Negotiating the Triangle: Players, Clubs, and Agents with Richard Motzkin

[Shirin Mollah] (0:06 - 0:33)
Today we're joined by Richard Motzkin, Executive Vice President and Managing Executive of Global Soccer at Wasserman, longtime player agent and educator. He's negotiated landmark deals in global soccer and now teaches the next generation of sports professionals. He also teaches sports law at Loyola Marymount University and it's great to meet you.

[Richard Motzkin] (0:33 - 0:35)
Great to be dealing, thanks for having me.

[Shirin Mollah] (0:36 - 0:40)
So what's something about your job people would never guess?

[Richard Motzkin] (0:41 - 1:39)
Oh what's something about my job people would never guess. I think people probably generally don't appreciate how sort of all consuming it is. If you ask my wife she'll say it's 24 7 365 and you know in that vein it is important to sort of at times put up you know some you know to try to find the right balance and put up some barriers in terms of when you're you know quote unquote not available but you know in the business that I'm in which is talent representation primarily you know it's sort of your clients sort of assume you're going to be available at all times which you know you sometimes do get those calls early in the morning at 3 a.m. So it's you know I think that's part of the job I think people don't necessarily understand or appreciate that it really you know like any job if you want to be really good at something it takes a lot of hard work and you have to and this job certainly has that in terms of sort of the time commitment element to it.

[Shirin Mollah] (1:40 - 1:53)
Yeah we talked a little bit about your journey and I thought that it was interesting how you got there. You had your own business and you're a lawyer as well and you went to UC Berkeley. Would you want to tell me a little bit about your journey?

[Richard Motzkin] (1:54 - 6:02)
Sure yeah and I think part of like anyone's journey also involves sort of hopefully learning lessons that you can pass on to you know the next group of highly talented young folk but yeah I grew up in LA and I went to college at Berkeley and law school in LA and I went and I started my career at a big law firm downtown called Latham and Watkins but I do believe that when you're young you know we you know sometimes as you sort of go through life you forget what you're passionate about maybe or you get caught up in what you're doing but I think at our core we all have different things that we're passionate about right it might be for me as a young kid it was always sports it might be art it might be medicine it might be you know rocket science you know and I think one of the things I always try to impart to people as their you know and students as they're trying to figure out their their own journey is you know go back to your core and your essence and what was something that motivated you and what was something that excited you because ultimately I do believe that if you can be in a profession or your avocation also ties into something that you're passionate about it'll make it a lot more enjoyable you know but one of the lessons I also say is be flexible so I didn't grow up with soccer I grew up with the traditional American sports baseball basketball football I played them all I loved you know back in the day there was something called a newspaper and you know the sports page came every morning the LA times and I'd have my cereal and I'd read the sports page literally front to back and all the stats this is before computers and before the internet and I just loved consuming sports and knowing about sports and all the sports but soccer wasn't really a sport that I that existed but fast forward as I mentioned and I was working at a big law firm and there was a partner there who became the president of US soccer and was running the 1994 World Cup which is that you know it'll be here next year in the US it's going to be a major fun event an exciting time for the country and the last time it was here was 32 years ago and at the time that was for the 1994 World Cup this was the early 90s he presented me an opportunity to go become the in-house council and the general council for US soccer in Chicago and I had started working with him on a lot of the World Cup stuff a lot of the soccer stuff and it was one of those opportunities where as a young lawyer it was an you know great professional opportunity I'd never been to Chicago and you know I had to take a huge pay cut to do it but it sounded like a great opportunity and I took it and I went and spent the next two and a half years traveling all over the country and the world and learning everything you could about soccer and the World Cup and dealing with marketing people and venues and players and on and on and it was an incredible professional and personal experience and of course I fell in love with the sport I got to know the sport and after the World Cup in 94 ended I started my own business representing many of those stars off that World Cup team Alexi Lawless, you know Eric Winall, the Tab Ramos, John Harts, you know all of whom many of whom now are broadcasters and coaches and I still represent them in their that capacity I grew the business for 12 years and Wasserman bought my business when Wasserman then which was almost 19 years ago which is crazy how time flies was effectively a startup sports agency and at the time there was about 20 people here in one office and now you fast forward to today and Wasserman now is not only in the sports business but we're big in music and entertainment we have something like 50 offices worldwide and about 5,000 people who work here so it's you know the journey all along has been really fun and especially over the last few years to see what's happening with soccer and global football as we call it you know here abroad men women it's really it's really fun and exciting time to be you know be part of what has been the you know

