Career Alternative 1

Career Alternative 1: Working for Scott Boras, sports agent extraordinaire

Why? It's the same fucking job. I-bankers promote high valuations for companies of questionable quality ($607 million for a company with less than $1 million trailing revenue???!?!?!??!). Scott Boras promotes high valuations for players of dubious quality ($36 million for Derek Lowe??!?!?!?!?) Same fucking job. And apparently, Scott's fee is 5% of a player's total contract. Think about that.

Reportedly, for Alex Rodriguez, he put together a massive presentation (read management presentation) discussing his "investment highlights." In the presentation, based on "projections," he was expected to retire as the all-time leader in home-runs, RBIs, Total Bases, and whatever other offense metric you can think of. Somewhere in '99, someone probably predicted that Ariba would be doing over $1 billion in revenue in 5 years. And of course, I imagine the analysis showing how much additional revenue Alex could bring in would look something like this:

1999 Texas Rangers Operating Statistics
($Millions, except per ticket data)
1999 Texas Rangers Avg. Ticket Price¹: $25
1999 Texas Rangers Attendance¹: 1.5 million
1999 Texas Rangers Ticket Revenue²: $37.5

Transaction Synergies
Incremental Year 2000 Attendance attributable to Alex: 1 million
Incremental Average Ticket Price Increase attributable to Alex: $5
Incremental 2000 Revenue Attributable to Alex³:
1 million * ($25+$5) + 1.5 million * ($5) = $37.5

The acquisition of Alex Rodriguez (or "the Player") by the Texas Rangers (or "the Team") will double revenues in 2000
(1) Source: Texas Rangers media guide
(2) Source: Forbes magazine
(3) Does not take into account synergies from advertising or apparel sales


Some questions:
-Does Scott Boras get a massive lucite tombstone when he gets a client signed?
-Is the payment all up-front? Did he just receive a $12.6 million dollar check when Alex Rodriguez signed?
-Is he feeable on incentive clauses?
-Is there an opportunity for agents serving "middle-market" (read washed-up and/or crappy) players? (Imagine the pitch: We are a full-service agency representing middle market sports player. You the player are underserved by the bulges. Do you think that you're top on Scott Boras' list? Or on Arn Tellem's? We at Winthrop Prescott provide senior level attention throughout your entire playing lifecyle. Winthrop Prescott is the leading sports agency targeting the middle market. In the last 5 years, Winthrop Prescott ranked number 1 in the number of clients signed where the total deal value was less than $5 million¹)
(1) Source: SDC Platinum
-Does anyone else think that universities should be allowed to trade professors? ("We'll give you Cornell West and a post-doc to be named later for Stephen Pinker.")
-Are these questions signs that I've been in i-banking too long?

Hours spent at work: 13
Hubie Brown sez: Lots of upside.