The Commission Stack: Who Takes What Before a Star Gets Paid
Standard entertainment representation runs agent 10%, personal manager 15%, business manager 5% and attorney 5% — around 30 to 35% of gross before a dollar of tax. Team sport is dramatically cheaper because union regulations cap agent fees at 3 to 4%. Modelling is the most expensive of the lot.
In film, television and music the standard stack is 10% to the agent, 15% to the personal manager, 5% to the business manager and 5% to the entertainment lawyer. Carry all four and roughly a third of gross is gone before tax.
Team sport is a different world. NFL agent fees are capped at 3% by union regulation, NBA at 4%, and there is no personal manager layer taking a second bite, so a player keeps well over 90% of playing income before tax.
Modelling is the outlier at the expensive end, because the agency commissions the model and separately bills the client a service charge on the same booking.
The stack, industry by industry
Read down a column to see what a full-service team costs in that business. Very few people carry every row — a young actor might have an agent and a manager and nothing else, while an established musician usually has all five plus a tour accountant billed on top.
Representative Film and TV Music Team sport Modelling Talent or booking agent 10% of gross on covered work; licensed and franchised 10% of live gross only — no cut of record or publishing income 3% (NFL), 4% (NBA), typically 3–5% (MLB, NHL) — capped by union regulation 20% commission from the model on each booking Personal manager 10–15% of gross; uncapped, contract only 15–20% of gross across all income streams Rare; a separate marketing agent takes 10–20% of endorsement income only Mother agency takes 10% of what the booking agency remits Business manager 5% of gross, or a fixed monthly fee 5% of gross; tour accounting frequently billed separately 1–3% of gross, or fee-based Uncommon below the top tier Entertainment attorney Hourly, roughly $450–$1,200, or 5% of deal value 5% of deal value is the default in music Hourly, engaged per contract Hourly, deal by deal Publicist Monthly retainer, roughly $3,000–$15,000+ Monthly retainer, similar range, often tour-funded $2,000–$8,000 monthly, frequently club-funded Usually bundled into the agency relationship Client service charge billed to the buyer None None None A further 20% added to the client's invoice — the second half of the double dip Cumulative take-home on gross 65–75% 60–65% on touring; 70–75% on recorded income 92–97% of playing income 60–70% after commission and chargebacks Find your column, add up only the rows you actually have, and use the bottom line as the multiplier on any fee you are quoted. That number, not the headline fee, is what hits your account before tax. One thing the table cannot show: the commissionable base is negotiable and it matters more than the percentage. A manager on 15% of gross and a manager on 15% of net after touring costs are not remotely the same deal on an arena run where costs eat 60% of the artist share.
Why sport costs a fraction of what entertainment costs
Two reasons, and both are structural rather than cultural.
Player unions certify agents and cap their fees as a condition of certification. An uncertified agent cannot negotiate a player contract at all, so the cap has teeth in a way that an unregulated market never manages. The NFLPA holds contract advisors to 3% of compensation above the league minimum; the NBPA caps at 4%, dropping to 2% on minimum-salary contracts.
The second reason is that the playing contract is largely pre-negotiated. Salary structures sit inside a collective bargaining agreement with maximum and minimum scales, rookie wage tables and cap arithmetic, so the agent's leverage is real but bounded. Compare that to a film negotiation with no scale ceiling, where the agent is arguing an open number and the commission reflects it.
Endorsement income breaks the pattern completely. Marketing representation on off-field deals runs 10–20% with no cap anywhere, which is why the athletes with the largest commercial portfolios often pay more in commission on endorsements than on the contract that made them famous.
The instruments that set the ceilings
Every number in the matrix comes from somewhere. Some of those places are statutes, some are union regulations, and some are simply market convention with nothing behind it — which is worth knowing before you assume a rate is fixed.