[Shirin Mollah] (6:02 - 6:27)
decades of the labor of love you have a lot of experience in you know this global soccer in different countries so it's a very good perspective in economics so a question that we always look at is salary caps labor mobility and you know monopoly monopsony and other aspects but how do you think that those dynamics feel when you're representing an athlete

[Richard Motzkin] (6:28 - 8:20)
so what I would say is as a starting point you know when you're representing an athlete it's you know and it is a global game and so two things you need to know the rules and regulations of each jurisdiction that you're dealing with right whether it's domestically when you're dealing with you know major league soccer nwsl or quite frankly all the american pro sports leagues you need to know what those collective bargaining agreements entail you know similarly when you're going overseas and i'm bringing a player to germany or england or to port to spain france italy colin etc you know it is really important that you know the rules and regulations for those territories now part of what you know is what you also don't know and you need to be smart enough to say hey you know especially if you're going into a territory that has a different language that you don't speak you need to hire competent local council to assist you in that regard uh and so what i would say is you know as a starting point you know again in anything that we all do in whatever business that we do there's certain traits and characteristics that are important that will give you the greatest likelihood of success right and those are things like preparation those are things like having a good work ethic and then quite frankly it's being creative because at the end of the day you know your clients aren't hiring you just to accept status quo and if you know if all you're doing is doing exactly what everybody else does you're not really adding value and so you know your clients hire you to be creative to find loopholes to understand the rules and regulations but doing so in a way that allows you to maximize what is possible for them and be a difference maker so do you think that the

[Shirin Mollah] (8:20 - 8:26)
players value themselves economically or overestimate their brand power i think when

[Richard Motzkin] (8:26 - 12:25)
there's a lot of times where you see now more and more oh i'll just represent myself um you know our family members will do it and at the end of the day listen there are certainly situations where maybe their contract value is 100 percent set and there's nothing anybody can do right you know i think more often than not that's not true and so my question to those people or my general question would be you know if you hire an expert to do something that they are an expert in then the net result to you ought to be better than if you get it yourself right you know so for my taxes i'm going to hire an accountant because hopefully that account is really competent and good and ultimately will do the best job of effectively you know maximizing my revenue and minimizing my tax liability in a proper legal way no different than if you know you have a medical issue you're going to go to a doctor and so what i would say to that is look you need a an expert to help you not only just maximize one contract and whether that's you know hypothetically getting you more guaranteed money getting you more contingent compensation putting escalators in that allow you to do super well if you perform and all these other creative things that a good agent can do but then the other thing is you quite frankly you know there is a lot of times where both the club and the player want to have an agent be the intermediary to help with potentially disputes or issues and all of a sudden if you're like oh i'm going to do the contract on my own and not use the agent you know well guess what what happens if there's you know some sort of you know issue off the field or what if what if all of a sudden um you know they they end up trading you somewhere you don't want to go and you didn't have that no trade protection right so there are non-financial things that agents do and think about you know i look at like the luka donchich and anthony davis trade that made huge news in the mba this year and to me i'm not in the mba world but to me what's startling is that those guys didn't have no trade clause protections in their contracts and then i discovered as a result of that trading two players in the entire mba have no trade protection and to me there's only two in the entire mba that seems like something that um far you know a lot of these players have a lot of uh leverage in my opinion and the fact that only two of them have no trade protection was sort of shocking to me to discover because obviously first of all every player who plays in de facto can't get traded without their consent now under the new nwsl cva for the women's league nobody can get traded without their consent and obviously in other sports there's a far greater number of players slash a higher percentage of players that have no trade protection but again that's just one example that while it might not be an economic uh it not might not be directly an economic example it has huge consequences because by way of example luka doncic by being traded from the dallas mavericks his next contract will cost him a hundred million dollars between what he's eligible to receive because dallas he could have received what's a supermax contract he no longer can receive that plus the tax benefit of being in a texas that has no state income tax versus california so that trade cost him a hundred million dollars on his contract over five years so those are also things that agents think about and experts think about when negotiating contracts that go far beyond just how much is somebody getting paid to play this

[Shirin Mollah] (12:25 - 12:33)
year i think you touched on uh cbas so collective bargaining agreements um how do they um how do

