Menu
Champions

Champions 2015: David Falk

Agent David Falk has new outlook on life, but still doesn’t settle for second best

Editor’s note: This story is revised from the print edition.

David Falk’s 12-cylinder, silver Aston Martin Vanquish is safely parked at his Bethesda, Md., home on this snowy January day.

No need for Falk to risk his beloved British import on the icy roads, so it’s the custom-ordered blue 2014 Mercedes S500 that is the vehicle of choice for Falk on his drive to his Chevy Chase, Md., office, where he runs his FAME agency.

David Falk stands next to the rock in his office inscribed with his mother’s
words: “Always Shoot For The Stars And Never Settle For Second Best.”
Photo by:
NICK GRINER

This is the second in a series of profiles of the 2015 class of The Champions: Pioneers & Innovators in Sports Business. This year’s honorees, and the issues in which they will be featured, are:

Feb. 16: Mike Trager
Feb. 23: David Falk
March 2: Donna de Varona
March 9: Len Elmore
March 16: Russ Granik
 March 23: Tom Jernstedt

The firm’s name, short for Falk Associates Management Enterprises, remains the same as the star-studded agency Falk launched some two decades ago. But today he runs it in a far different manner from the days when he dominated the NBA player representation business and reinvented athlete marketing for a platinum client list led by Michael Jordan.

Falk was a negotiating machine during the 1980s and ’90s, representing Jordan, Patrick Ewing, Alonzo Mourning and dozens of other NBA stars. It was a lengthy and power-laden client list with endless marketing deals to close and massive contracts to negotiate. No battle was too small for the hard-wired Falk, who still loves nothing more than the art of the deal.

Back then, reputations needed to be established, and fortunes needed to be made. In the process, Falk won respect, disdain, friends and enemies as he boldly built his business into a powerhouse agency.

But life today is deliberately more calm for Falk as he strolls into his office, his bald pate tanned after a recent family vacation in Anguilla with his wife of 40 years, Rhonda, and their two grown daughters, Daina and Jocelyn.

Today, like most days for Falk, began with a leisurely 7:30 wake-up after which he headed to the gym for a workout with his personal trainer and then downed a protein shake. Falk works out six days a week, with a weight-lifting regime

{podcast}

SBJ Podcast:
NBA writer John Lombardo and Champions editor Tom Stinson discuss David Falk's career and what he has meant to both NBA contract negotiation and the marketing of athletes.

that has the 65-year-old looking like an AARP magazine cover boy.

After his daily workout, Falk typically will arrive at his office around 10:30 and conduct business before heading home or perhaps to a dinner. On this night, Falk has three bottles of wine to share with Coca-Cola executives in town for a meeting. A wine connoisseur, Falk has chosen a Brunello, a Priorat and a California Meritage for his guests, who will eat in one of the seven restaurants in which Falk has a financial stake.

If he has to travel, Falk drives to the Dulles Jet Center at Washington, D.C.’s Dulles International Airport and hops on his own plane — a Learjet 60 painted in his favorite shade of blue. The plane’s tail reads DF 821 after his birthday, but Falk likes it better when others call it “Air Falk One.”

It’s all part of the kinder, gentler David Falk these days.

“I’ve had my run,” Falk concedes. “I can enjoy things I didn’t used to enjoy.”

Spend a few hours with a retrospective and opinionated Falk and he’d just as soon expound on his philosophy of success than the particulars of the NBA salary cap. Either way, it’s all part of the reflections of a remarkable career that redefined the role of a sports agent and changed the landscape of the sports marketing business.


Under Falk, clients benefited from his bulldog negotiating tactics to land oversized contracts. Consider Juwan Howard, the one-time NBA All-Star, who under Falk’s management became the NBA’s first player to sign a $105 million deal, which he did in 1996 with the Washington Bullets (now Wizards).

Then there’s a certain transcendent basketball star turned current NBA owner who under Falk’s guidance became one of the world’s most recognizable brands while creating an entirely new sports marketing industry tailored around megastars.

“With David, everything is a negotiation,” Jordan, owner of the Charlotte Hornets, said in an email. “He’s smart and calculating. Plus, like any good lawyer, he loves to talk and won’t stop until he gets what he wants.”