Instrument Who it binds What it fixes Notes and cautions California Talent Agencies Act, Cal. Lab. Code §1700 et seq. Anyone procuring employment for an artist in California Licensing, bonding, contract filing; unlicensed procurement can void the contract and force disgorgement Marathon Entertainment v. Blasi (2008) allowed severance of the offending parts rather than voiding everything — the case managers cite when accused of unlicensed procuring New York General Business Law Art. 11, §185 Licensed theatrical employment agencies operating in New York A statutory maximum fee schedule, 10% on theatrical engagements Applies to licensed employment agencies; managers structure around it SAG-AFTRA agency franchise and representation rules Franchised talent agencies representing performers A 10% commission ceiling on covered work and no commission that takes a performer below scale Franchise terms change; check the current representation rules rather than a summary WGA agency agreements, 2021 Agencies representing Writers Guild members Ended packaging fees and capped agency-affiliated production ownership at 20% Packaging phase-out completed 30 June 2022 — anything describing 3-3-10 as current is describing history NFLPA Regulations Governing Contract Advisors Certified NFL agents Maximum 3% of compensation above the league minimum Negotiable downward; several agencies compete on rate NBPA Regulations Governing Player Agents Certified NBA agents Maximum 4%; 2% on minimum-salary contracts Certification is the enforcement mechanism, not a court MLBPA Regulations Governing Player Agents Certified MLB agents Certification and conduct standards; no hard percentage cap Market settles around 3–5%, lower on very large contracts FIFA Football Agent Regulations, Art. 15 Licensed football agents Service-fee caps around 3% of remuneration, 5% below a threshold, and 10% of a transfer fee The caps have been challenged in national courts and enforcement has varied by jurisdiction — verify current status before citing Use this to tell a hard cap from a soft convention. A rate set by union regulation is enforceable against the agent; a rate that is 'standard' is just an opening position. Commission comes off gross, and that is the entire trick
A percentage of gross and a percentage of profit behave nothing alike, and the gap widens exactly when the deal gets bigger.
Take an artist grossing $807,500 as their share of an arena night. Agent at 10% of gross takes $80,750. Manager at 15% takes $121,125. Business manager at 5% takes $40,375. That is $242,250 gone. Now note that the artist's own production, trucking, crew and travel for that night ran $401,000 — a real number for a full arena production. The artist nets $164,250, and the representatives collectively took nearly half again as much as the artist kept.
Nobody is being cheated in that scenario. It is the contract working as written. But it explains why experienced managers and artists fight over two words — 'gross' versus 'net' — harder than they fight over five percentage points.
Where you can move the base, move it. Common carve-outs worth asking for: no commission on tour production costs reimbursed to the artist, no commission on money that never reaches the artist, no commission on pre-existing deals the new representative did not source, and a sunset clause so commission on a deal tapers over two or three years after the relationship ends rather than running forever.
Packaging: the cut that never appeared on a statement
For decades the largest agencies took a fee from the production itself instead of commissioning their clients on a television show — the '3-3-10' structure, meaning 3% of the licence fee up front, 3% deferred and 10% of modified adjusted gross.
The pitch was that clients paid nothing. The objection, which the Writers Guild pressed from 2019, was that an agency taking a fee from the buyer sits on both sides of the table, and that 10% of a show's backend is a large incentive to keep licence fees low.
That fight ended with agency agreements in 2021 that eliminated packaging fees on a phase-out completing 30 June 2022, and capped agency-affiliated production entities at 20% ownership. If you find a source describing packaging as how television representation works, you have found a source that stopped being current several years ago — which is a useful thing to notice about the rest of that source too.
What to check before signing anything
- Is the commissionable base gross or net, and is 'net' defined in the document or left to the representative to define later?
- Is there a sunset provision, and does it taper or cliff?
- Does commission attach to income streams the representative did not source — endorsements, catalogue income, an existing series?
- Is the representative licensed or certified where they need to be, and can you verify it with the issuing body rather than their website?
- Are expenses chargeable to you, and is there a cap or an approval threshold above which they need your sign-off?
- If there is a package or a producer credit involved, who is paying whom, and is that disclosed in writing?
Get the answers in the agreement rather than the pitch meeting. The commission percentage is the part everybody negotiates and the part that matters least; the base, the sunset and the expense clause are where the money actually moves.