The challenges of an athletic career and developing the financial and life skills for success

Key topic

This lesson goes over the challenges of an athletic career and discusses their parameters.  It introduces athletes to the holistic model of athlete development, and it also gives an overview of the financial and life skills that athletes will need to build in order to design, implement and project-manage their desired life plan.  Furthermore, this lesson outlines the hard realities faced by athletes whether mental, emotional or financial, and offers guidance on how to build the necessary skills which will help athletes overcome life’s hardships.  We also discuss athlete wellbeing and engagement, and we further explain how and why athletes become financially vulnerable and offer advice on the steps athletes need to take to create their life plan and safeguard their financial future.

Learning objectives

• Realize that an athletic career comes with a number of challenges
• Become familiar with sport integrity issues they may have to deal with
• Understand the importance of building confidence
• Realize that their personal wellbeing is paramount to their success
• Understand how and why athletes are financially vulnerable
• Discover the steps athletes must take in order to hedge against financial vulnerability and thrive financially
• Be able to develop a greater career and life plan and project-manage it successfully
• Create readiness to succeed in life

The challenges of an athletic career

Throughout the years, athletes across all ranges of sport have been idolized by their fans, their countries, and sometimes the entire world, for being able to stand out in what they do.  Just a few times though, have the masses or the fans considered the amount of pressure that these athletes undergo to be able to keep up with expectations and life in general.  In fact, discussing athletes’ wellbeing or considering whether an athlete has the mental or emotional capacity to continue performing has long been a taboo in our society.  The challenges of an athletic career are many, but we have narrowed them down to the following.

• Maintaining top athletic performance
• Building and maintaining confidence and personal wellbeing (physical, mental & emotional)
• Maintaining integrity and staying away from temptations such as doping, gambling, match fixing, etc.
• Dealing with the reality of a short career, early retirement from sport, and preparing for life after sports
• Becoming financially independent by having a viable financial plan that will sustain the athletes throughout their lives
• Balancing relationships because an athletic career can easily distort personal/family relationships
• Developing and maintaining an image which is positively perceived by public opinion

Today, we will discuss all of the above challenges, and we will go through the skills that athletes will need to develop to be able to deal with these challenges and create the life they aspire to have.

The professional athlete and sports integrity issues

An athletic career can bring with it a number of sports integrity issues such as doping, sports betting/gambling and match fixing.  We will briefly discuss these issues so that athletes become aware of what forms and shapes they come in and become better prepared to deal with such situations.

Sports Doping

In 2018, Ulrich, Pope, Cléret et al., published the results of an anonymized survey that was conducted in 2011-12 and asked more than 1,200 professional athletes whether they had ever taken Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs). The astonishing result was that 44% of respondents replied affirmatively. The topic of PEDs is a taboo in sports, but arguably the biggest problem that the industry has been facing since the introduction of controls in 1965 and their institutionalization in 1970.

Doping, which started in the 19th century with the use of alcohol and cocaine among cyclists has nowadays morphed into an entire underground industry aided by advancements in the ever-innovative pharmaceuticals sector. Some of the most popular methods include steroids, blood transfusions, human growth hormones and EPO, and aim at increasing the athlete’s endurance and strength—according to some studies by up to 38%. In what follows, we will discuss some of the adverse effects of PEDs on athletes such as health, psychological and financial effects, with the aid of the infamous stories of Marion Jones, Diego Maradona, and Lance Armstrong.

A large number of athletes who have been caught red-handed have shifted the blame to coaches, physicians, partners—in the case of the Russian Olympic team fiasco in 2018, the entire state apparatus—and expressed complete ignorance as to what was given to them. Whether they are to be believed or not, PEDs can have extreme side-effects on the individual. They typically include cardiac complications, headaches, nausea and dizziness. In the case of men, side-effects can range from acne and baldness to shrunken testicles and reduced fertility, to high blood pressure and prostate cancer. Women on the other hand, can experience disturbed periods, facial hair and deepened voices. In their attempt to gain an edge in sports athletes are quite simply jeopardizing their lives.