Now, Falk is taking a different approach as the sun sets on his career. It may be hard for his critics to believe, but Falk insists that today, mentoring is as important as deal-making for his clients. Dispensing advice and counsel is just as satisfying for Falk as landing a fat contract or a shoe deal for one of the eight remaining clients he represents today.

“I don’t want to go back,” Falk says of his heyday. “I don’t want to let my competitive nature suck me back into when I was 40. I am at a different stage of my career.”

A LACK OF PEDIGREE

The son of a butcher, Falk knew early on that he had no interest is using his hands to make a living. He grew up in working-class Seaford, N.Y., with his brother and sister in a 1,500-square-foot house his parents bought in 1959 for $17,500. Falk’s dad owned two butcher shops and used whatever profits they generated to chase the next sure thing.

“My dad was a compulsive gambler who lost everything he had,” Falk said. “My dad was a fun guy. But he was irresponsible. He didn’t do the things a man should do to take care of his family.”

Falk began working in his dad’s butcher shops at age 9 and quickly learned he didn’t want to wear a blue collar for a living.

“I hated it,” he said. “I never wanted a job working with my hands.”

Still, Falk worked his way through school.

Falk became famous for his relationship with Michael Jordan, though he’s represented dozens of stars.
Photo: COURTESY OF DAVID FALK
“I worked as a bus boy, I drove trucks, I worked in warehouses,” he said. “I consider myself a working person. A very lucky working person.”

It was Falk’s beloved late mother, Pearl, who became his biggest influence, as evidenced by a sizable chunk of stone that sits in a corner of Falk’s office. Chisled into the rock are his mother’s words that still guide Falk: “Always Shoot For The Stars And Never Settle For Second Best.”

“It’s a mantra she expressed over and over,” Falk said. “My mom and dad were polar opposites. My mom was very loving but unbelievably demanding. My biggest critics say my expectations are unreasonable, and I wouldn’t deny that. That was the environment I grew up in.”

After graduating from Douglas Mac-Arthur High School in 1968, Falk attended Syracuse University. After earning a degree in economics, he went on to earn a law degree from George Washington University in 1972.

During law school, Falk clerked at the white shoe law firm of Sidley & Austin in Washington where, among the many Ivy League-educated clerks, he felt the sting from his lack of pedigree. It wasn’t long before the chip on his shoulder grew as big as the boulder that now sits in his office.

Feeling frustrated at Sidley & Austin, Falk began clerking during law school for Donald Dell at his D.C. law firm, which would become ProServ.

“You were allowed to work 20 hours a week as a full-time student, but I worked 80 hours a week,” Falk said. “It was my tryout and I dove into it.”

Upon graduation, Falk was offered a full-time job by Dell for $13,000 a year in 1975.

Falk soon gravitated toward the firm’s basketball business and quickly found his place. Dell had the early connections to coaches like Dean Smith at North Carolina, and Falk deepened the player pipeline by building personal and business relationships with John Thompson at Georgetown and Mike Krzyzewski at Duke that remain today.

“He is more than my attorney,” Thompson said. “We became very good friends. People talked about how he had a hold on Georgetown, but he could have easily screwed it up. If one of [the Georgetown players] got messed over, they’d tell the others. That was the danger. The biggest testament is his honesty. I was always impressed by how enthusiastic he was. It is a labor of love for him.”

It turned into a very profitable structure for everyone involved: ProServ, the players, the coaches and Falk. The players enjoyed big contracts, which in turn helped Falk attract more top players. The coaches used their players’ financial success as a recruiting tool. And ProServ made money and gained a reputation for success.

“The coaches weren’t looking for anything, they wanted to take care of their kids,” Falk said. “I got great clients, and the players made a lot of money. It was a mutually beneficial system for everyone.”

The system continued for 17 years while Falk worked at ProServ under Dell. The biggest coup, of course, was when ProServ convinced Jordan to sign with the company when he left North Carolina in 1984.

“I actually signed with Donald,” Jordan said. “Donald and Coach Smith knew each other, and Donald had previously represented some other UNC players. At the time, David was one of the younger agents in the firm. Gradually, though, David and I developed more of a relationship and he eventually took over the basketball side of the company and became my agent.”

