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On EU Conference on Sports Agents / WAIPU ready to take on responsibility

WAIPU President Dr. Lucien W. Valloni attended the EU Conference on Sports Agents of 9 and 10 November 2011 in Brüssel / WAIPU is ready to take on responsibility

WAIPU President Dr. Lucien W. Valloni: "It was a good conference where the sport stakeholders were having discussions about the issue of sport agents. It was evident, that a solution needs to be found for this area to improve the activity of sport agents.

WAIPU has a clear position on the agent issue. WAIPU has an extremely critical opinion about the practice of players’ agents in general. A number of those agents seems to place their own interests above those of the players they represent.

An unnecessarily large amount of money disappears from professional hockey through agents.

WAIPU feels that it is time for a completely new approach in this field and is ready to put in place a monitor system of agents.

WAIPU wishes to set up together with IIHF a working group to tackle these problems.

WAIPU will continue to keep a critical eye on the activities of players’ agents.

WAIPU is optimistic that a regulation will solve part of the problems.

However, due to conflict of interst issues it is also clear that the players must have its say in the control of the agent since agents represents players.

Hence, we are of the opinion that WAIPU should be part of the solution and we are ready to implement a licencing/monitoring system for agents.

However, it is also clear that we need the help and involvment of IIHF to tacle this issue.

We strongly believe that we should look for a international system where WAIPU is the driving force controlling the agents and we need on national level our union members to lead the control system.

We are ready to implement such a system with the support of IIHF".

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