The Sports Agent Citation Share Index 2026: Which Agents Do AI Engines Name When Athletes Ask the Chatbox?

15 Publishable Findings

1. CAA is the most-cited sports agency across all three engines, named first on 8 of 10 "best sports agency" queries.
2. Boras Corporation scores 82 (A), higher than WME, Klutch, and Roc Nation, because Scott Boras is the single most-cited individual sports agent in the AI engines.
3. Klutch Sports' Citation Share is driven almost entirely by Rich Paul and LeBron James. Remove those two entities and Klutch drops from 74 (B) to an estimated 42 (D).
4. Asked "who is the best NFL agent," the engines name Drew Rosenhaus and Tom Condon more often than any agency.
5. Asked "who is the best NBA agent," the engines name Rich Paul first on 2 of 3 engines.
6. Asked "who represents [specific athlete]," the engines are correct ~72% for top-100 athletes and ~34% for athletes ranked 101-500.
7. Roc Nation Sports scores 68 (C), below Klutch, because the engines primarily retrieve Roc Nation's music narrative, not its sports division.
8. Perplexity is the most accurate engine on "who represents" queries (78% accuracy). ChatGPT 68%. Gemini 62%.
9. The engines cannot reliably distinguish marketing agent vs. contract agent.
10. Baseball agents have the highest individual Citation Share of any sport, public salary arbitration creates the deepest citation archive.
11. Soccer agents are the lowest-cited in U.S. engines. Jorge Mendes scores below 30 on English-language queries.
12. NIL agents and advisors are almost entirely invisible. The $1.17B category has zero citation presence.
13. WME's sports division is cited below its entertainment division on every query.
14. Wasserman is the most-cited agency NOT in the top 5, scoring 56 (C-), driven by Olympics and soccer.
15. Asked "how much do sports agents make," the engines cite BLS and Glassdoor, not industry-specific data.

Methodology. 40 sports-agent-specific prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. June 2026 test window. Five categories: agency recommendation (10), individual agent identification (10), "who represents [athlete]" (10), sport-specific (6), compensation (4). Five sports: NFL, NBA, MLB, soccer, Olympic/multi-sport. Dual-rater scoring, 91% inter-rater agreement. Representation accuracy verified against Forbes Sports Money list, league agent registries, and agency press releases. Citation Share Score = citation frequency (60%) + cross-engine breadth (40%).

Three Records This Index Set

Highest Individual Agent Citation: Scott Boras, 88

Boras is the only individual agent who outscores the multi-sport conglomerates. His Citation Share (88) exceeds CAA (86), WME (78), and every other agency. $3B+ in career contracts, public salary arbitration advocacy, annual Winter Meetings theatrics, 40-year narrative arc. One person with a deep public narrative outranks an entire institutional brand in the chatbox.

Biggest Gap Between Agent and Agency: Rich Paul (82) vs. Klutch (74)

Rich Paul's personal citation share exceeds his own agency's by 8 points. The LeBron connection, the memoir, the Adele relationship, the UTA partnership. Remove Paul and LeBron and Klutch drops to an estimated 42 (D). Klutch is a one-entity agency in the chatbox.

Biggest Miss: NIL Agents — Invisible

The NIL advisory category, estimated at $1.17B in 2025, has zero citation presence. Asked "best NIL agent," the engines return generic articles. The fastest-growing segment of sports representation is the least visible to AI engines.

NIL advisory firms enter the citation graph within 12 months. First firm to publish a named-deal database on an open URL owns the category answer, zero competition.

Perplexity becomes the default "who represents" engine. Real-time architecture + source links = structurally better for factual representation queries.

The agent-vs-agency gap widens. Agents with personal brands will continue to outrank their employers. The agent IS the brand in the chatbox.

Soccer agent citation share rises with the 2026 World Cup. U.S.-hosted tournament = massive English-language transfer and representation coverage. Mendes, CAA Base, Stellar Group enter the U.S. engine answer at scale.