THE BRAND MANAGER

The relics of the Falk-Jordan partnership are scattered around Falk’s spacious ninth-floor Chevy Chase Pavilion office.

On one shelf sit five faded boxes of Wheaties cereal, the front of each displaying Jordan at various times during his glory years. In a far corner is a producer’s chair with Falk’s name scripted on the back from the 1996 hit movie “Space Jam” that starred Jordan and grossed $230 million at the box office, according to the website Box Office Mojo. On a top shelf sits the first Air Jordan shoe, the clunky-looking black, white and red high-top that marks a brand so ingrained into the country’s culture that perhaps it should sit next to Archie Bunker’s chair or Fonzie’s leather jacket at the Smithsonian.

Jordan’s fame sold the shoe, but it was Falk who came up with the name and brokered the deal with then-upstart sneaker company Nike (see related story).

“He’s incredibly loyal, and he’ll fight to the death for his clients,” Jordan said of Falk. “He may not always be right, but he truly believes he’s right. He’s not a yeller, but he’s blunt.”

It was that style, along with Falk’s vision of parlaying Jordan’s basketball stardom with his off-the-charts Madison Avenue appeal, that changed the industry. Falk wasn’t just Jordan’s agent. He was his brand manager.

Falk, shown in 1992 with Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley, parlayed his success with Jordan to sign other stars.
Photo by: NBAE / GETTY IMAGES
The strategy was unique but simple: Sign Jordan to lucrative deals with select blue-chip brands. Then use them to craft Falk’s mom, apple pie and American flag marketing narrative that he outlined for Jordan.

The first-generation deals were with Coke, McDonald’s, Chevrolet and Nike, and each was between three and five years. Then Falk read an article while on an airplane about the marketing of Jack Nicklaus and decided to raise the stakes of doing business with Jordan.

“Every deal after the first-generation deals had to be 10 years,” Falk said. “Gatorade was the first to sign, and

Photo by: NICK GRINER
McDonald’s dropped out.”

Only the chosen few could align themselves to “Be Like Mike” — the theme of his first Gatorade campaign, in 1991 — and the cost of buying into Jordan was far beyond any other professional athlete. Among the biggest was WorldCom, which in 1995 signed Jordan to a 10-year, $25 million deal, including a $5 million bonus.

“What he did for sports marketing using Jordan as a vehicle is legendary,” said Jerry Reinsdorf, owner of the Chicago Bulls and White Sox. “Later in Michael’s career, David limited the number of his deals and nothing could be less than 10 years, which meant they would run well past his retirement. He took a tremendous asset in Jordan, and if you wanted Michael, you had to take him for 10 years.”

But early on, Falk almost negotiated himself out of his own long-term strategy.

According to Falk, when he approached Nike to renew Jordan’s deal four years into the company’s original five-year contract, he offered Nike the chance to nix any of Jordan’s future endorsements provided it pay Jordan $10 million a year. Nike, Falk said, wasn’t thrilled with having to share Jordan with other brands. The proposal was Falk’s offer to placate Nike founder Phil Knight.

Stunned by Falk’s bravado to suggest what was then considered an outrageous fee, Nike passed, allowing Falk to freely market Jordan.

“It was the best deal I never made,” Falk said.

As Jordan’s stardom — and brand — grew, so did Falk’s client list. In 1985, a year after Jordan signed, Falk signed Ewing to what was then the biggest contract in NBA history. The $30 million deal with the New York Knicks, negotiated before the NBA implemented its rookie wage scale, angered general managers. It also attracted to Falk a litany of other stars hoping for the same level of compensation.

“David would get the most for his clients,” Ewing said. “To this day he continues to work hard to try to do that.”

Soon, Falk had leverage and he knew how to use it.

In just the short window from 1984 through 1985, Falk was representing not only Jordan and Ewing, but also future NFL hall of famers in James Lofton and Chris Doleman, along with star quarterback Boomer Esiason.

“If that had been my entire client list, I would have had a successful career,” Falk said. “We were on a roll. I never had time to sit back and analyze it.”

Falk became renowned for fighting for every last nickel for his players.