[Richard Motzkin] (12:33 - 19:15)
and league structures affect players leverage no i mean they affect them greatly because ultimately right this collective bargaining agreement yeah is what dictates the terms and conditions between you know between labor and management um and it not only affects the existing players in the league but it also affects you know prospective players in the league because by way of example right the nfl says you have to be you know either a certain age or three years in college before you can even enter and that's a cba requirement or the mba says you need to be a year out of high school things like that so it not only affects those who are there but it affects others as well so it's important to sort of first and foremost understand what those rules and regulations are and as each new negotiation is happening hopefully quite frankly the cba the players association who is representing the group and hopefully they're also as they're negotiating subsequent cbas they're talking to individual agents who deal with the individuals in real time and i'll give you one example a handful of years ago um in 2021 we ended up having to sue the nwsl to allow a 15 year old soccer player to play in the league for the nwsl olivia moultrie and at the time there was no cba that existed and our position was look mls allows under 18 players to sign so literally you as a league are prohibiting a player to sign just because she's a girl if she was a boy she could sign in the boys league and at the time there was no cba that existed they hadn't done the first cba between the players association and the league but as part of that we were also speaking to the pa and saying look if for mls in the men's league they don't have a prohibition about signing players under 18 so please don't include that in you know and meanwhile the league was of course as part of that cba and in the face of our lawsuit was saying okay we want to we you know we don't want players under 18 being allowed to sign and technically they could have agreed to that with the players association and we would have had to accept that because once there's a cba then it's exempt from antitrust law fortunately the players association sided with us and as part of the cba there was no restriction we reached a settlement and now the league you know not only you know does in fact sign under 18 players they have a whole rule that encourages teams to sign under 18 players and they make a lot of noise and publicity they had a 14 year old play last week and when you know and they announced that she was the youngest player to ever play in the league and you know for me when i see those stories you know for one it makes me smile because we fought for two plus years to make that reality happen and it was a great example of sometimes you're not me you're not we were doing it because it was the right thing to do there was no reason a 14 year old or 15 or 16 or 17 year old girl should be treated differently than a boy but it also it was you know cost us a lot of time money and expense but it was the right thing to do and you know it's one of those sort of battles and i'm really proud that we were you know industry leaders and we took a strong stand and you know something that ultimately has benefited everyone and olivia mulchrey who was the player and she's now i think she just turned 20 um she's great she was she's you know she gets all the credit in the world and anytime uh somebody who's under under 18 and they make their professional debut they should thank olivia mulchrey because she really deserves all the credit in the world she you know she fought hard for that right for all the other players so um but that's one thing and then going to the cba thing the other thing is what i would say is our job is also to find loopholes in the cba right and so we're i'm a lawyer you never can you never can think about an account for every possible scenario and so i'll just give you a recent example which is the last cba for the mls was done in 2020 and it yeah and they got read by during covid but it goes through 2027 you know at the time there were no they have different designations of players in mls there was no the the way that free agency works as part of the new cba is if you want to become a free agent or if you qualify for free agency after a number of years of service in an age you can only get as you know as an incremental increase off your existing salary so i had a player who was making a million dollars a year who got transferred a year ago who got bought a year ago by a club in mexico and this is all public for seven million dollars um and then a year later there were multiple clubs who wanted to buy him back for say 10 million dollars which is what it cost to buy him back and make him a designated player you know making three plus million dollars so he's making a million dollars he left to make two plus million dollars and now a year later they wanted to buy him back what was the problem according to the cba they had never contemplated a situation where somebody left the league who would have otherwise been a free agent but then was coming back as a designated player and so you know it was extremely complicated it involved seven parties but the point is you have to figure out ways to work within that to um get the result that we wanted which we were able to do but it was very complicated one last example when i had another free agent as part of the negotiation with the team i said i wanted that player to if he was signing with that team as a free agent i wanted a no trade clause and again we talked about it earlier and neither neither the league nor the pa had thought about that and i and so i went through the whole cba and i said when there's the free agents there's restrictions on salary but there's no restrictions about getting a no trade clause and in this case this person was accepting less money to go to the city that he wanted as opposed to more money where he was being offered elsewhere so again ultimately i was able to achieve that result for a client but that's the kind of thing cba's are never going to cover everything you know and so you try to figure out solves for a client in their particular interest um in a creative way so what are the key economic