Psychological side-effects are also common, with many reporting rapid mood swings and paranoia, as a result of the strict schedule required to dope and its illegal status. On top of those, athletes who get caught have to cope with a variety of after-effects as well.  Suddenly finding yourself in the spotlight for the wrong reasons, along with the shame and disappointment it brings to you, your friends, family and fans, is something you can hardly recover from.

As far as the athlete’s finances are concerned, it is almost guaranteed doomsday. In the blink of an eye, sponsorships, scholarships, incomes, savings, physical assets—you name it—everything gone. Marion Jones’ $1 million of endorsements gone, her $2.5 million home in North Carolina along with her mother’s house sold, in addition to the $80,000 per race of forgone income and the five years she spent in federal prison. Lance Armstrong was asked to pay $10 million to SCA Promotions Inc. for years of lying and deception, while all his sponsors— $75 million in monetary value, deserted him without a second thought. Armstrong himself publicly said that his doping debacle cost him a total of $100 million; it even crushed the momentum of his charity—those Livestrong bracelets that anyone born in the 90s is probably familiar with.

Article 10(2) of the WADA regulations state that if you get caught once, you get a ban of two years—officially no games, matches even training—and the second time, signals a lifetime ban. Of course, only the lucky few get to strike number 2 because you are probably done the first time, unless you can pull a Maradona. But even for Maradona, when in the 1994 World Cup 5 variants of ephedrine were discovered in his blood, albeit towards the final stages of his football career at the age of 34, it unceremoniously ended his international endeavors. He nonetheless managed to reinvent himself as a football coach and enjoyed a decent coaching career up until the end of his life. However, Maradona was one of the best football players in the history of the most popular sport in the world and his story is by no means the usual conclusion to a doping saga. Marion Jones and Lance Armstrong were not as lucky.

PEDs can have devastating effects on athletes; financially, psychologically, on their wellbeing and their career. The future looks even grimmer when one considers that gene-editing is on the up and up. Gene editing technologies, like CRISPR, may allow athletes to alter their genetic makeup for performance advantages, raising even more complex ethical and regulatory challenges. But at the end of the day, professional athletes should put everything into perspective and soberly do a simple cost-benefit analysis, in order to discover that doping is not worth risking everything they ever worked for. In a sense, it is like a house of cards; you might be able to evade the authorities for years and beat dozens of tests, but it only takes one for everything to crumble!

Athletes facing such pressures are encouraged to seek guidance from certified professionals, trusted mentors, or sports integrity bodies to navigate their careers ethically and safely.

Sports Betting

Betting is deeply ingrained in the cultural framework of sports and is even viewed as a pre-existing activity which is part and parcel of competitions. In the 21st century, it is hard to conceive of a world without sports betting. However, sports betting was not always as prevalent as it is today and in some places of the world—such as the US—there are still legal restrictions on betting, or at least on certain variants of it.

Sports betting in itself is not inherently unethical or dodgy, but the behaviors and incentives it leaves behind can be malicious and outright illegal.  Match fixing refers to the manipulation of a sporting event’s outcome, or elements within it, in order to secure a specific betting result.

Scandals in sports are over a century old and have taken place in all parts of the world from the US to Italy and beyond.

One of the first recorded sports scandals in modern history was during the 1919 World Series when the Chicago White Sox squared off against the Cincinnati Reds. It is alleged that Joseph Sullivan—a professional gambler—bribed 8 players of the White Sox to lose the game. It is also alleged that the arrangement was organized by a gambling syndicate. The 1919 World Series fiasco is considered as one of the worst betting scandals in history. More recently, in 2023, multiple professional footballers in Europe were investigated or suspended for breaching betting rules—highlighting how these issues are still very much alive.

However, sports betting is not necessarily synonymous with match fixing, as there are other problems resulting from betting as well, that have one common denominator:

By definition, the existence of betting alters the very nature of sports by giving birth and feeding a tangential industry which in turn seeks to maximize profits. It furthermore creates another avenue through which financial gain related to sports can be sought out.  The danger that this entails, is that the betting industry might try – or better yet, is trying—to meddle in the outcomes and proceedings of sports competitions. With the rise of mobile betting apps and real-time wagers, the betting market has become more accessible, faster, and harder to regulate, increasing risks for manipulation.

