The location Jon Smith suggests for this interview is a hotel a mile or so north of Cockfosters. On emerging from the very end of the Piccadilly tube line, there are hedgerows and massive houses one after another, the homes of Premier League footballers among others. After a while, the pavement comes to an end but the hotel is still not in sight. Then, from behind a row of trees, a helicopter takes to the air. Oh, it must be in there then.
Smith, using air commas, which he acknowledges using as he does so (“Who does that?”), calls himself football’s “original super-agent”. At different times the representative of Diego Maradona, the entire England football team and James Beattie, Smith – 65 going on 45 – has witnessed the Premier League explosion from the inside. In recent years he has stepped back from the frontline, to act more as an adviser to people keen to invest in the game. These people invariably have a tonne of money. That might be why the hotel Smith calls his local has a helipad outside.
An hour in Smith’s company flies by. Digressions from the agreed topic include Brexit, Jeremy Corbyn, China’s influence on North Korea and the moral values of taekwondo. He not only has anecdotes – like the time he followed Jeremy Paxman to the urinals to gain a psychological advantage ahead of an interview – but also acuity and a massive amount of energy. He may not be a super-agent any more, but he is not short of things he wants to talk up.
One of these is his latest scheme, the Fans Agency. The plan is to open a player agency in which fans hold a stake. Raising its capital via crowdfunding – more than £500,000 is currently pledged on the platform Crowd Cube – investors will take a stake in the company and its profits. They will also, according to Smith, be able to trade shares in represented players and even have a chance to influence which individuals the company represents.
“I wrote this book called The Deal, a couple of production companies are talking about making it into a docudrama which would be very cool if it happened,” begins Smith, by way of introducing his idea. “Anyway, I was doing the book tour and a few fans came up and asked me about how to become an agent. They were really bright guys; knew tactics, understood the business of football a little bit. I thought, rather than just give them advice, it might be nice to wrap something around them.
“They’ve called it the Fans Agency, and I’ve become chairman. What’s gone around them is a professional setup. So it will be well-run but it will be nice [for the fans] to be involved. For them to be a shareholder and say ‘I’ve seen this lad play and he’s 15’ and this and that. And they’ve got a channel to fund it.”
Does that mean if someone invests in the Fans Agency they can get scouts to watch their 10-year-old? “If one of my shareholders sees your son playing, they’d be able to phone the office and out go the scouts to have a look,” says Smith. You’d go to anyone they suggested? “Yes.” There’s a rare pause. “If you have 1,000 phone calls a day it might be difficult. We’d have to break them out and say: ‘OK, going all the way up to Hartlepool to see someone who’s 10, we might have to deliberate over that.’ But essentially, yes. The system is set up to do that.”
Lest anyone get carried away, Smith is not bringing football supporters into his line of work purely from the goodness of his heart. “For me, it’s sentimental,” he says, “but because I’m a businessperson I’ve got an edge to the sentimentality. I just want to make money out of it. So the business will either fly and we’ll sell it to the big boys, or it will bounce along the bottom of the ocean and we’ll osmose it into something else. I’m hoping for two clients, just two clients, because the sort of money you’re earning now from players’ contracts these days are seven figures. It’s a big payout.”
Fair enough. That said, it is clear Smith has been doing some thinking about the fan’s place in the modern game. An Arsenal supporter (he is a long-time friend of Arsène Wenger) he is aggrieved at the treatment of stadium-going punters by their clubs. “I recognise that the fans have had an expensive ride,” he says. “It’s not so much the ticket prices, because the players are commanding lots of money now. But it’s things like the price of a hot dog. I know it sounds stupid, but that pisses me off.”
Smith gives short shrift to the idea agents have played their own part in raising the costs of following the game. The £211m spent by Premier League clubs on agents’ fees in 2017-18, he says, is a result of market forces. Meanwhile, he sings the praises of fan TV, those combative YouTube channels that air supporters’ grievances (his son runs a fan TV company, Ultimate Football Fan). He believes that supporters need to be listened to and “given a hug”.
Part of the sell behind the Fans Agency is that supporters are an undervalued asset. Smith believes this idea applies more broadly. He cites England’s World Cup viewing figures as proof that football reaches parts few others can. “When I came into football in the 80s, it was shit,” he says. “People were dying in stadiums, it doesn’t get any worse than that. Now it’s ‘the greatest entertainment on the planet’. Look how it touches people. Corrie on a good night will get five or six million. The Royal Wedding got nine. England v Croatia got 20 million and that’s without counting people on their devices. That’s almost half the nation. I don’t know another product that does that.”
Smith eventually ends the interview to head to London and supervise preparations for The Best Fifa Awards, which took place this week. As befits someone who has had a successful life, Smith is an optimist. He believes the bubble will not burst in the beautiful game any time soon. Indeed, its influence is only going to increase, he says. He also remains an enthusiast. The Fans Agency may sink or it may swim, but that does not mean there will be no other opportunities. Like a helicopter in Cockfosters, there will be one along in a minute.
