Dalglish And Mawson Launch Tap23

Former Premier League player Paul Dalglish and leading entertainment talent manager Ben Mawson have announced the launch of TaP23, a new sports representation agency.

Mawson is the co-founder of international talent agency TaP Music, which has guided the careers of music artists including Lana Del Rey, Ellie Goulding and Dua Lipa, while Daglish, son of Football legend Sir Kenny Dalglish, is a former professional footballer who has won Major League Soccer as both a player and coach.

According to a statement from the pair, TaP23 will offer a ‘genuinely full-service approach to representation’ with regards to both on- and off-field matters and will be ‘backed up by robust ethics and first class legal representation’

As part of the launch, Sir Kenny Dalglish has also been announced as a founding client and ambassador and will sit on the TaP23 board in a non-executive advisory role.

Additionally, Pat Devlin will head up TaP23’s work in Ireland while agent Grant Smith has been brought on board to represent Scotland, and brings with him a roster of players including Everton and Scotland international Nathan Patterson.

Ahead of the agency’s launch, SIG caught up with both Mawson and Dalglish to understand a bit more about Tap23’s inception and offering.

How did you first meet?

Paul: Ben turned up at the my junior school when we were kids – all the sensible kids must have been on a field trip so I was asked to show him around the school. We became best friends pretty quickly, and spent our youth having music lessons, playing football and hanging out socially. We obviously took different career paths with football and law/music respectively, but it’s been great to reunite personally and now professionally

How did the idea for TaP23 come about?
Ben: Music and sport, particularly football, have always been my two passions and during Covid, I was approached by one of the UK’s leading football agencies to handle off field /commercial for their players. I was excited by the possibility but ultimately decided to start working with footballers under the TaP umbrella .

We covered social media, press and commercial deals for players like David Alaba and Kalvin Philips, as well as doing some consultancy for a Premier League club.

 This initial work in the football industry gave me real insight into where I felt footballer representation could be significantly improved. But to be the complete full-service agency, looking after absolutely all aspects of a players needs, it was important to cover on field too.

For that, I knew the company needed football credibility and so there was happy synchronicity when I reconnected with Paul and Sir Kenny in 2022 who agreed to partner on a full-service agency. It was particularly timely with the new FIFA regulations being introduced, which to Paul and I felt like an important step to standards of representation in football being improved. 

Since then we’ve been working hard on assembling the best possible team and TaP23 was born!

How do you intend to do things differently to other football representation agencies?
P: Many agencies claim all kinds of qualifications and specialisms, but we have a genuine team of world class specialists  and are committed to fostering a team-based management approach with us all working closely together. Based on our collective experience in football, music and commercial, we have created an optimal team of experts to maximise the modern-day player’s career.

Footballers are no longer just footballers; they are public figures off the back of their job in football. Football must always come first but, there is so much more to looking after talent.

We believe that having a single agent is a dated approach, so we have created a team-based management ethos. All of us are better than any of us.

A team-based approach allows us to focus on the areas we specialize in. I can advise on football matters, performance analysis, career planning etc whilst Ben and the broader team lead on legal, profile building and commercial.

There are huge agencies that are involved across multiple talent industries and whilst some talent may be attracted to this model, we believe that with huge rosters it is hard to deliver the day to day bespoke service that we want to provide and that top talent deserves. The music company is rated one of the best in the world , but one of the things I’m most impressed with by Ben and Ed Millet’s work in music is that they’ve achieved it without having a relatively small roster of artists.

What do you each bring to the table?
B: Paul has done everything in football – from playing in the Premier League , getting the top coaching badge in the world, winning the MLS as player and multiple titles as a coach, now a FIFA qualified agent and a graduate from the UEFA Player Agent Programme – a genuinely unique set of experiences and qualifications. In fact, he is the only person in the world to hold those three qualifications. I think what Sir Kenny’s has achieved in his career as a player and manager and humanitarian needs no explanation!
 
Personally, I think my background as a barrister is a good grounding for representing talent of any sorts but I’m also proud of TaP’s world leading reputation for supporting talent on their journey to becoming superstars. I think the smartest thing Ed – my business partner on the music company – realised early on was that it takes a broad team of brilliant people to support talent on that journey.

 Our company was built on a model of self-sufficiency with every possible need covered in house, whether social media, fashion, brand, marketing, legal, philanthropy, concierge services etc.

Ben, how does your experience in music translate to football?

I think the core principles of managing a human whatever their talent are the same – and at the heart of that is that no two human beings are the same.

The management service must be bespoke to the individual with their wellbeing put front and centre, as well as doing everything to support the development or their careers on and off the pitch. And the beauty of it is, with our team-based approach I can focus on what I specialise in that does translate to football and allow the Dalglish family and broader football team to take care of football matters.
 
What can the football representation world learn from the music industry?
B: A lot, I think. I have been surprised at quite a lot of what I saw in football. UEFA asked me to talk on their agent’s course about talent management so think that UEFA maybe agrees that football can learn from music. That said, learning and development for managers in all fields should be a constant process. Society evolves, trends emerge, fresh opportunities are constantly presenting themselves and it’s important keep eyes and ears open to these.
 
Should we expect to see a lot of football and music crossover?
B: The worlds frequently overlap, as does fashion. We work with Gala on the music side whose song ‘Freed from Desire’ is a football stadium anthem. Lana Del Rey has recorded a version of YNWA for a Liverpool documentary and footballers are now mentioned regularly in songs. Football clubs across the world have started doing collaborations with luxury fashion brands and luxury fashion now looks to players as ambassadors, something that would not have happened in previous times. We believe we are optimally placed to take advantage of these crossovers.

We’re also focussed on content production and working on an exciting sports doc, as well as TV format ideas that cross both worlds, as well as podcasts too.

Who is the ideal client for TaP23?
P: It’s important we have a close relationship with our clients as we will be there for them on a daily basis. I think the ideal client is aligned to our company values – committed to hard work and self-improvement to become the best they can be, which are essentials for success in any career. Someone who appreciates partnership and teamwork, and the need for long-term, strategic career planning. We’re equally as excited to be supporting a player’s journey from youth team to superstar, as to be working with players already at the top of the game and we have a set-up ready to take on the world’s elite athletes.

There are other sports we are exploring too, again off the back of passion for the sports and strong connections in the sports – we think the principles of good management go across all industries – but our immediate focus is football.

Are you launching with clients already on the books?
P: We made the decision to do things a little differently and build the optimal team to manage the footballers of today and then identify players we would like to represent, rather than getting players and then working out how to do it, which is the norm when family members, friends or ex-players decide to represent players.
 
However, with that team now built, we are launching with an international Premier League player, an international Champions League player, as well as some younger players we think have exciting futures ahead of them.

TaP23 has officially launched, but what’s the next objective or milestone?
P: We don’t want to be the biggest, we want to be the best. We feel if we have too many players, then it is impossible to create a unique management plan for each client and to make each player a priority, as it takes so much time to do it correctly. The next objective is to actively identify further players that we would like to welcome to the TaP23 family.