Anyone who has engaged in sports betting recently will know that it is not just about who is going to win or lose. Nowadays you can bet on almost anything that the human mind can conceive; yellow cards, red cards, number of corner kicks, fouls—if you can think of it, it probably exists. Therefore, players are also susceptible to betting themselves. What’s the harm in making an additional grand or two (or ten or a hundred)? What better guarantee that John Johnson will get a yellow card in the first half than John Johnson betting that himself? One would argue that there are laws prohibiting athletes from betting on their teams, but then again, they can always have a friend/distant relative do it for them and it would be next to impossible to identify and prevent that.

Team officials and others might try to influence, and mess with, the performance of athletes in order to attain the outcome that they favor and after all, although, we rarely think of it in those terms, athletes have bosses too and will most likely do as they are told. Of course, it is not just team officials. It could be relatives, fans, agents, and the list goes on almost endlessly.  Athletes need to have their guard on at all times, and they should stay away from any such activities, as they could prove to be disastrous to their career and life in general.

Match Fixing

Manipulating the result of a sports encounter is nothing new; games have been fixed for almost as long as sport has taken an organized form. From ancient times athletes and/or their trainers would be bribed to lose a fight or race, so the winner and their city or country would bask in the glory of their success. In the modern world, match fixing is found in almost every sport and the motives behind it are evident:

• Financial motives – people may try to make money through gambling on a fixture in which they know the outcome before it takes place because they have manipulated the result
• Sports motives – So that one of the game participants will gain an advantage, for example losing a match so you can face an easier opponent in the next round of a tournament

Globalization and the emergence of online gambling, legal and illegal, have amplified the issue by attracting the interest of organized crime, with criminals seeking to fix matches by reaching athletes, coaches and officials on a global scale, in any level of organized sport.

Athletes are in the heart of the problem, being the most common target for criminals attempting to manipulate the result of a fixture.  Sports organizations acknowledge that it is crucial to create efficient reporting mechanisms for athletes in order to fight corruption.   FIFPro for example, the worldwide representative organization for all professional soccer players, has developed a phone app called “red button” that allows players to anonymously report their suspicions regarding a fixed match.

But even when reporting mechanisms are in place, coming forward to disclose information requires sacrifices from athletes on many levels and might have life-altering implications for them and that’s why ongoing multi-level support is essential for those who decide to come forward.

Informing athletes about their options and rights when it comes to disclosing information and educating them on the rules of their sport in relation to betting and match fixing can help their voice become even louder.  Unfortunately, the current culture about disclosing information is more likely to discourage athletes from coming forward than encourage them.  We advise athletes to refrain from getting involved in such activities and in cases where they become aware of any such activity they should come forward and speak up, ultimately helping protect the integrity of sport.

The financial vulnerability of athletes

Despite the fact that professional athletes are among the highest-paid individuals worldwide they usually lack the financial knowledge that will enable them to manage their wealth effectively.  As a result, a great portion of athletes find themselves in financial disarray during or soon after their retirement.  The root of the problem lies in the “lack of knowledge” of athletes about money and finances. The solution lies in educating athletes financially so that they can cope with all the bad externalities that will always be around. We believe that financial literacy is the solution because financial education equips athletes with the means to cope with the realities of their mode of living and it makes them aware of the potential pitfalls and traps that they will inevitably encounter during their lifetimes.

The Statistics

• In the NBA: 5 years past their retirement, 60% of former NBA players have gone bankrupt or are under financial distress.
• In the NFL: A 2015 study published in the American Economic Review found that approximately 15.7% of NFL players filed for bankruptcy within 12 years following retirement.
• In the English Premier League: Three out of five Premier League players – who earn an average of £30,000 pounds per week – declare bankruptcy within five years of retirement.
• In the Australian A-League: 12% of retired players are dissatisfied with their current financial situation; 18.8% report that football had a negative financial impact on them; and 1 out of 3 report that they had made decisions that negatively affected their financial position.
• A large percentage, about 78%, of professional athletes go broke after just three years of retirement, Craig Brown, an NKSFB Sports Business Division partner, told FOX Business’ “Mornings with Maria” in 2022.

