THE·TEAM expands football empire with stake in Italian agency GG11
What's the deal? Global sports, music, and entertainment company THE·TEAM has acquired a significant ownership stake in GG11, an Italian football talent representation business. The deal, announced on May 20 by Lee Charnley, vice president of international operations for THE·TEAM's Global Football group, brings one of Italy's established player agencies into the company's expanding network.
GG11 was founded in 2007 by Gabriele Giuffrida and is now run alongside his brother Valerio. Based in Rome and Milan, it has built its reputation brokering high-profile deals for players and managers across Italy and internationally.
Its roster includes Tottenham's Guglielmo Vicario and Radu Drăgușin, Fiorentina's Albert Gudmundsson, and manager Stefano Pioli, among others. They join THE·TEAM's existing football stable, which features Fede Valverde, Manuel Akanji, John Stones, and Teun Koopmeiners.
Why now? THE·TEAM has been on an acquisition spree across European football, having already bought People in Sport in Denmark, International Football Management in Switzerland, and SportPlus in Belgium. Italy — home to one of Europe's top five leagues — was a clear target.
"Italy has long been a priority market for us," Charnley said. "This move enables us to expand our impact globally and within one of Europe's top five leagues."
Valerio Giuffrida framed it as a necessary evolution: "Football has been transformed by globalisation, and international scale is now essential to access the market's full potential."
What could go wrong? Consolidation in football's agency world can raise concerns about conflicts of interest when a single company represents multiple players negotiating with the same clubs. Regulators and football governing bodies have been paying closer attention to agent activity, with FIFA's new Football Agent Regulations tightening oversight.
Integrating a family-run Italian business into a global corporate structure also carries cultural and operational risks.
The signal: Football's talent representation market is consolidating fast. Independent, family-run agencies are increasingly being absorbed by global platforms that can offer players cross-border opportunities and bundled services spanning sport, music, and entertainment.
THE·TEAM already represents talent from Calvin Harris and Kendrick Lamar to Courteney Cox and Russell Crowe through its entertainment arm, Brillstein Entertainment Partners. The GG11 deal reinforces a broader trend: the lines between sports, entertainment, and media management are blurring, and scale is becoming the price of admission.
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