By Darren Kane
In a legal context, there are two key ways of defining what actually is meant by the term conflict of interest.
First off, a conflict of interest can arise in circumstances where a person owes a duty in respect of a matter in which they also have a personal interest.
Say a buyer’s agent is advising a client regarding purchasing one of two properties, where the agent also secretly owns one of the properties under consideration.
Second, a conflict of interest might come about where a person who owes a duty to a client to provide a professional service is compromised in performing that duty because simultaneously they owe a similar duty to another client, whose interests conflict with the first client’s.
Say a sport agent who advises some up-and-coming superstar in circumstances where the agent also advises numerous other high-profile athletes, and almost half of a league’s leading coaches. Is it possible to operate in a silo, so that you don’t think what a benefit it might be for the success of your other clients if they were teamed up with the new phenom?
The mere existence of conflicting interests isn’t in itself the root of all ills. Conflicts are a usual barnacle of professional practice. Conflicts must, however, be disclosed and then appropriately controlled. Sports agents, as they are permitted to ply their trade in rugby league especially, are a pertinent case in point.
Influential player agent Isaac Moses.Credit: Ben Symons
The idea seems routinely expressed as fact that Braith Anasta, for example, labours under a conflict of interest baggage. He’s a registered NRL player agent and the general manager of Searoo Sports Management. That company’s clutch of rugby league clients, promoted on its website, include Cameron Munster, Lachlan Ilias and Jonah Pezet.
But Anasta’s player-agent interests do not affect his ability to do his day job in the rugby league media, even if he were to talk about matters that impinge on his clients and their interests.
I don’t watch much of Anasta’s to-camera stuff, and I’ve no view whether his opinions favour his clients’ interests or not. But even if they do, do those circumstances constitute Anasta having a conflict of interest? Hardly. That would assume someone in Anasta’s position in the media lives in a soundproof room.
Being prominent in the media isn’t relevant to either test. Anasta has no more of a conflict of interest than does Peter V’landys, by reason of him merely being Racing NSW CEO and Australian Rugby League Commission chairman. V’landys has no such conflict; thoroughbred racing and rugby league are two plainly different sports.
Moreover, Anasta isn’t exactly Robinson Crusoe in terms of someone in the media having a side hustle. Phil Gould, for example, is an expert commentator for Channel Nine, publishers of this masthead, and general manager of football at the Bulldogs. And that’s fine.
Nevertheless, would it be advisable for Anasta to veer away from expressing views that obviously touch on the interests of his clients? Yes. And I speak with some authority.
I’ve practised as a lawyer, specialising in sports law, for over two decades. Among other roles, I’m an arbitrator with the National Sports Tribunal, the chair of the Combat Sports Authority of NSW, a member of the Harness Racing NSW appeals panel, and a member of the ethics panel of the International Testing Agency, which manages anti-doping programs for the International Olympic Committee and over 45 international federations.
NRL 360 host Braith Anasta.Credit: NRL Photos
Also, I’ve written this column for 12 years. There’s so much I’ll never be able to write about, as much as it would make for tremendous copy.
By virtue of his media role, Anasta is compelled to have opinions; nobody’s going to watch someone that everyone invariably agrees with.
My role as a columnist gives me a mere fraction of the prominence of Anasta, and my professional obligations far exceed his because I’m a lawyer, who is required to shoulder the ethical obligations that go hand in glove with all that. I routinely agonise about what I can say, and what I can’t. I’ve no idea whether Anasta is afflicted with such angst. He should be. But he still doesn’t have a conflict of interest in the proper sense.
The more pertinent matter for examination is the level of power that exists to regulate player agents in terms of their professional obligations and conflicts of interest. It’s the system of regulating sports agents involved in rugby league, and in professional sport in general in Australia, which is where things run out of steam.
There are currently about 150 sports agents registered under the NRL’s mandatory Accredited Agents Scheme, which entitles them to represent rugby league players in contract negotiations with clubs.
There were 105 agents registered just five years ago. Each of the 17 clubs has an elite squad capped at 30 players. That’s just over 500 potential clients already involved at the game’s highest level.
Of the cohort of registered agents, most have no top-level clients, or maybe one. Player agency is as speculative an enterprise as scurraging in the dirt for truffles. Agents vacuum up umpteen 16-year- olds with stars in their eyes in the knowledge that maybe one of the crop will, one day, generate a commission.
At the other end of the spectrum to the agents struggling with few or no clients, there’s a cabal of uber agents, including the invariably-in-the-headlines Isaac Moses, who have sequestered the market. In addition to the countless superstars and emerging players on his books, Moses oversees the affairs of not less than five of the 17 NRL head coaches.
Think about it: it would be nearly impossible to get the best possible contractual terms for all of your clients in that scenario, where basically there’s one single market: the National Rugby League.
Conjecture over whether Anasta has conflicting interests by reason of his media prominence and his nascent player agency business misses the bigger issue. The NRL does a poor job of regulating the agency profession, which in turn is largely not the NRL’s fault.
It’s seriously arguable that the whole concept of a governing body licensing and regulating player agency constitutes an unreasonable restraint on the trade of those wanting to act as player agents, and it’s also a breach of Australia’s competition laws. That argument has never been assessed in the Australian courts; push too hard, and it could be.
In 2021, the NRL’s appeals panel confirmed Moses’ deregistration as a player agent, consequent to rules breaches of apparent “great seriousness”. It wasn’t his first offending – he also was banned for six months over a decade ago, arising from the Melbourne Storm salary cap affair.
Yet in 2025, Moses operates like a puppeteer in rugby league. His last deregistration remained in force for less than two years. Somehow, that fact sits at odds with a finding that a professional person committed rules transgressions of “great seriousness”.
The stint on rugby league’s naughty step never adversely affected Moses’ registration as a rugby union player agent, nor the ability of other agents within his business to carry on. Now, he’s more influential than ever.
Player agents provide quasi-legal, financial and accounting services in negotiations that are complex, and where tremendous amounts of the folding stuff and livelihoods are bargained.
Lawyers, accountants and financial advisers are heavily regulated by governments and professional regulatory bodies. In contrast, player agents in rugby league subscribe to a code of conduct that requires them to (a) not take improper advantage of their position; and (b) not intermingle their personal interests with their professional responsibilities.
Agents, however, aren’t restricted in terms of a maximum number of clients, the number of clients playing in the same positions, the number of players who they represent at any given club, or in terms of representing coaching staff and media types as well as players.
But regardless of what the NRL’s rules say, there’s a toothlessness to their operation in practice, as is evidenced by Moses’ own registration history. It’s not wrong that professional sports regulate agents; it’s fundamental. But it’s only part of the solution.
What must sit alongside sports regulating certain aspects of agents’ conduct and activities is statutory intervention. It’s been that way in the US for over 20 years; almost all 50 states have adopted the Uniform Athlete Agents Act in some form, or another regulatory framework.
And in answer to the argument that it would be governmental overreach, the Entertainment Industry Act in NSW establishes a compulsory code with the force of law, regulating the activities of anyone who for financial benefit negotiates arrangements for, and otherwise represents, clowns and acrobats.
Those laws carry criminal sanctions as a consequence of the most egregious conduct. No corresponding laws apply to rugby league agents.
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