[Shirin Mollah] (19:15 - 19:22)
factors that drive player moves between the mls and europe you know what i say is you should

[Richard Motzkin] (19:22 - 22:20)
picture any player move as a triangle and so the triangle involves three parties right there's the selling club there's the buying club and then there's the player and in the triangle each party is part of two of those elements right so you know the selling club and the buying club have to agree on a price the selling club and the player have to agree on effectively a termination agreement and the buying club and the player have to agree on a salary so in any agreement all part in any transfer of a player abroad um it can't happen unless everybody agrees to all elements and ultimately it's all a negotiation that's going to be driven by one how much is the buying club willing to spend on a player all in meaning you know the transfer fee the player salary over let's say it's a four-year deal all the other intended fees that come along with it whether it's agent fees or solidarity payments or training compensation there's all these other things in soccer and ultimately there's how much money the buying club will spend on the entire package of say a four-year deal and then on that four-year deal how much money does the selling club want from that because that's what will be left over for everybody else and so there's all these different negotiations that are going on and ultimately it comes down to who wants the deal to happen the most is this being motivated by the player who really really wants to go overseas to this that club is it being motivated by the selling club who says hey i've only got a year left on this guy's contract and so i just want to make some money so like i'm trying to sell this player now because i don't really want to resign them i just want to make some money is it being motivated by the selling club because this club has i'm sorry that that's the selling club the buying club because they say you know that player is the best player in the world born in 2004 and to the best 21 year old and like we desperately want this player so we're willing to sort of stretch because that's the player in the position so there's a lot of factors that go into it um and you know sometimes all the pieces can come together and it's all about compromise and you know sort of what's you know who's really driving it in terms of whether or not a deal gets back it's done i mean it there it's not easy so and you need to which goes to a much broader theme which you know for me the most important thing in business and in life is relationships period flat out more important than money more important than any deal and so you know i always tell my students and people that work with me prioritize relationships more than anything full stop and that's what actually ultimately probably allows most deals to get done or not get done how one treats relationships

[Shirin Mollah] (22:20 - 22:47)
so in the united states we have closed league and then in europe we have open league and the economics behind it we look at competitive balance but competitive balance affects revenues revenues affect the wages the salaries a lot of things even broadcasting so my question is going to be do wage differentials between leagues presenting opportunity or a challenge when you're

[Richard Motzkin] (22:47 - 27:10)
representing talent well i'd say are you a half-class full or half empty so you know i always think it's an opportunity you know and start with the general premise that those of us who make a living in sports are fortunate right at whatever in whatever way you're doing it right there you know and you know there's a lot harder ways to you know earn money and i do again part of what i counsel all the folks who work with me and my clients you know is also like just be appreciative like you know and and be good humans and acknowledge that you know um you know we're fortunate to be working in sports living in sports and doing this as something we're passionate about that we enjoy as our applications so start there um but i think of it as an opportunity because ultimately uh again you know it uh the sports not just soccer football but all sports are growing pretty rapidly and the opportunities are pretty enormous and not that anything is recession proof um as we're living in pretty turbulent and crazy times at the moment uh and you know it's pretty chaotic and we don't know whether the market's up or down or the world's up or down on a given day at the moment but the truth is you know sports are an outlet sports are diversion sports or something and entertainment that you know regardless of how the economy's doing you know it's something that people will always gravitate toward and um want to consume and so you know so in my mind it's always an opportunity and then it's about as we talked about a little bit earlier understanding okay you know in the u.s american landscape usually there's salary caps and again some are hard caps some are soft caps some have you know basketball you know luxury taxes or baseball you know once you exceed certain and it's about understanding and educating yourself on how each system work whereas in europe you know they now have a bit of a you know a financial fair play model that restricts you know sort of how much a club can spend based on the revenues that they receive um but you know they're but it's but so that's a level of restrictions but you know salary caps and european leagues typically are don't work um but you do have wage disparity in all sports right and so one has to ask those questions right you know in in you know in england for many years now it's been sort of you know the big three of sort of manchester united uh sorry manchester city chelsea you know in Liverpool and manu that spend the most money and typically are winning one of those fours typically winning the league every year and in germany you know with almost very few exceptions it's been you know byron munich winning and you know and so but you have that in baseball too the disparity in baseball's massive here and i you know i think there's no right or wrong answer to this but i think if you're starting a sort of sports league from scratch and you had that opportunity you would want to create sort of figure out a system that allows for parity and by the way that also you know i the model that has talent and owners sharing in revenue generation to me is smart so that you incentivize everybody to collaborate and work together and generate revenue but i also do think personally when you have the same teams winning year year by year i don't know i think personally i think that gets a little stale and boring um you know europe has the promotion relegation thing so it keeps of course the bottom part very fascinating who's going to go up and down and that financial differences you know they say the most valuable game in sports is the wendley game that has you know the promote the final promotion game from the championship to the premier league is worth 200 million dollars you know ballpark now so that certainly keeps it exciting um but uh you know i think i think that it's uh you know the wage disparity issues and how that affects revenue generation are certainly fair questions and whether owners pool their funds or they're they're completely independent um you know that it's really there are divergent theories on that and every league uh you know sort of just you know has a slightly different system

