The Most Powerful Sports Agents 2025

A string of big deals gives Scott Boras up to $244 million in commissions, but the entire top 20 is swinging for the fences, with a combined $32 billion in contracts under management.

The 15-year, $765 million contract Juan Soto signed with the New York Mets in December gave the 26-year-old slugging outfielder the all-time mark for the largest deal in professional sports. But the agent who negotiated that landmark contract didn’t even need it to maintain his place atop the financial leaderboard.

Scott Boras, founder and president of the Southern California-based Boras Corporation, is once again the most powerful sports agent in North American team sports, with commissions of up to $244 million on an estimated $4.89 billion in active playing contracts under management as of December 31, 2024. That record-setting commissions figure represents a 28% increase from the last time Forbes published the agent ranking, in 2022.

Boras has now landed in the top spot nine times across the 10 editions of the Forbes list, which made its debut in 2013 and is sorted by the maximum commissions that agents can earn based on the standard fee percentage in each league. The lone exception was in 2019, when Boras dropped behind soccer super-agent Jonathan Barnett; however, Forbes has confined its 2022 and 2025 rankings to North America, setting aside Europeans like Barnett, who is now retired and has been accused of rape and trafficking. (Barnett has denied the claims.)

On this year’s list, Jeff Schwartz, CEO of Excel Sports Management and a powerful NBA agent, remains No. 2 with $113 million in maximum commissions on an estimated $2.84 billion in active contracts. Rich Paul, a fellow basketball agent and the founder of Klutch Sports Group, rounds out the top three with $111 million in maximum commissions on an estimated $2.77 billion in active contracts.

The top 20 agents, who are each set to collect at least $32 million in maximum commissions across the life of the playing contracts they have negotiated, together manage more than $32 billion in active deals. They include four agents from CAA—North America’s most valuable sports agency—and another four from Wasserman, which came in second in the agency ranking. Excel, with baseball agent Casey Close appearing alongside Schwartz, is the only other agency with more than one representative on the 2025 list.

No agent is in the same ballpark as Boras, who has 113 clients but could have matched Schwartz’s commissions total with just six of them: Soto, Bryce Harper, Corey Seager, Gerrit Cole, Xander Bogaerts and Anthony Rendon, who have each signed a contract for at least $245 million. The gap between Boras and the rest of the field is even starker because agents typically charge 5% in MLB, compared with 4% in the NBA and 3% in the NFL, where fees are limited by the players’ unions, and a standard rate of 4% in the NHL. That difference helps explain the breakdown of the 2025 agent ranking by sport: eight agents from basketball, seven from baseball, three from football and two from hockey.

The entire list has seen significant growth since 2022, however, as leagues’ record revenues have pushed up player salaries, especially in the NBA. Schwartz’s estimated contract total is up 32%, and Paul’s 103%, for instance, while WME Basketball’s Bill Duffy now ranks fourth overall among agents with $72 million in maximum commissions on $1.8 billion in estimated active contracts—up 77%, and five spots in the ranking, from 2022.

Endorsement deals were excluded from the tabulation of this list in recognition of the fact that, at many major agencies, separate marketing divisions handle all or much of the work around those contracts. (That approach effectively rules out agents from individual sports, such as golf and tennis, where athletes generally don’t collect salaries.)

Even so, the role of a sports agent is increasingly being stretched well beyond the boundaries of a playing contract, often in ways that don’t directly lead to income. Agents now frequently orchestrate training regimens for their clients ahead of league drafts. They cultivate investment opportunities and nurture athlete-founded businesses, sometimes continuing to serve as financial advisors well after athletes have stopped playing professionally. They might also be asked to coordinate media appearances, or secure box seats for a marquee event. And at CAA, for instance, Pat Brisson (No. 6 on the agent list with $62 million in maximum commissions) takes special pride in his hockey group’s ability to guide players through medical decisions, tapping a network of experts independent of team-employed doctors.

“You have to think about athletes in a different way now,” Excel’s Schwartz says. “The more complicated the world gets, the more hats you’re wearing as an agent.”

Most Powerful Sports Agents 2025

Agency: Boras Corporation

Sport: Baseball

Key Clients: Bryce Harper, Corey Seager, Juan Soto

Estimated Clients: 113

Estimated Playing Contracts Under Management: $4.89 billion

Maximum Commissions: $244 million