David Seligman

David Seligman is an Associate at Brandsmiths, where he is based in the firm’s Manchester office. David advises and represents various football clubs, players and agents/intermediaries on a range of legal issues. Indeed, he has been referenced by the European Commission in its report on the Economic and Legal Implications of the Transfer System. During the most recent transfer window, David advised Moussa Dembélé and Jeremie Frimpong on their high-profile transfers to La Liga and the Bundesliga.
 
1. How did you first start working as a lawyer in sport?
  
My approach into this is a bit different, it’s quite interesting. I grew up in North Manchester as a season ticket holder at Bury Football Club. When you support a team in the fourth division you sort of follow all the leagues. Big football fan: I watch it, play it. My knowledge of players is something I’ve always had a bit of a fascination about, it’s crazy – if you name a player, I’d tell you his last ten clubs and the transfer market, the business about moving players. When I went to university and did Law at Birmingham University, I was quite keen on that element of it. But whilst studying Law, I didn’t really like the actual degree. So, when I graduated, I was like, ‘I’m not going to be a solicitor, I’m going to be a football agent’. This was about ten years ago now, and about ten years ago to be a football agent you had to pass an exam, which you no longer have to pass as of 2015. The exam itself was really hard, the pass rate was about 5%. So, what you would have is loads of people who are agents who weren’t registered with the FA who’d do deals but wouldn’t be able to sign them off. What I did was I passed the exam after I graduated and got picked up by an agency. I worked as a football agent for three years alongside Tony Dorigo. Tony was a top player; he played for England, Chelsea, Leeds, Aston Villa and Torino in Italy. He was a great guy, he really helped me. We worked as agents for about three years and after that it sort of came to a natural conclusion as he got offered a role to be a full-time commentator in Doha. I was like, ‘Well, I’ve been doing this for three years, I’ve built up a really good network, I really understand the industry, but I’m 23-24 [so] maybe I should look to put that Law degree to use’. I then did the LPC but what I did was I approached a few firms in Manchester and said, ‘Look, this is what I’ve done for three years away from Law, what do you think?’, and I got offered the training contract straight away. That’s how I got back into law. I used to have a lot of French contacts and one of the final transfers I did (as an agent) was I moved a player called Mathieu Manset to Coventry City with a contact I know called Makan Fofana. We kept in touch and maybe when I was a trainee, I got a call from Makan. He said, ‘We’ve just signed this new player called Moussa Dembélé, we need a bit of advice on something’. So, I said, ‘Yeah, no problem’, [and] helped them out and in return I got a signed shirt! Then, about four or five months later, they said, ‘We’re owed some money from a club abroad, do you reckon you could help us get that back?’. I was like, ‘I’ll see what I can do’, this club was in Saudi Arabia, [I] wrote a few letters as a trainee and they just paid! So, I was like, ‘This is good’, and basically they were like, ‘You’re our guy, you’re our lawyer now’, and then quite a few other agents I started helping out on different bits of legal work and settlement agreements and contractual matters for them. It’s just snowballed from there, [I’ve] built up a pretty good practice mainly advising intermediaries/agents on the industry, on transfers, on disputes, and clubs on all sorts, and that’s sort of how I got into it. Although I was an agent before, I had this network that [had] sort of grown. At the same time as that, I started my Twitter account which – I don’t really do it as much anymore – built quite a lot of traction at the time. 

2. What are your career highlights so far? 

I’ve been fortunate that I’ve had a few really good results and really good experiences. I think the journey I’ve been on with Mansa Sports Management – which is Makan Fofana, Mamadi Fofana and Moussa Dembélé – is definitely my highlight. We [Makan and David] met when we were like twenty-two, moving a player to Coventry City, and now ten years on we just moved somebody to Atlético Madrid. We’ve been on this crazy journey where it’s not a client relationship anymore, we’re friends, the guys came to my wedding and all that sort of stuff. So, I think seeing their progression and Moussa’s progression really is a bit special, the journey we’ve been on – we obviously went from Fulham to Celtic, Celtic to Lyon, then Lyon to Atlético, it’s pretty cool. We’ve had some great moments on the way with like hattricks at the Old Firm, twice he’s scored braces against Man City in the Champions League, and obviously moving to Atlético was amazing. 
 
That’s probably the stand-out, but one particular case actually is – a big highlight case for us – which isn’t football-related, it’s a rugby league doping case – UKAD v Ryan Bailey. Ryan Bailey was a top rugby league player, [he] played for Leeds Rhinos for twelve years or something, but near the end of his career he refused to drug test. Me and my colleague represented him, along with a barrister who is now a QC. We successfully argued that he bore no fault or negligence in refusing a test which has never been done before and never been done since. As a result, he was not banned at all, he received no punishment whatsoever for refusing a doping test. 

3. What are some of the key trends in the sports industry to look out for this year? 

From a clubs’ point of view and an associations’ point of view, I think they’re going to have to have a look about diversification in raising revenue. Obviously, COVID’s had a horrific impact on the sports industry; no fans is creating big problems for many clubs financially, sponsors as well, so clubs are going to have to look to fill that gap. It’s not going to be as simple as, ‘Right, no more COVID anymore’ [and] all fans pile into the stadiums. I think it will be a very different experience going back and I think there’ll be many fans who won’t want to go back. It’s [a question of] how do you balance that? For instance, I think EFL clubs have, particularly lower down the pyramid, done quite well in selling the games online to watch. Because there’s no overheads – if you have 2,000 people in a 10,000-person stadium, your overheads are huge, whereas if you have 2,000 people watching it online, there are fewer overheads – it works. I’ll tell you what doesn’t work though – having 1,000 people online and opening the stadium up for 1,000 people because the overheads are too big. So, I think that is going to be interesting to see how the return of fans impacts financially and logistically. That’s the obvious one [trend]. 
 