Before becoming a player agent, Arn Tellem worked as an attorney for the Los Angeles Clippers during the 1980s. He has known Falk for nearly 30 years. The two first met while negotiating a rookie contract for one of Falk’s clients, Charles Smith. A routine negotiation that should have taken no more than 30 minutes stretched on for hours as Falk pressed Tellem for an extra $100,000 in salary for his client.

“What should have been a half-hour conversation turned into an all-day ordeal,” said Tellem, who today is vice chairman of Wasserman Media Group. “We were supposed to meet for coffee, but that turned into lunch and then it turned into dinner as he went into his theory of where the league was going. It was a small matter, but the conversation was well beyond the time necessary to get it done. In the end, he got his way. That was David. He was tenacious, looked at it from all perspectives, and he was very convincing.”

But as Falk grew more successful at ProServ, he felt underappreciated and underpaid. So on Jan. 6, 1992, 17 years after he began working at ProServ, he submitted his resignation letter to Dell and created his own firm in FAME.

It was a bitter divorce as Falk negotiated what he calls a leveraged buyout from ProServ.

“I am over it,” he said. “I will always be grateful for Donald for giving me my start.”

Over the next six-plus years, Falk prospered on his own and continued to grow his client base, buttressed by Jordan’s stardom and an NBA labor deal that prior to 1995 did not include a rookie wage scale and prior to 1998 didn’t limit maximum contracts.

But Falk also learned some hard lessons. His biggest regret was his handling of Adrian Dantley.

Dantley, who was so close to Falk that he is the godfather to one of Falk’s two daughters, sued ProServ after Falk convinced Dantley and the Dallas Mavericks to void the last year of Dantley’s contract following the 1989-90 season. Dantley broke his leg shortly after the agreement had been reached, costing him what would have been a guaranteed $1.5 million had the contract still been in place.

Falk chats with client Alonzo Mourning in 2003.
Photo by: NBAE / GETTY IMAGES
The issue still haunts Falk today, who calls it his biggest and most grievous mistake.

“We terminated the contract and he broke his leg three weeks later,” he said.

At its peak, FAME was representing nearly 45 NBA players and had negotiated player contracts worth close to $1 billion. Falk also aggressively used his leverage to push his own players’ agenda during NBA labor battles in 1995 and 1998, calling to decertify the union and demanding a system that better rewarded his own superstar clients.

“He understood what the system we were working for was designed to achieve,” said former NBA Commissioner David Stern. “He was also of the view that the players who were the best should earn the greatest percentage of the money and that other players could be interchangeable parts. We used to have wonderful conversations and intellectual battles. He understood exactly what each rule was and what impact it would have as well as anyone on

the planet.”

But the sports marketing world was changing quickly in the late 1990s with the roll-up of sports agencies. And on June 4, 1998, Falk cashed in on the trend, selling FAME to SFX for $100 million in cash and another $100 million in stock.

The $200 million deal made Falk a very wealthy man. He also became chairman of SFX Sports Group, which eventually was bought by Clear Channel in 2000.

As chairman, Falk was part of a giant conglomerate where he was in charge of some 900 employees and 1,100 clients, a far different structure from his old agency.

“That was slightly different from 24 employees and 40 clients,” he said.

He soon grew frustrated with the direction of SFX, eventually resigning as chairman in 2001.

“I didn’t like the large corporation so I stepped down,” he said. “At that point it was like Russia breaking up.”

Those close to Falk knew it was a bad fit from the start.

“In 1999 I joined David at SFX, and a large part of it was that given our history, I thought having the two of us together would be fun and rewarding,” Tellem said. “It was short-lived. David is such an individual that he had to do it his way. David isn’t afraid to go down with his principles, and he sticks to his guns. I admire him for that.”

Falk wasn’t ready to leave the industry and instead downsized his role.

From 2001 to 2007, Falk went from running a $500 million business to not actively pursuing new clients and instead managing about a dozen clients, including coaches Thompson of Georgetown and Krzyzewski of Duke. When Krzyzewski was seriously considering leaving Duke to coach the Los Angeles Lakers in 2004, it was Falk who played a major role in shaping Krzyzewski’s decision to stay in Durham.

“He was right there to give me guidance throughout the entire process,” Krzyzewski said. “He never told you what to do. He’d get a feel for what you wanted to do and tell you the pros and cons of that. It wasn’t a change of venue but a change of lifestyle. There were things that had no price tag, and he understood all those things. I’ve never felt with David for one second that it was ever about him getting his percentage.”