[Shirin Mollah] (27:10 - 27:24)
with when it comes to all of that so you mentioned a little bit about promotion and relegation uh there is something in the news that just came out with uh soccer about that in america but i want to start off saying how do you think american soccer is positioned globally from

[Richard Motzkin] (27:24 - 31:19)
a labor market standpoint when you say from a labor market standpoint i think that i'm not you know there's a lot of ways you can answer that question but let me start with the following uh soccer in general for the us is positioned globally as a ever growing ever interesting ever fascinating uh you know opportunity um and uh certainly will only continue with the world cup coming here next year all eyes of the world will be on the u.s and defacto mls and nwsl will have olympics in 28 which is a little smaller scale but then we'll have the women's world cup in 31 so the you know the true trajectory of the sport's going to continue to grow what also will help the sport grow going to your labor question to me still is you know the more americans that we can have that go overseas and perform at the highest level in champions champions league and perform for their clubs plus the u.s teams doing well the women are rock stars and have won olympics and gold medals the men still you know need to perform in big tournaments especially but the more and more we have the americans that go overseas and do well it helps so for example you know we're in the now the semi-finals of champions league but we just had more players play in champions league than we ever had this this season i think it was 13 total um and over time you want to see those numbers grow because you want to see americans performing at the highest level and we have players like christian polisic at ac milan or weston mckinney at the eventus who are not only performing at a high level in western's case he's the captain of the team now and uh you know and those are the kinds of things you didn't have 10 15 20 years ago um and so and then the other thing is as those players perform though the international clubs come over and they continue to sign more and more young players because quite frankly the american players are also viewed as cheaper right to go sign the top young brazilian and argentinian player cost tens and tens of millions of dollars to do a young americans a million dollars right and so they're still viewed as you know good risks or potentially really really good investments um and you know the last thing i'd say is this generation is now growing up both boys and girls with mls and nw cell and so you know my generation didn't grow up with professional soccer um but now as this generation is growing up and professional soccer is part of the norm it's part of the landscape you know young kids can see okay there's an opportunity for me to be a professional soccer player and now there's facilities and infrastructure and massive investment in north america and in soccer and these kids growing up are the beneficiaries of this and so it's only natural the labor market's going to continue to increase it's going to continue to create incredible opportunities the one thing i would say though is what's interesting and something that mls needs to look at in every other league in the world there's pretty significant either restrictions on the number of foreign players who can play or a requirement to give their domestic based players either playing time or rosters and we don't have that at the level here that they do overseas so more and more you do see a lot of teams in mls that have the vast vast majority are international players and quite frankly almost no americans who are getting playing time or so one of the questions the league needs to ask themselves going to your labor question is you know if we want to be a league that's giving opportunities to our domestic players

[Shirin Mollah] (31:19 - 31:39)
we need to look at those rules so from um recent news on promotion and relegation and soccer how do you think it's going to change um not only the you know the the athletes the game of the the leagues itself but kind of the culture in america when you say recent news are