From a sports law point of view, I think there needs to be more access to justice. Some disputes don’t get litigated because it’s too expensive and there’s no means for a fast-track, small claims type [of] dispute resolution in many sports. LawInSport did a ‘paper’ in May/June about dispute resolution in sport and how that can be impacted by COVID. It was chaired by a guy called Murray Rosen QC, and I had similar ideas that there should be some sort of fast-track procedure for smaller claims worth £30-40,000. So, that might be a trend that might take place. 
 
I think, in football as well, obviously [if] we look at the transfer market that’s just been [January 2021], there was not much business done at all, many loans, clubs have been reluctant to spend significant money during uncertain times. I think that’s probably going to continue, maybe into summer, certainly until restrictions get lifted. 

4. What are some of the biggest misconceptions in football? 

I think the biggest misconception is that an agent’s job is easy. People think that an agent just rocks up on transfer day, signs a piece of paper, chats a bit, negotiates a contract which is a standard document and gets paid extortionate amounts of money for doing that. It’s very naïve. Many agents, particularly the ones I work with, will spend years working on one transfer. Often, transfers are years in the making in that you’re building relationships with people who you’re doing business with that you’ve known for ten years but you may never have done a deal with before. In fact, you might have met with them while they were working at a different club, but then, you know, you keep in touch, you socialise with them, you find out exactly what they want, how they work, what they need. I think that is the biggest misconception that I see. I mean, don’t get me wrong, sometimes I’ve seen deals where it is very easy for the agent, but I think more often than not they earn the money they get paid, otherwise they wouldn’t get paid it. 
 
In addition to that, a misconception is also about agents – that the industry is dodgy or a lot of underhand business goes on. In any business, there are the certain people that do things not by the book, but my experience has shown that more often than not, most intermediaries do things correctly and legally. 

5. What are the rewards and challenges of being a sports lawyer? 

It’s a little bit different to other areas of law where you might do something that would impact [a] sporting decision, which is quite cool. It’s a hobby. [The reward is] seeing what you do. If you win a result for a business in a normal piece of litigation, you don’t really see how that impacts, whereas if you do a deal in sport or win a case in sport, you see the impact of that. So, for instance, when we got Ryan Bailey off that doping case, we then saw him back out on the pitch. It was, you know, good to see. When you negotiate a transfer and then you see the player stood there holding the shirt up, it’s quite a nice little reward. You see them then do well, we like that, and I guess that’s sort of a bit different to other areas of law where you don’t get that sort of ‘after-the-event’ buzz or recognition. 
 
Challenges are [that] often people who work in sports are extremely busy so it’s difficult to get instructions, that’s probably the biggest challenge when you’ve got a case ongoing, you need to sort of get your client to tell you exactly what they have got to do, that can be a bit difficult at times. I think many sports lawyers would agree with that. I actually think there’s a big gap in how sports disputes are handled, I don’t think a lot of the regulations are particularly fit for purpose. So, for instance, disputes between agents can’t go before FIFA anymore, [and] haven’t been able to go before FIFA since 2015, and that is a challenge – it’s [a case of] where do you hear that dispute, how do you do it, is it worth it financially? Then, you’ve got sort of smaller claims of £20-30,000, and it’s like, well, is it even worth fighting them by way of arbitration because by the time you’ve spent money on arbitrators [and] solicitors, the £30,000 is irrelevant. So, that’s sort of the challenge that you will have as well.

6. What advice would you give to aspiring sports lawyers? 

Don’t expect anyone to give you anything. If you want to practice in this field, go out and network, show value, be there to help people. [One] big misconception that I find when people want to work in sports law is that they like just want to rock up at a firm and just do the sports law. I don’t think that’s how it really works. I think, in that industry and sector, most lawyers who do well out of it and are looked at by their clients as a trusted advisor, they’re not massively interested in just anyone doing their work. So, the best way to get into it if you want to do it is position yourself – things like networking, meeting people, writing articles, blogs, giving yourself a public profile – to attract clients in that space. I know it might appear like an easy thing for me to say at this point ([as a] qualified solicitor [who has] been doing this for a while), but ultimately everyone’s got to start from somewhere. The advice that I give to paralegals and trainees here that would want to really push – we do all sorts here, we do IP, commercial litigation, a lot in sport – [is that] I say, ‘If you want to do more work in this field, you’re not going to do it by just doing my work, you need to go out, win your own clients, position yourself in that industry’. [It’s the] same for many sectors, but particularly in sport. 

7. Please can you describe a typical ‘Day in the Life of David Seligman’? 
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I probably get up at like 6, woken up by a one-year-old. [I] get into nursery – my wife’s a doctor so she’s out early as well – I drop him at nursery, go to the gym, go to the office, get in for 9ish. Then, it could be anything really. [It] could be working on a case, doing a deal. [I] usually speak to two or three clients a day, whether it be on cases or just generally catching up with people. Then see whatever the day has, [it] depends what [the] cases are, [I] could be in court (virtual court, High court, arbitrations, virtual arbitrations), [I] could be out seeing clients but not as much anymore. It’s hard to say what a typical day is because it changes so frequently. Every day is very different, other than the start of it at the moment! It’s nice to be in the office today, but at the moment it’s very monotonous - ‘up – nursery – home’ basically, but normally it’s ‘up – nursery – gym – then the office’ working with the guys at Brandsmiths.