The growing significance of sports in New Zealand has continued to provide Warren Alcock with a placement in the Power List, regarded by many in the business as being the country’s leading sports agent.

A native of Napier, he graduated from Otago Law School with a first class honours degree together with a BA in economics. Before leaving the faculty he also spent time teaching and as assistant lecturer, initially as a Maori Land Law lecturer.

He then moved to Dunedin’s Gallaway Haggitt Sinclair (now Gallaway Cook Allan) where he worked for 14 years where he worked as a litigator. Among his clients were Otago and All Black players and he developed his sports law practice to the point where he joined fellow Otago law school graduate Bart Campbell and Lou Thompson in setting up Global Sports Management, specialising in rugby in New Zealand, Japan and the United Kingdom.

“I would get letters from everywhere, kids from the West Coast saying they were doing a school project on Dan Carter, and here’s [a] list of questions,” he was reported on saying about his client Carter.

Alcock was the first NZRPA accredited agent, described by NZ Rugby Chief Executive Steve Tew ‘as probably the most influential agent in the country’. In 2010, he featured at number 18 in the NZ Herald list of the 25 biggest powerbrokers in New Zealand sport, and a year later he was sixth in NZ Rugby World magazines most influential sports people.

GSM is now part of CMS Group headed by Lord Sebastian Coe and trading as Essentially Group, providing legal and management services to rugby players internationally and acting for a range of All Blacks.

A director of talent management company Halo Sport, he continues to exert continued, if low profile, power over the increasing influence of the sports business arena.

Return to the 2021 Power List