[Richard Motzkin] (31:39 - 35:33)
you speaking about the usl saying that they want to do promotional allegations how are you referring okay so look the usl is a second division league at the moment right and and you know below mls in the professional soccer um you know when you look at professional sports models in europe they from day one it was a promotion relegation where you know the the you know from each tier below say the top three teams go up and the top and the bottom three teams go down and as i mentioned earlier not only does it make the race at the top exciting it makes the race at the bottom exciting as well um and financially uh you know uh either very rewarding or very if you go up or potentially catastrophic if you go down right so it's it's uh significant um in american sports it's never no league's ever been built that way and in american sports it other than when somebody sells their club or there's expansion it's a closed system of 30-ish owners you know depending on how many teams there are in a given league and so they're competing for football the super bowl baseball the world series you know soccer and the men's side mls cup so that's that's what we've always grown up with and that's what the american sports system has known um quite frankly the certainty of that system has allowed billionaire owners to build incredible facilities uh build brand new stadiums invest heavily because one while they might be losing money year to year their assets appreciating greatly because it's a closed system with a very finite number of these toys and so you know at least even if you're you know uh maybe spending more money than you're taking in your assets appreciating rapidly and as a metric an economic metric you could have bought an nwsl team five years ago for probably five million dollars ten million dollars and the most recent one sold for 250 million dollars so you know mls you know uh the most recent one the branch i sold for 500 million dollars and 15 years ago you could have bought one for you know 40 million so you know 50 million right so these things they're appreciating tenfold in a short period of time you're obviously losing some money along the way but you're still doing okay financially but it's in large part economically because they know there's they're not going to get relegated and it's not part of the american culture uh so what usl has now said is look we're a second tier division we're going to build tiers below that and we're going to have promotion relegation and look again as a soccer fan you know global football fan i think it's it's a smart thing for them to do i think it's exciting i think that they're going to have to have obviously certain standards that are met at each level to make sure that the teams that are coming up can meet minimal standards whether it's the facilities paying the players etc um but i think it's a smart thing for them to do um do i think it's going to happen anytime soon in mls no because that's not what these people invested in and agree to participate in look what i say never know you know years down the road if they say hey we want to grow and be you know in all over the country in significantly more places and they can figure out a way to create a tiered system to allow for promotion relegation that's reasonable i you know i'd never say never but do i think it's happening anytime soon no so i'm going to switch gears to

[Shirin Mollah] (35:33 - 35:44)
your your teaching uh we both teach at playa la merriment and it's it was so nice to meet you through that um so you've been in high stakes negotiations so what lessons from that do you

[Richard Motzkin] (35:44 - 38:45)
bring to your students you know it's been great to being back down to henna at the law school but what i would say is first and foremost when you're in any negotiation and again these are themes that you know i'll just repeat over and over right you need to prepare you need to not only understand what you're looking to accomplish in a negotiation but you need to understand what the other side needs it out of it you know no negotiation involves both sides and to be the best negotiator and to achieve the best result you need to understand what the other side needs out of it that's one two as i mentioned earlier right it's prioritizing relationships there might be when you're in sports when you're in soccer global football it's a small world right you are going to work with the same people over and over and there may be times where i have all the leverage in the world and there may be times i'm sitting across the desk from this very same person and he or she has all the leverage in the world but what's important for me and everyone's got their own philosophy even if i have all the leverage in the world i am never going to be one of those who's going to get every last penny out of every deal because that's not healthy for a long-term relationship with somebody because ultimate and by the way it's not in the best interest of my client even if i could get every last penny because you know i always sort of say if you get to that place where it's slightly uncomfortable for both sides you're maybe not getting as much as you want and they're like giving more than they want that's probably that's the right result right but the important point is um as i mentioned earlier there's so many non-financial factors that go into negotiations that go into relationships that once you're done with the deal you're working with these same people over and over and it might be your client has some issue off the field that has nothing to do with soccer but guess what if you've had a negotiation that's been respectful and professional and at the end of the day is prioritize relationships when something's happened off the field and i call that gm or sporting director or club president say hey i need your help with something boom they'll do it right away you know if you've been in a hole and you've treated them poorly and you've basically taken advantage of them they're going to be like hey sorry to hear that good luck right and those are the things that people might not think about in negotiation but they're important because i have a long term view of everything it's not just one negotiation it's not just one deal um so you know it's really important to understand what the other side needs out of the deal too and um you know and ultimately our job is to operate in the best interests of our clients and i think operating in the best interests of our clients as they said is doing a really really really good job obviously always the best job but also not leaving the other side you know feeling bad or hating you

[Shirin Mollah] (38:45 - 38:53)
either so how are students now approaching careers in sports differently yeah it's funny i mean as