Real Life Examples (5 – minute presentation & discussion) Mike Tyson made a fortune during the ’80s and ’90s and filed for bankruptcy in 2003. His extravagant spending included three Bengal tigers which cost $70,000 to buy, an additional $200,000 in food per year and a 2 million Dollar Bathtub as a Christmas gift for his ex-wife. Latrell Sprewell famously said that he “had a family to feed” when he declined a three-year, $21 million deal from the Timberwolves in 2005. That would be fine if he had an alternative, which he didn’t. There were teams interested in signing him after that season, but he wouldn’t sign with any team because he felt their offers were too low. Since declining that contract, Sprewell has had a well-documented array of financial problems. What do these real-life examples teach us?

Common factors contributing to the financial failure of athletes

There is widespread belief that athletes after retirement are financially set for life, living in mansions, with unlimited money to spend. At the same time, stories of athletes going bankrupt, during or after their playing career, very often appear in the media. In short, the prevailing perception of fans is that the majority of professional athletes are set for life after retirement. In reality, as already discussed, athletes are some of the most financially vulnerable people of our times and there are several factors which contribute to the financial vulnerability and failure of athletes.

Athletes usually earn substantial amounts of income within the limit of a short time span, depending on the particular sport, but usually an athlete’s career can last between 3 to 10 years on average, with some exceptions like golf or tennis where careers may last longer.  According to a Statista 2023 report, the average salary for NBA players is around $8.5 million per year, while NFL players make about $2.8 million per year whereas the average household salary is significantly lower.  The end of the athlete’s field play usually marks the end of the substantial earnings, both from field play and from other sources, such as NIL commercialization, endorsements, and so forth.  Most of the time, the athletes’ salaries are not fully guaranteed and poor performance, injury, on and off the field behavior, can adversely affect their earning capacity.

Athletes usually earn their money at a very young age.  Recent statistics show that professional athletes often retire before the age of 30. On average, MLB players retire around 29.5 years old, NHL players at 28.2, NBA players at 28, and NFL players at 27.6. In comparison, individuals in the general workforce typically achieve their highest earnings later in life, usually between the ages of 45 and 54. Usually athletes work away from their homes and their countries, as most of them are offered lucrative contracts in distant places; being away from home and their family puts additional pressure on athletes.

Athletes adopt a costly lifestyle. The high income and celebrity recognition that they enjoy at such an early age leads professional athletes to being drawn to a lifestyle of the rich and famous, living for the moment, and revelling in their fame and fortune. Most of them live paycheck to paycheck and blow their money on depreciating assets instead of putting it away.

Sudden wealth, or “sudden money,” cannot be handled appropriately, especially by young athletes, who are completely inexperienced in handling finances. The receipt of sudden wealth is an intense and emotional event, and it precipitates new financial challenges and decisions. Athletes must deal with their emotions and confront their fears that may arise from their newfound wealth.  This sudden wealth phenomenon of earning big unexpectedly, may cause athletes to lose interest in the small things that make life enjoyable and give intangible benefits; they may change their attitude, and spending becomes a way of utilizing their free time.  We have plenty of examples of athletes who have mishandled their newfound wealth, and they include Mike Tyson, Allan Iverson, Sheryl Swoops, Warren Sapp and many, many more.

Gambling is another common problem of professional athletes, who seek the thrill of big risk and big return, without fearing the catastrophic consequences.

Comparison to General Population: According to research, the prevalence of gambling disorders among the general population varies between 0.15% and 6.6%. This suggests that some athlete groups may experience gambling issues at a higher rate than the general public.

Athletes also tend to go through emotional disturbances, feeling lonely, or feeling exploited or loved only for their money. The numbers show that athletes are prone to depression, usually when their sport careers near their end and they are not sure what their future will hold, especially those athletes that did not prepare, did not save money, did not get an education and did not create alternative revenue sources to sustain them after retirement. The result of these emotional stressors is manifested in substance abuse, alcohol abuse, and violent behavior that may cause criminal and financial penalties; before they realize it, many athletes have hit rock bottom.

