In professional sports, a free agent is a player whose contract with a team has expired and who is thus eligible to sign with another club or franchise.
In the European Union, the 1995 Bosman ruling by the European Court of Justice established this right for association football players in all EU member nations. The Bosman ruling has since been extended to cover other professional sports and players from Eastern Europe. Players were still tied to their clubs unless their contract ran out until the Webster ruling allowed players the opportunity to move between nations, though it does not free footballers to move within the national league in which they currently play. The term came into wide use in North America after sports leagues stopped using a "reserve clause", which provided a repetitive option for the club to renew the contract for one or more years but did not allow the player to terminate it.
;Restricted free agent The specific rules of restricted free agency vary among the major professional sports, but in principle it means that a player is free to solicit offers from other teams for new contracts. However, before this player is allowed to sign with the new club, the current club has a chance to match (or come within 10% in some leagues) the terms of the new contract in which case the player must remain with the original team. In some leagues, if the original team decides not to match the other team's offer for the restricted free agent, the new team provides some number of draft selections to the original team as compensation for losing the player.
;Undrafted free agent Players who are not drafted in a league's annual draft of amateur players are considered to be unrestricted free agents and are free to sign contracts with any team.
Free agents do not have to be signed during the normal transfer window that is implemented in some countries' leagues. If they are signed by a team, the team signing them does not have to pay any fees - sometimes this is known as "snapped up on a free transfer".
If a player gets released from their club when the transfer window is closed, they cannot sign for another team until the window reopens. A notable case of this being Sol Campbell who in September 2009 was released from Notts County, just after a month from signing on a free transfer. He signed for his former club Arsenal in January 2010, after spending a few months training with the team to maintain his fitness.
;Unrestricted free agents Unrestricted free agents are players who have completed four or more accrued seasons of service and whose contracts have expired. They are free to sign with any franchise.
;Undrafted free agents Undrafted free agents are players eligible for the NFL Draft but who are not selected; they can negotiate and sign with any team.
;"Plan B" free agency Plan B free agency was a type of free agency that became active in the National Football League in February 1989. Plan B free agency permitted all teams in the NFL to preserve limited rights of no more than 37 total players a season. If a player was a protected Plan B free agent, he was incapable of signing with another team without providing his old team the first opportunity to sign him again. The rest of the players were left unprotected, liberated to negotiate contracts with the rest of the teams in the league.
Eight players sued the NFL in U.S. federal court, stating that Plan B was an unlawful restraint of trade. In 1992, a jury found that Plan B violated antitrust laws and awarded damages to the players.
Teams that lose a Type A free agent, to whom they have offered arbitration, receive the top draft pick from the team that signs the free agent, plus a supplemental draft pick in the upcoming draft as compensation. Teams losing Type B free agents, to whom they have offered arbitration, receive only a supplemental pick as compensation.
Teams that lose unclassified free agents, or who do not offer arbitration to classified free agents, do not receive any compensation.
In Europe, the wages of the top players have increased dramatically since the Bosman Ruling, although this is partly because of increased television revenues. Some club chairmen have called for a payroll cap in a bid to control player wages, but this would almost certainly be ruled anti-competitive and therefore illegal under EU law. As in North America, the number of transfers involving a fee are on the decline since clubs can wait for players to finish their contracts and become unrestricted.
In Europe, players can only move during transfer windows—during the close season and half-way through the league season. There are exceptions for unsigned professional players in the lower divisions.
Category:Sports terminology Category:Baseball labor relations
de:Free Agent (Allgemein) et:Vabaagent es:Agente libre fr:Agent libre it:Free agent ja:フリーエージェント (プロスポーツ) ko:자유계약선수제도 pl:Wolny agent ru:Свободный агент simple:Free agent fi:Vapaa pelaaja sv:Free agent uk:Вільний агент zh:自由球員This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
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