Thick as thievesFollowing his injury, changing teams, and the long recuperation, Tsao Chin-hui performed exceptionally well this year during spring training with the Dodgers. What's more, hurting for pitchers, the Dodgers announced in mid-April that Tsao would be called up from the minors, setting another first for a pitcher from Taiwan--that of wearing uniforms for different MLB clubs.
Looking around at sports in Taiwan, however, we see that Tsao is definitely one of the lucky few to receive such support.
"Tsao Chin-hui and Wang Chien-ming have been with CSMG Sports and SBC since starting their careers. These are sound agencies of respectable size," points out Chu Yan-shuo, a Videoland Sports commentator and expert on the structure of American professional sports. But in Taiwan, whether you're talking about baseball, which has been a professional sport for 18 years, or basketball, which has never really extricated itself from its "semi-professional" status, the ball club has both the first and the final word on how much a player is actually paid. "This results in two consequences--lack of security for players and endless disputes over sports agent agreements. In the end, this prevents the establishment of professional sports ethics and rules of the game," says Chu.
The ETTV Antelopes signed on Taiwan's top hoopster Chen Hsin-an, then playing for Yulon, for a record NT$15-million, three-year contract in 2005. The day after he signed, however, Chen immediately changed his mind. The episode served to set pro basketball in Taiwan abuzz.
"Salary assessment and adjustments are one thing, but ball clubs even negotiate your endorsements and take a cut for it," Chu Yan-shuo explains. When Chen had initially tried to change teams, he had hired friends who didn't know much about the business. It's no wonder that the whole thing was bungled.
Chen had made the mistake of taking ETTV at their word following an oral agreement. It wasn't until after he'd accepted the NT$1-million signing bonus that he sat down and really studied ETTV's contract. It was only then that he discovered that the agreement stipulated that the ETTV team had the right to Chen's portrait. Furthermore, prior to signing, Chen had stipulated that if the opportunity to play ball in America presented itself, he wanted ETTV to release him unconditionally. This request was absent from the agreement. This was tantamount to shattering his dream of playing in the NBA.
Chen pulled out of the agreement before it was even dry. It goes without saying that ETTV came down hard on him. Chen had to spend all of the 2005 season on the bench due to "injury." The curtain was finally brought down on the entire contract mess when Yulon chairman Kenneth K. T. Yen, loathe to see talent wasted, stepped in and talked with ETTV. Chen apologized and returned the signing bonus.
Basketball and baseball are the two most popular sports in Taiwan. Other sporting events, such as taekwondo, billiards, tennis, and golf have seen more than their share of talented players in recent years, but the majority have had no choice but to go abroad where their sporting dreams lead them, because they have no agents in Taiwan to protect them.
"Take golf, for example. Competitions at all levels offering a wide range of prize monies exist in Japan, the US, and Europe. Fresh out of the gates, most athletes really have no idea which competitions to choose and which will benefit them the most," confides Erics Sports Marketing president Eric Shih, who recently signed on three top-notch women's golfers, including Lu Kwan-chih. Golf competitions in America offer the biggest purses, but they also attract the best players, so it's not easy to win. Competing in matches like these is not necessarily a cost-effective idea. What's more, the costs of competing abroad, including transportation, food, and lodging, are staggering. If a player has no choice but to take care of all of these himself, it's going to take its toll on him mentally and physically, which will in turn impact his game.
"Taiwan actually has its share of agents, but they tend to wait until athletes have proven themselves before handing them their business cards. Furthermore, they are generally just out for a quick buck. Then they're out of there." With no laws regulating the industry and no transparency in the market, most "agents" are retired ball players or school physical education instructors operating under the radar. They can probably be better described as "brokers." They hang out in the sports world and use various channels to come into contact with and to lobby athletes, sometimes signing secret agreements with athletes under 18, so as to lock them into contracts that offer them less than NT$10,000 per month.
"As a result, many of the best players in basketball, for example, are unable to go abroad. University scouts from overseas would like to offer players full scholarships to play for American schools. But the players can't do anything but grumble, because they have locked themselves into contracts years earlier," Chu Yan-shuo says.