A NEW BEGINNING

By 2007, Falk’s close connection with Georgetown and Thompson would help dictate a new plan after he signed Hoyas star Jeff Green, who was taken as the fifth pick in the NBA draft and ended up with the then-Seattle SuperSonics.

With Green on board, Falk relaunched FAME as an ultra-boutique firm. He brought on SFX executive Danielle Cantor as his partner and together they run the agency with a plan to have 10 NBA players each earning at least $10 million annually, allowing Falk to run the business on his own terms.

“It was because of Jeff Green that he decided to get back into the business,” Cantor said. “That he could sign Green cleanly, well, that got him excited.”

Falk signed Green with one promise.

“I took him to dinner and told him, ‘You are playing in a city that is the furthest city in the NBA from Washington, D.C., and I can’t be there every month,’” Falk said. “I said, ‘If you tell me in three years that you are going to fire me, then fire me now. He said, ‘I’ll never fire you.’ Now we have eight guys who are loyal. I spend way more time talking to them than when I had 45 players.”

Cantor’s office is across the hall from Falk’s and the structure has Cantor running the day-to-day operations of the firm, with Falk closely involved.

“David likes to be here,” Cantor said. “He comes in and does a lot of stuff. We are both intense and butt heads all the time when we disagree, but for some reason we get along very well. A lot of people in the early years would ask me how could I do this, and isn’t it impossible to work for him? But I don’t see it. He has mellowed so much. He has nothing to prove and his track record speaks for itself. It is more about what he can teach and what he can share.”

While still representing a handful of NBA players, Falk doesn’t want to go back to his heyday. “I am at a different stage of my career.”
Photo by: NICK GRINER
The talk of sharing and mentorship are not just empty words.

Falk has given some $20 million to Syracuse, his alma mater. In 2011, he and his wife, who also attended Syracuse, donated a $15 million gift to name the school’s David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics. The pledge added to a previous gift of $5 million to the school.

Last year, Falk and Ewing pledged $3.3 million to Georgetown University to help fund the school’s John R. Thompson Jr. Intercollegiate Athletics Center.

Falk knows that the gifts speak to his legacy in the business, but he isn’t yet ready to retire. His plan is to work at his agency until he turns 70. He also has stakes in eight companies outside of sports, with each in various startup stages.

“I realize that I have been extremely fortunate,” he said. “I still have something to contribute in the business.”

Then, as late afternoon falls outside his office, Falk adds something that 30 years ago likely never would have crossed his mind.

“I am not trying to be a power broker,” he said. “That is not what I want to be. At different points in your life, you have different priorities.”


SBJ Morning Buzzcast: March 18, 2024

Sports Business Awards nominees unveiled; NWSL's historic opening weekend and takeaways from CFP deal

ESPN’s Jay Bilas, BTN’s Meghan McKeown, and a deep dive into AppleTV+’s The Dynasty

On this week’s Sports Media Podcast from the New York Post and Sports Business Journal, ESPN’s Jay Bilas talks all things NCAA. Big Ten Network’s Meghan McKeown shares her insight into the Caitlin Clark craze. The Boston Globe’s Chad Finn chats all things Bean Town. And SBJ’s Xavier Hunter drops in to share his findings on how the NWSL is making a social media push.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

SBJ I Factor: Nana-Yaw Asamoah

SBJ I Factor features an interview with AMB Sports and Entertainment Chief Commercial Office Nana-Yaw Asamoah. Asamoah, who moved over to AMBSE last year after 14 years at the NFL, talks with SBJ’s Ben Fischer about how his role model parents and older sisters pushed him to shrive, how the power of lifelong learning fuels successful people, and why AMBSE was an opportunity he could not pass up. Asamoah is 2021 SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree. SBJ I Factor is a monthly podcast offering interviews with sports executives who have been recipients of one of the magazine’s awards.

Shareable URL copied to clipboard!

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2015/02/23/Champions/Falk.aspx

Sorry, something went wrong with the copy but here is the link for you.

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2015/02/23/Champions/Falk.aspx

CLOSE