Athletes have a lot of external pressures from family, friends, coaches, and others who have helped them succeed.  It is common for family and friends to seek financial rewards and returns from the athlete as recognition of their contribution to the athlete’s fame; such a situation is difficult for the athlete to handle properly or deny, given the high degree of loyalty and attachment.

Bad Investments/Misplaced Trust. Advisor improprieties and misappropriations of funds have contributed to the financial problems of professional athletes especially if athletes don’t have the proper knowledge to identify such events early and avoid them.

Divorce and child support payments. Divorce has proven to have a disastrous effect on the financial well-being of a lot of professional athletes, as they do not usually have prenuptial agreements in place before getting married. In addition, a number of athletes have children from multiple wives, and they are obliged to pay several monthly alimony and child support payments, which are quite substantial.

Lack of financial education. Career athletes often do not have the same level of financial literacy as people who took more conventional careers and education paths. The unique financial challenges that come from life as a professional athlete, combined with the lack of financial education, usually lead to poor financial decisions which, unfortunately, have an adverse lifelong impact.

The above clearly shows that the financial failure of athletes is indeed a problem and preventive action is needed.  Many of the factors that make athletes financially vulnerable cannot be altered. Athletes will always have a family, will always have friends and other relationships, and will always have to make decisions for themselves.  Despite their inherent vulnerability though, athletes can compensate by improving their knowledgebase and decision-making abilities. The solution lies in educating athletes, so that they acquire knowledge about money, personal finances and financial options, thus giving them the tools to make wise decisions concerning money.  Financially educated athletes are able to react in a more prudent manner to situations arising from financial pressures which involve financial decision making.  Financial literacy is a learned life skill which can help athletes, not only make sound financial decisions, but will give them great confidence over their financial lives.

Action Steps – Exercise 1 (20 minutes including the video):

We will now watch a video on why athletes go broke, and we will have a discussion on the reasons athletes fail financially after we watch the video.

Why Professional Athletes Go Broke

Building Confidence is a prerequisite for a successful career

“It is always in my mind still that I can crush anybody. That’s not an issue […] If you don’t believe you can win tournaments anymore, then you can’t do it.” – Roger Federer, Tennis Player, 20-time Grand Slam Winner

20-time Grand Slam winner Roger Federer is the living example of the fact that what distinguishes highly successful athletes from less successful ones is confidence.

Research has long shown that confident athletes feel energized, inspired and excited, focusing on what they need to do in order to perform at their optimal level, making both their training and competing experience enjoyable. In turn, successful competing experiences bring about confidence and positive thinking, creating an upward spiral of confidence, a successful performance, and ultimately a successful life.

Of course, athletes are often presented with obstacles, like losing a competition or making mistakes, which may hinder their confidence. Unfortunately, quite often, such obstacles create a vicious cycle of self-doubt, low self-confidence and a drop in athletic performance. If athletes lack the ability to overcome failures, it may be difficult to recover their self-confidence. It is evident that sports performance and confidence interrelate, and indeed, winning competitions is a powerful way to boost confidence, but it should not be an athlete’s only source of confidence.

With the right mindset, athletes can overcome setbacks, and failure may even help them become more focused on their life goals, encourage them to assess what went wrong and become strategic about how to be better prepared in the future. In this respect, athletes should acknowledge that confidence will be built over experiences, and they should strive to build a “resilient” confidence. Elite athletes have described resilient confidence as an “unshakable belief in their ability” to do anything, which enables them to stay confident even when they are not performing well.

This resilient confidence is actually the key to success, as it allows athletes to rise over obstacles, but also, in contrast with arrogance, encourages them to work hard in order to become better. This type of confidence, at its core, emanates from the understanding that if you put yourself in the work, the results will follow, urging athletes to focus on what they can control (that is, their efforts) rather than things they cannot control (that is, the results).

