Roc Nation Sports, founded by Jay-Z, only entered football in 2019. Seven years on, the agency represents Vinícius Júnior, Endrick, Yan Diomande and Gabriel Martinelli, and claims a place in the world's top eight. A look back at a rapid rise and at a representation model that treats the athlete as a brand.
Last updated: 11/09/2026
An agency founded by an American rapper that ranks among the eight biggest football agencies in the world? In seven years, Roc Nation Sports International has brought Vinícius Júnior, Endrick, Gabriel Martinelli and Yan Diomande into its portfolio, and has placed twelve clients at the FIFA World Cup 2026.
Football was not, however, this agency's original business. Launched in 2013 as the sports arm of the group founded by Jay-Z, RNS first built itself up in the United States. Its move into football began in 2019, with an approach that differed from that of the long-established European agencies.
Let us now take a closer look at who actually owns the agency, how it gained a foothold in football, which players make up its portfolio and the logic on which its representation model rests.
Roc Nation Sports is the athlete representation division of Roc Nation, the entertainment company founded in 2008 by Jay-Z. The sports arm was created in 2013, with baseball player Robinson Canó as its first client. Its early years played out in the United States, across baseball, basketball, American football and boxing.
Football arrived in 2019, under a separate entity, Roc Nation Sports International (RNSI). It is RNSI that carries the football business, run out of London under the leadership of Michael Yormark.
The football operation rests on three hubs:
The agency also claims commercial coverage that reaches well beyond these three offices. It organises its offering by major regions — Europe, North and South America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific — which allows it to present a single player as a brand that can be exploited across several continents at once, and not only in his original sporting market.
This architecture goes a long way towards explaining the agency's positioning: it recruits in South America and Africa, places its players in Europe and exploits their image commercially from the United States.
One point often missing from quick overviews of Roc Nation Sports deserves to be spelled out. When the sports division launched in the spring of 2013, Jay-Z did not enter this market alone. The company relied on an initial partnership with Creative Artists Agency (CAA), one of the largest talent and sports agencies in the United States. That backing gave the young structure immediate access to negotiating methods and to a network already established in American sport, before Roc Nation built its own teams and gained its independence, notably when it opened up football in 2019.
Roc Nation is co-owned by Jay-Z and Live Nation Entertainment, one of the world's leading live entertainment operators. This ownership structure sets the agency apart from most of its competitors in football, which are generally owned by their founders or by funds specialising in sport.
Leadership is shared between several identified figures:
The FFAR (FIFA Football Agent Regulations) issues the licence to individuals and not to companies. An agency is therefore never a licence holder. It operates through licensed agents who declare every transaction on the official FIFA Football Agent Platform. In regulatory terms, the names of Alan Redmond and Frederico Pena therefore count for more than that of the agency.
In September 2019, Roc Nation opened its first international office in London and handed its leadership to Michael Yormark. At that point the agency chose to build its portfolio player by player rather than buy an existing European agency.
The decisive reinforcement came in September 2020 with the recruitment of Alan Redmond, whose agency R10 Sports Management was absorbed. Roc Nation gained, in one move, a licence issued by the Football Association and a network of clubs in England. The first big names followed, notably Kevin De Bruyne, Romelu Lukaku and Federico Dimarco.
That recruitment bore its first concrete fruit fairly quickly. In 2021, Kevin De Bruyne extended his contract at Manchester City F.C. for four further seasons. The agency then highlighted the support of a proprietary data study in building the negotiation, a way of showing, from the very beginnings of football at Roc Nation, that the analytics approach was not merely a marketing argument but a tool genuinely deployed case by case.
On 7 July 2023, RNSI announced the acquisition of TFM Agency, a São Paulo agency which at the time represented more than a hundred footballers. The deal gave rise to Roc Nation Sports Brazil, headed by TFM's founder, Frederico Pena.
It is the most decisive transaction in its football history. In a single move it brought Vinícius Júnior, Gabriel Martinelli and Endrick into the portfolio. Juan Perez, President and founder of Roc Nation Sports, declared at the time that Brazil is the centre of football and that the deal showed the world the agency's intentions.
The takeover also changed the nature of the Brazilian business. TFM was described as an export agency, focused on selling young talent to Europe. Roc Nation applied its full-service approach there, marketing included.
The agency states that it has guided more than twenty African players to Europe in twelve to fifteen months. It launched the Roc Cup, a youth tournament that brought together 160 players from the continent over six days, in front of around thirty European scouts. A second edition has been announced in Ghana in 2027. Yan Diomande, the Ivorian international, and Habib Diarra, the Senegalese international, serve as a demonstration of this strategy.
