Donegal man Simms strikes gold as Bolt and Farah earnings surge

IF THERE was a gold medal awarded to the most successful sports agent at the Rio Olympics, Donegal-born Ricky Simms would be the undisputed winner.

With two of the world’s most bankable sports stars on his books, Usain Bolt and Mo Farah, Simms’s company Pace Sports Management is set for a massive windfall in commissions from lucrative sponsorship deals and on-track earnings.

Simms has been listed in Sports Business International’s Top 20 most influential sports agents in the world. But with track stars Bolt and Farah eyeing retirement next year, Simms has made a move into property investment to provide a nest egg for his own retirement. Last year, Monaco-based Simms and his wife Marion Steininger renamed Pace Sports Management Company Limited as Dumari Properties.

Signalling a move into bricks and mortar, company accounts filed in June this year — covering the financial period up to December 2015 — revealed that Simms had invested in three buy-to-let residential properties valued at stg£1.2m.

However, track stars remain the agency’s cash cows. Profits at Pace Sports Management Company Ltd doubled from stg£470,000 to £1.1m in the wake of the 2012 London Olympics — and profits are set to flow again after his clients’ winning ways at Rio.

Simms is director of the similarly named Pace Sports Management LLP, which is sitting on a cash pile of €411,000.

With agents typically earning around 5pc of any deal as their fee — with a sliding scale of 7.5pc to 20pc commission for off-field earnings — Simms has struck gold.

As Mo Farah’s agent he enjoys a cut from deals negotiated for the Olympic and World Athletics champion, who boosted his personal fortune by nearly stg£3m in 2015 as a result of various sponsorship deals.

With Usain Bolt’s earnings hitting $32.5m in 2015 — and with more Olympic gold medals won at Rio — another big pay day awaits Simms.