With resilient confidence, athletes are able to stay confident even when they are not winning, because it shifts their focus on always performing their best. Fundamentally, it rests on the athletes’ faith in their ability and preparation. Seeing that resilient confidence is essential in the development of athletes, cultivating it should become an integral part of athletic education.  To build resilient confidence as an athlete you are advised to implement the below simple rules:

• Identify if there is anything that holds you back from achieving your goals; is it fear of failure, or even fear of success? Recognize your fears and work on overcoming them.
• Focus on the things that you can control and do not get drained in things that you can’t, like your opponents, the weather, field conditions, etc.
• Do not compare yourself to other athletes: focus on yourself and what you need to do in order to prepare in the best possible way.
• Prepare: There is no substitute for hard work and training; knowing that you have trained long and hard will give you confidence. When Roger Federer was asked how he stays confident he said: “There is no way around hard work. Embrace it. You have to put in the hours because there’s always something that you can improve.”
• Accept that failure is part of sport and that it forms an integral part of your athletic experiences; embrace it, learn from it, and don’t let it get you down! Recognize that facing challenges is necessary in becoming the best you can be!

Sorts psychologists often work with athletes to develop mental skills such as visualization, positive self-talk, and goal setting—all of which contribute to cultivating resilient confidence over time. Helping athletes build resilient confidence is an integral part of the holistic model of athlete development and you need to devote the necessary time and effort to train in this particular area.

Action Steps – Exercise 2: (10 minutes)

Describe the number 1 factor that has helped you flex your confidence muscle as well as the number 1 factor that has had a negative effect on your confidence.  Can you share any confidence-building strategies that you have personally used?

Athlete wellbeing is paramount to having both a successful career and life

An athlete’s wellbeing is primarily concentrated on the following factors: physical, mental, emotional and financial wellbeing. All these factors are interrelated given that one affects the other and altogether affect the athlete’s ability to perform in the field and to lead a successful life. In short, wellbeing focuses on the athletes’ ability to understand their potential and be able to cope with the stress that comes with life’s everyday challenges. In an ideal situation, the athlete should be able to understand that while competition and striving for success are important, there’s life beyond sports and being an athlete is not what defines them as a person. The ability to be physically capable, financially independent and mentally stable allows an athlete to feel more secure, be happier and perform better on and off the court.

Nevertheless, an athlete cannot achieve wellbeing without being engaged with the broader society and that’s where athletes’ engagement comes into play. It’s important for athletes to be connected to their communities, share experiences and contribute in a meaningful manner in an attempt to “take off” their athlete hat and be treated as a regular human being. This allows athletes to connect with society not only professionally but also at a personal level, showing the world that there’s an individual that goes beyond the athlete. By being engaged, athletes improve their wellbeing, which consequently makes them feel more comfortable with their body and better performers both on the court and in their everyday lives.

Everyone seems to be talking about athlete wellbeing and welfare lately, which involves creating a safe environment for athletes while competing and training for their sport, as well as ensuring their safety and wellbeing away from the game.  Additionally, athlete welfare involves the creation of an environment in which athletes can develop skills and competencies outside of sport that will add to their personal development and wellbeing, which is not related to sports.

Our program is a complementary tool which enhances athlete welfare and wellbeing, and it adheres to the holistic model of athlete development.  It considers financial education to be a prerequisite of athletes’ wellbeing, and it emphasizes the need for athletes to understand their personal financial interests, be able to navigate through the risks of personal financial management and be prepared to safeguard their resources from the hard work they are putting in their sports careers.  Our program addresses the concept of a dual career and the need for athletes to create career outlets and options beyond the sport industry and also exploit their full potential.  We further address the needs that surface in the athletes’ post-sport career and ensure that athletes have educational skills to complement any other skills to be used in the job market.  We believe that education promotes entrepreneurship, as well as adds value, allowing athletes to develop entirely new revenue-generating streams.

Action Steps – Exercise 3: (10 minutes)

From a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the highest, how do you rate yourself on the following:

1. Physical wellbeing
2. Mental wellbeing
3. Financial wellbeing
4. Emotional wellbeing
5. Community engagement

Please justify the rating you have given yourself in each category.

