to ensure a rider chooses them. Twenty years ago, when having an agent was viewed as a premium service, the percentage was far greater. 

“In the mid-1990s, I have heard that the average commission was 15%,” says Marc Bator, owner of TeamVision, considered to be the third largest agency. They represent a good chunk of the German and Austrian riders, as well as the Americans Matteo Jorgenson and Brandon McNulty.

Reducing fees, potentially bringing cycling in line with football where the governing bodies recommend an average commission of around 3% (the clubs pay 10% or more), would not be a good thing for riders, even if they would get to keep more of their salary, Bator believes.

“Everyone can draw their own conclusions on whether it makes sense to go lower and lower every three-to-five year period, and whether going lower means an agent has a better chance of attracting riders, but quality work has a price, and I don’t think it makes sense to go lower just to attract riders,” Bator said.

His co-director at TeamVision, Christopher Langer, argued that “offering a lower commission sounds to me like a desperate argument. We always discuss commissions with athletes at the very end of our conversations, because they should decide if they want to work with us based on the quality of our work and how we progress their career.”

Ending contracts early largely remains a taboo subject, but cases have been more frequent in the past couple of years, with Carera overseeing two high-profile cases: Cian Uijtdebroeks’s move from Bora-hansgrohe to Visma-Lease a Bike, and Maxim Van Gils switching from Lotto to Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe.

Bator insisted that “formally, a contract is a contract and there’s no freedom to break a contract; sometimes, though, it does make sense and a regulated transfer system is something we would support and we believe would help all parties involved.”

Agents representing women in cycling is on the rise

As well as the rise of junior and U23 riders excelling on the biggest stage, the other seismic change for agents has been the number of female riders they represent. 

“When I came into the sport, there were no agents for female athletes. For so long, riders were told this was the only offer and take it or leave it – there was very little room to negotiate,” said Chloe Hosking, Australia’s most decorated road pro. “But it started to pick up six to eight years ago, and now you’re seeing an explosion of agents coming into the sport and saturating the market.”

Some agencies, like Koers is Koers, only represent women, but there is a paucity of female agents – Emma Wade of Bespoke, who counts both Elisa Longo Borghini and Lizzie Deignan as clients, is the standout figure. 

TeamVision’s first-ever client was Lisa Brennauer, formerly one of the best riders in the women’s peloton, and today they represent a number of current female German riders. 

“The underlying assumption with the arrival of agents in the women’s peloton is that we have increased salary demands, but that’s not the rule,” Langer said. 

“Women’s cycling has developed extensively in the past decade, and teams are putting more resources into those areas, and thus the need for top-level female riders has increased. It may be a very simple capitalist approach, but what that’s done has increased the need, and that drives the market. With the increased professionalisation of the sport, you see more and more women that need the advice of agents to manage their contracts.”

Despite the prevailing winds, riders do not need to have an agent – they can go it alone. That’s what Hosking did throughout her entire career from 2010 to 2022. “I don’t think there’s one size fits all and it’s up to the rider to determine what’s best for them, but they don’t need to have an agent, and there’s no reason why an agent should be taking a cut of a minimum wage,” Hosking, who is now a sports lawyer, said.

“If a rider doesn’t feel comfortable negotiating their own contract, there is an alternative option: there’s nothing in the UCI agent regulations that says you can’t bring in a parent, advisor or a third party into the negotiation of a contract. There are examples in other sports where athletes have not sacrificed a portion of their salary to get a contract. The basketball player Allan Ray negotiated his own $70 million contract by himself, and then hired a lawyer to advise him for $5,000 an hour. He spent a few thousand dollars on the lawyer, but an agent would have taken $2.8m.”

Did Hosking ever regret not having an agent? “Probably, a little bit,” she said. “When you’re a rider, you’re so tunnel visioned and focusing on what you’re doing, and that's where an agent’s biggest value and ability can really show, in negotiating contract details, but also commercial deals which create value for the riders now and in the future.

"But at the same time, the skills I gained negotiating my own contracts from the age of 18 are more valuable to me now than if an agent could have gotten me an extra $1,000 when I was 20. The skills of self-advocacy and building networks in what is a small sport were invaluable.”

Super-agents are only going to become bigger and more common

In all likelihood, fewer and fewer riders will follow Hosking’s example – super-agents are only going to become bigger and more common. 

“Every year there are more agents, but it’s risky for new agents because it’s expensive to start and you’ve got to be sure you take good riders,” Carera said. 

“Right now, there are around 10 big agencies, but in the future, there will be more, and some will focus on men or women only. Smaller agents will continue, but it gets more difficult for them every year. How do they convince a rider when we can give them 1,000 examples of successful careers over 28 years?”

Berkhout agreed. “Our job is still developing, and we’ll become more major and more respected in the coming years. I think cycling is typically 10 years behind the football industry, and if you look to football the big agencies have gotten stronger and stronger,” the Dutchman said. 

“While I think there’ll always be solo agents – cases like Remco Evenepoel being represented by his dad will exist forever – I expect more agencies like ours who have performance centres and have a lot of employers. I even see more agents joining forces to make the big agencies even bigger.”