[Richard Motzkin] (38:53 - 41:06)
you can imagine i we have a lot of young people that work here we have everybody wants to be involved in sports and whatever way and passion and what i would say is that my advice to students would be if you want to get involved in sports i feel like what i feel a lot of times people give up way too easily right and i think that um i think that i see that a lot that people just okay well you know and by the way okay that's fine but you know if you want to be involved in sports or in any profession you got to work hard so um the other thing i would say is be flexible i you know if somebody had said to me you know you're going to be an agent attorney when you grow up i said of course i love sports that makes sense if they said soccer i would have said zero chance i knew nothing about it right so it's about be flexible about where the opportunity is um it's about uh you know also i feel like a lot of times people want to sort of get ahead of themselves and like but it's like no like put in the work and by the way it's so much more important to do one thing really really really well then try to do too much and be mediocre at everything right when you stand out and when you add value that will get noticed that is translatable and that will create opportunities so you know it's an indirect way of answering your question about you know how do how do students you know um how are they approaching sports you know careers in sports it's more this is how i think they should approach it because i do think that most people approach it incorrectly you know because most people will just be like okay this is what i want to do and i'm like no there's so many ways to break into sports teams leagues agencies companies that sponsor you know uh athletes you know financial management like there's so many ways and i just think it like the focus needs to be broader not not so narrow okay so now

[Shirin Mollah] (41:06 - 41:20)
transitioning to uh athletes and their identity um many athletes struggle with the transition after sports what role can agents educators or former athletes play in preparing them no i think we

[Richard Motzkin] (41:20 - 43:43)
play a huge role and it's sort of it's why you know in a lot of ways i'm super proud that not only have i represent athletes for their playing careers but you know i now have clients who have represented for longer post-playing than they did playing right and as i mentioned earlier they're broadcasters they're coaches they're team and league execs and i think what we can do athletes have a very charmed life that you know they basically practice two hours a day you know they go golfing or they nap and like i think part of what our job is to do is to start preparing them for the real world especially you know in the back half of their career and so there are things that i talk to my clients about and say okay uh you know maybe the season's over and you've got time off or your team's been eliminated from the playoffs you know hey if you're potentially interested in broadcasting you know when you're done let's get you some gaskets get you some practice broadcasting or if you're interested in coaching let's go get you know go go to your coaching licenses so that when you're when you're playing days are over you already have your licenses or you know you're interested in the business side of how a soccer team runs go you know go shadow the president of the club for a couple weeks and you know encouraging the athletes to do that those kinds of things and read books and you know um make them more well-rounded individuals or things that i talk to them all the time about because every year especially my age i have clients retiring every year and so um to be able to help them transition easily is is you know into something they enjoy is important and it's really really hard when athletes are done by way no athlete is really ready to be done playing and they miss it terribly and then the other thing they're going to make way more money playing than they do once they transition in the beginning now if they're really good at what they do they can yeah come back and make a lot of money but that's all there's all these things you need to sort of speak about and you know and obviously you see a lot of really hard and sad stories of athletes who struggle post-playing because they they never thought about it they never planned for it and they didn't they didn't um you know and and it's it's not it's different than you know how most people

[Shirin Mollah] (43:43 - 43:48)
work in the real world what's one story or moment where you felt like you really helped