The Holistic Model of athlete development as a solution to the challenges of being a professional athlete

Athlete development has been the focus point in sport operations for decades.  However, there has been an evolutionary approach to the entire process that has been shaped by socioeconomic and cultural developments, as well as emerging needs of athletes themselves. The Holistic Model is the latest trend, which in essence is athlete-centered or athlete oriented, meaning that the athletes’ overall well-being and social welfare is being considered, in addition to the sporting development of the athlete. Holistic athlete development describes the process of developing skills, attributes and values, which will assist athletes in achieving success in life, regardless of the level of success they achieve in sports. The Holistic Model refers to a comprehensive, athlete-centered development approach that goes beyond physical and technical training to include mental, emotional, educational, social, and financial well-being.

As you very well know, athletes are not blessed superheroes or fine-tuned sport machines that compete day in and day out for the millions of dollars in salary, providing entertainment to audiences and a lot of work output for sport media and social media. Athletes are, first and foremost, human beings with needs that extend beyond those related to their chosen sport and they are people that have a professional life span limited to just a few years during which they play professional sports.

The Holistic Model of athlete development considers their physical abilities, their sport-specific skills in competing and their perception and understanding of the sport and its needs. Additionally, in this model one can observe the input of sport-related science, specifically related to rehabilitation and recuperation from sport activity, proper hydration and nutrition, physical preparation and medical care and of course mental readiness (psychological support) to cope with a heavy sport schedule, the need to focus and work hard, while maintaining a sport-life balance that is at least bearable to the athletes and their families. The new addition to the Model, however, is the personal development aspect for athletes, that has been trending in the sports industry for the last few years.

Given that athletes have on average a rather short professional career, the fact that athletes do not have the time or other resources to invest in professional development away from sports, the fact that athletes are proven to be highly financially vulnerable for a series of reasons and the fact that the sport lifestyle has in the past restricted athletes from carrying a normal daily life, the need has surfaced to provide athletes and their development with a complementary set of skills. These skills can be life skills, educational skills, ethical and normative behavior, cognitive skills and so on.

The sports industry is currently signaling that “We Care”; if the athlete cannot get a professional contract and drops out of sports, we care.  If an athlete drops out of professional sports due to illness or injury, we care.  If an athlete ends up bankrupt, we care. If an athlete is depressed and feeling hopeless at the end of his/her career, due to lack of professional options, we care. This is the underlying message and the bottom line in the Holistic Model of athlete development. The industry is taking a stand in producing elite athletes, who are also educated, skillful, balanced individuals, who will not vanish when their athletic career is over.

Let’s discuss what exactly these new additions are in the Athlete Development curriculum. An important factor in the model is the so-called Athletic Talent Development Environment (ATDE), which is comprised of all key stakeholders in the development process, including family, friends, the school system, athletes’ peers, as well as everyone that one would expect to be present such as coaches, other athletes, team personnel etc., essentially combining the micro and macro environments of athlete development.

Nowadays, athletes should be taught basic life skills, should be mentored and empowered, they should be in a simultaneous dual-career path (education and sports) and of course the latest trend is the need for athletes to become financially literate, which is a unique skill that reaches beyond just a supplementary form of development, rather it should be characterized as essential and paramount.  Athletes should also be exposed to social responsibility, inclusiveness, diversity, a new set of moral standards that follow societal expectations and needs, and through sports they should be guided to becoming better individuals; not necessarily acquiring more qualifications, but definitely more quality.

Sport is considered to be one of the biggest vehicles for development and positive change. Whether on a personal, or community level, national and international, sport has the ability to affect change. This Holistic Model of athlete development can instill attitudes and behaviors, can teach qualities such as persistence, perseverance and resilience, which will facilitate learning and excellence on and off the playing field and especially in other areas of life away from sports. This development model is able to teach adherence to teamwork, team values, respect to rules and regulations; it can develop social and leadership skills; physical skills and general athleticism for life long involvement in sport and physical activity; it teaches life skills such as a healthy lifestyle, personal hygiene and awareness of good sleep, rest and recovery practices; it teaches the importance of education as a tool for professional advancement (including the advancement of a pro career) and the extremely valuable life skill of financial literacy that can literally guide athletes throughout their lives in whatever they choose to do in or out of the sport industry.