The North American market corresponds to the latest strategy put in place by the structure around football. The agency has announced that it wants to build a representation business in the United States, with recruitment and possible acquisitions, drawing on the standing of the Roc Nation brand in its home country.
| Year | Deal | Players involved | What the deal delivers |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Recruitment of Alan Redmond and absorption of R10 Sports Management | Initial European portfolio | An FA licence and a network of English clubs |
| 2021 | Kevin De Bruyne's contract extension at Manchester City F.C. | Kevin De Bruyne | A four-year contract, backed by a proprietary data study |
| 2023 | Takeover of TFM Agency, which became Roc Nation Sports Brazil | Vinícius Júnior, Gabriel Martinelli, Endrick | More than 100 Brazilian players and an office in São Paulo |
| 2026 | Transfer from West Ham United F.C. to Flamengo | Lucas Paquetá | A fee of £37 million, a record for a South American club |
| 2026 | Transfer from RB Leipzig to Real Madrid CF | Yan Diomande | One of the highest-value deals of the summer transfer window |
| 2026 | Contract extension at Real Madrid CF | Vinícius Júnior | A contract until 2032 for the agency's most high-profile client |
The agency is reported to have around 137 active clients, 67 of them in leading leagues, for a combined market value estimated at £644 million. The portfolio combines established internationals and very young players. Four cases illustrate the way the agency works.
Brought into the portfolio with the TFM takeover in 2023, the Real Madrid CF winger is the agency's most high-profile player. He extended his contract until 2032, after numerous rumours of a possible move to the Premier League. Michael Yormark publicly credited Frederico Pena and the Brazilian team for this extension, a way of reminding everyone that the São Paulo office runs the Brazilian files even when the player is playing in Spain.
Spotted in Côte d'Ivoire and then having come through RB Leipzig, the winger joined Real Madrid CF in the summer of 2026. The reported amount varies according to the source, at around £109 million, with some specialist databases adding up to £13 million in potential bonuses on top of the fixed fee. The deal validates the agency's African strategy, which consists of identifying a player on the continent very early, placing him in an intermediate European league, then negotiating the sale on to a leading club.
Short of playing time at Real Madrid CF, the striker was loaned for six months to Olympique Lyonnais in January 2026, with no purchase option. There he scored eight goals and provided eight assists in twenty-one matches, a performance that opened the door to the Brazil squad for the FIFA World Cup. Back in Madrid, he was given the number 9 shirt for the 2026–27 season.
The Belgian winger left Olympique Lyonnais for Sunderland A.F.C. on 1 September 2026, in the very final hours of the summer transfer window. Olympique Lyonnais announced a deal worth £30 million including add-ons, together with a 12.5% sell-on clause on any future capital gain. The negotiation went right to the wire, with Arsenal F.C. pulling out over the asking price and Crystal Palace F.C. mounting a late counter-bid on deadline day. The case is a good illustration of the reality of the sports agent profession, between the time limits to be met, the football calendar and the selling club's financial constraints.
The portfolio also includes Gabriel Martinelli, Lucas Paquetá, who returned to Flamengo in January 2026 for £37 million, the highest fee ever paid by a South American club, as well as Luis Henrique and the Senegalese international Habib Diarra. Other European profiles are regularly linked with the agency from one season to the next, among them Axel Witsel, Eric Bailly, Jérôme Boateng, Marcus Rashford and Reece James, while Romelu Lukaku was part of the portfolio before a separation that took place in 2023.
No. To date, the offering remains focused on players. No manager or head coach features among the headline names publicly promoted by the agency.
Football occupies only part of the total Roc Nation Sports portfolio. The division retains a significant presence in the disciplines that made its reputation before 2019, which partly explains its ability to build, for its football players, brand strategies modelled on methods already tried and tested elsewhere.
On the basketball side, the agency has represented or represents names such as Kevin Durant, signed as early as 24 June 2013 in one of the division's very first deals, Kyrie Irving and LaMelo Ball. In American football, Dez Bryant joined the portfolio in November 2014, alongside profiles such as Victor Cruz, Saquon Barkley and Todd Gurley. Baseball remains marked by its long-standing client Robinson Canó, while boxing rounds out a smaller but still active set.
This multi-sport base gives Roc Nation know-how in advertising, media and image rights markets that are far more mature than that of European football, and this fed directly into the approach adopted when the football division was launched in 2019.
What sets Roc Nation Sports apart from traditional representation agencies is above all the way the mandate is defined. Where classic representation is organised around negotiating the playing contract, Roc Nation treats the contract as one component among others.
Michael Yormark defends a simple idea, that of an athlete who thinks like a business leader and uses his sporting career to build his own brand. In his view, storytelling then makes it possible to create value that can outlast the playing career.
This can translate into four levers:
Behind the scenes, this offering comes with legal and tax support, along with assistance on immigration matters for players moving between countries, as well as an analytics unit deployed both in scouting and in support of negotiations, as illustrated by the Kevin De Bruyne extension mentioned above.
The most fully realised example remains Vinícius Júnior, who has developed a portfolio of commercial partnerships, equity stakes and charitable work through the Vini Institute. To this are added investments in clubs in Portugal and Brazil.
The same logic has been applied to less media-exposed profiles. Federico Dimarco, represented by the agency for several seasons before they parted ways, is a good example. Initially seen as a player defined above all by his football, he gradually became one of the most commercially attractive profiles in Serie A thanks to this support, to the point of securing a contract extension from FC Internazionale Milano with a substantially increased salary.
Since its launch, Roc Nation Sports has gone from new entrant to established player in the European market, drawing on the acquisition and development of new markets. Its originality lies above all in an approach inspired by entertainment, in which the personal brand and commercial partnerships hold a central place.
For a candidate sitting the FIFA agent exam, three points are worth remembering:
Identifying a skill the market lacks and building your business around it remains possible, even for an independent agent.