[Richard Motzkin] (43:48 - 49:29)
a client beyond the contract and uh there's so many and and that's like the most rewarding um you know i think of a number of stories that just sort of pop into mind in that regard i mean you know a while back i had a client who was you know uh you know 17 18 year old kid who was a top top draft pick who'd played you know at the youth national team level and in youth world cups and it was the number one pick of a team and he went in for his you know entry physical and it turned out he had hypocardial myopathy and a severe severe heart issue and here's a kid who was 18 years old literally was about to start on his professional soccer journey top top youth player in the country and now he's being told that not only is he lucky didn't drop dead while playing given the severe uh heart issues he had but he could basically never play soccer again um and let alone like work out and exercise at a high level and as you can imagine for anyone let alone somebody at that age it was traumatic hugely depressing and so you know working with that player to first and foremost take care of the medical issues and get them the best care and send them to the mayo clinic and you know have all the necessary procedures done and then help them then you know all of a sudden transition to go to college which he hadn't planned to do and you know um you know along the way he's now a very successful coach but that's you know that's one i had another client who had his leg shattered in a horrific severe way uh who was about to go transfer to europe for tens of millions of dollars and that ended his career helping that player transition you know more recently Landon Donovan who's a long-time client um really really proud of the fact that um you know he came out about 11 years ago and he was one of the first athletes 11 years ago to publicly speak about you know mental health and his depression uh and um you know uh you know it's obviously not not as stigmatized today but you know it's still not something a lot of people talk a lot about even though you know as Landon uh very you know uh very eloquently put it you know if i blew out my knee everybody would like understand that but when i say my mind's blown or whatever and i and i can't function like people have a hard time understanding that or treating that with the same level of concern or severity and so um you know uh helping him supporting him through that helping him navigate those challenges and here's the guy who was the best american soccer player in the world yet like many many of us i mean all of us suffer depression and mental health issues at some level um you know helping him you know sort of navigate that and speak about that publicly and be comfortable with that so you know uh there's countless on the female side you know i've got um you know clients who had miscarriages and have had to help them through that and you know and again something that happens to a large you know a significant number of women have percentages including some of my family members and um you know but again i think a lot of times people also view athletes as invincible but they have the same issues in real world problems everybody else does and so um you know and i care about my athletes right they're they're they're you know my clients are like family and so ultimately it's you know it doesn't mean it's always good but you just got to be real and you care about them and you have conversations and we all help each other through stuff um you know and we learn from each other i mean last comment i'll make to make it on a positive note was you know one of the things i learned from landon landon was an elite soccer player he literally could have played anywhere in the world real madrid barcelona manchester united anywhere um but he chose uh you know i'm in a very competitive business and you know i i you know that's how i grew up and so for me i always think okay you know you should be playing at the highest level and competing against the best and the best and you know and for him he he came to the realization that he said i'd rather be home in la flying for the galaxy in front of my family and friends than sitting in manchester where it's cold dreary pouring rain every day and i don't know anybody and and for me it was a really good learning lesson because what landon taught me was you know what pursuing happiness is a wonderful life choice right you know and and by the way doing what you want to do not what everyone thinks you should do is also impressive because you know uh most most everyone else in the world is like no you should be playing here there it's like you know what he's the one who has to live that life so he's he's choosing happiness so good for him what's something you wish more people knew about the sports world it's not as glamorous as everyone thinks it is you know um when i'm in the office on saturday and sunday and you know working hard um to be on top of all my stuff and to deal with stuff you know it's it's i think everyone says oh you know it's all sexy and this and that but you know again it's don't get me wrong as i said earlier it's it's it's a wonderful application but um i think people have a you know don't don't have the perspective of sort of you know the grind and the you know just the challenges the day-to-day challenges that we face

[Shirin Mollah] (49:29 - 49:35)
in what we're doing what excites you most about where sports and sports careers are heading

[Richard Motzkin] (49:36 - 51:25)
i just think the opportunities are enormous um in sports i mean first of all for my sports soccer what excites me is just i've been doing this for decades now but to see what's happened over the last five years in particular for men for women you know domestically and internationally it's just exciting i mean i think for many many years soccer wasn't really put at the same level as all the professional sports in this country and i think we're past that now which is great and i think it's the number one sport in the world i think it's the most accessible and by the way for little girls and women it's you know the greatest opportunity quite frankly and so i just think there's so much momentum and so much excitement and so for me you know it for soccer specifically global football it's just a wonderful time and it's going to keep growing um what i say what i would say for sports in general is um there are so many opportunities you don't have to be an athlete to be involved in sports and there's and there's new opportunities you know nil didn't exist a few years ago and now it's a huge booming business and there's always new things that come along but again you have to roll up your sleeves and be creative and be willing to sort of go for it and and not and not be afraid to fail and take certain risks right i mean i left a law firm job to go move to chicago and make less than half of what i was making because i thought it was a good opportunity and so that's another thing about like you know you have to be willing to take some risks you have to be willing to fail you have to be willing to sort of put the work in but if you're willing to sort of follow all this stuff you know and be really good at what you do then it's uh you know the opportunities are there and it's exciting time and sports will continue to

[Shirin Mollah] (51:25 - 51:43)
grow thank you so much rich for taking the time to answer all these questions and having this discussion and getting to know more about what you do in this sports world it's a unique perspective especially in sports economics so thank you so much well thank you for having me

[Richard Motzkin] (51:43 - 51:48)
and thank you for all the good work you do and hopefully we'll connect soon again too