FAMOUS player agent Danny Espiritu, at 71, has been involved with the PBA for more than four decades already.
Initially, he was a Crispa fan paying for his own tickets to PBA games. He even remembers the time it cost him P10,000 per ticket for a championship game between Crispa and Toyota, and he even brought his sons with him so he spent another P20,000 for their tickets.
But then that is how much this guy loves the games and what he did not know at that time was that his involvement with the league will evolve into something much bigger and much vital, that of being a player agent since 1987 gratis et amore in the beginning as he said he only wanted to help the players.
Now how did I come to know and more?
Well, as I promised, this year, I will be doing more PBA pieces which means I need to be present at the games and dig up interesting things I can write about and so when I went to the Araneta Coliseum for a couple of games to watch and look for stories.
And when I was seated there and awaiting the start of the first game, I saw him seated at a special place inside the court, not the playing area of course. It was a special concession by the PBA for his long involvement with the league without problems with the team, unless you call his hard-nosed negotiation for the benefit of his players can be called a problem.
Danny related that it was Bong Alvarez who was the first one to ask for his “help” when the latter was going up to the pro league and was about to meet with the Alaska front office to discuss an offer. And even as Bong was already agreeable with the initial offer by Alaska, Danny refused to bite and was able to get a substantial increase for Bong, and before he knew it, other players who learned about it from Bong were making a beeline for Danny to represent them.
For the first few years, Danny did it for nothing except for having free tickets to the games for which he was already happy.
He didn’t become a player agent officially, not until the PBA made it a condition that he needs to have a contract with the player that he represents if he wants to continue representing them and so a small commission for him came into being.
Danny must be doing a very good job to have lasted this long and he still represents 78 PBA players while his son Marvin and partner Matthew Manotoc handles 25 as Danny encouraged his son to get into it and even referred clients to him.
So what is his secret?
He says he is very transparent both to his players and to the teams he is dealing with. He also does his research and is prepared with data when negotiating.
Of course, the fact that he is an accountant was a big factor as he knew how to come up with innovative ideas—all legitimate and legal, of course—that would be a win-win deal for his players and the teams.
The truth is, with the number of players he handles, he knows practically the salaries of all the players and uses the knowledge accordingly, plus he has connections with all the teams all the way to the owners.
He also makes sure that he does not make a decision regarding his players. What he does is present him all the options and makes the player to choose what he wants.
Just too bad that space limitations prevent me from sharing all the behind the scene tidbits that I heard from our conversation. Of course the “off the record” anecdotes were the more interesting ones like who was the player who gave him the hardest time and it had to do with offcourt situations for the player involved.
Can you guess who it is?