England's attacking-talent franchise
CAA Base is the football representation arm of Creative Artists Agency, formed when CAA Sports acquired the London agency Base Soccer in 2019. Founded by former chartered accountant Leon Angel — one of the first FA-licensed UK intermediaries — it built a finance-and-deal-structuring reputation and now sits inside a US talent conglomerate majority-owned by the Pinault family's Artémis.
Its roster's centre of gravity is English attacking talent: Cole Palmer, Eberechi Eze, Moisés Caicedo and others place it squarely in the most liquid, most inflated segment of the transfer market. The CAA parent adds commercial and endorsement cross-sell that independent rivals cannot match, though the football desk still runs on the Angel and Trimboli relationships rather than the Hollywood brand.
Roster, parent, and regulation
How the agency actually operates
The roster concentrates on English attacking talent — Palmer above all, plus an academy pipeline — positioning CAA Base in the highest-value, highest-inflation segment of the market. The CAA parent gives it commercial and endorsement cross-sell that independents such as Pimenta or You First cannot match in-house, even as the football mandates still rest on long-standing personal relationships.
The headline client count conflates registered intermediaries' books across a large consultant network; the number of genuinely top-tier earners is far smaller and undisclosed. The agency's women's-game footprint appears thin — one named consultant, no marquee WSL client surfaced — so it should not be assumed to hold a strong women's book.
Direction in 2026
The posture is consolidating the English attacking-talent franchise under CAA's global commercial machine. The open questions are how much of Base's commission pool is being routed into CAA's broader sports P&L after the Artémis ownership change, how exposed the roster is to the eventual outcome of the FIFA agent-cap litigation, and whether the deals on its marquee names are durable mandates or transfer-cycle relationships.
- CAA Base company materials; Companies House (Leon Angel director record)
- SportsPro, European Sponsorship Association (CAA acquisition)
- FA Football Agent Regulations; Morgan Sports Law (FFAR status)
- Note: roster counts are aggregator estimates; women's-game footprint appears limited