In closing, let’s put ourselves in the position of a former superstar who has gone from hero to zero in less than seven years post-retirement. What if it was you? What would you have wished you had as a backup plan?  Well, this is exactly what you will learn through this program so that you do not find yourself in that position!

We strongly believe that a holistic view of developing athletes contributes to the personal growth and maturity of the athlete.  It prepares athletes, not just for being successful in their sport, but for being successful in life after sport as well.  It helps athletes develop both hard and soft skills which are necessary, not just for their sport but also for their life as a whole.

The skills athletes need to design and project-manage their life plan

To design your desired life plan you need to be aware of who you are, your special skills and of course your weaknesses.  In addition, you need to understand where you are in life right now and what, in broad terms, your life goals are.  These life goals should cover the different aspects of your life such as health, family, relationships, career and finances.

We all need a plan to go through life and if you don’t have one, now it is a good time for you to come up with a working draft of this life plan.  Your plan needs to include and cater for your personal life, work or business life as well as your financial life, considering your values and what matters most to you.

If you have not done it already, you need to start thinking about what you want to accomplish in your life and what your mission is.  If you have not already discovered your passions and talents outside of sport, maybe now it is a good time to look into that.  Given that you are a professional athlete, it means that you are passionate about sports; however, there must be other things that you are passionate about or at the very least good at.  Do not exclude your other passions or talents from your life plan.  Embrace them and include them in your life plan, even as an option.  We all know that sports careers are difficult to build and don’t last long, therefore you need to have all your options open and available.

To build a successful career and life plan you need certain skills, and these skills are the ones they don’t usually teach you at school.  Financial and life skills do not usually form part of formal education, and most people develop these skills through trial and error, by dealing with uncertainty, failures, and whatever life brings to them.

Our purpose here is to equip you with these skills which will enable you to build the life you aspire to have and deal well with whatever life brings.  You must have already developed a number of these life skills as part of your sports career: discipline, consistency, grit, determination, resilience.  We will supplement these skills with simple financial concepts so that you acquire a well-rounded view of how finances work in every phase of your life and how you can create a financial plan that will serve your greater life plan. Digital transformation is changing the way we manage careers, finances, and personal growth—use it to your advantage as you shape a well-rounded and resilient life plan.

Action Steps – Exercise 4 (10 minutes):

Ask the athletes the following questions and try to get at least 4 to 5 answers from different people to have a meaningful discussion with the whole class.

1. Have you been thinking about your greater life plan and what you want to accomplish in life?
2. Do you ever think about your post sports career, what you could be doing and the fact that sports will not be a part of it? How do you feel about that and how can you get yourself ready for such a case?
3. Do you know what you are good at, outside of sport, and how you can use that in a future non-sport career?

Overview of the financial and life skills program and how it helps professional athletes

This course seeks to assist professional athletes in all aspects of their lives that are unrelated to their athletic performance. It has been designed and tailored around the challenges, tasks and realities that athletes have to face off-the-pitch. Our objective is to introduce you to basic yet necessary financial concepts and techniques. By fusing theory and practice, we will inform you about the financial vulnerability of athletes as well as the impact of the transition from professional sports to post-sport life, with everything it entails. We will then delve deep into financial concepts such as banking, debt, investments, interest rates and advice on assembling a team of advisors, commercializing your sports brand and so on. Throughout this course you will engage with these concepts and techniques in a practical fashion so as to enable you to absorb them in full and utilize them when implementing your financial and life plan.

In today’s digitally driven world, professional athletes must also become digitally literate. Managing your finances, personal brand, and post-sport career all require understanding how to use digital tools effectively. From online banking apps to brand-building through social media, this program also introduces key digital platforms and strategies that empower athletes to make smarter decisions and remain relevant beyond the game.

We set below the roadmap of the course along with its components and the desired learning objectives.

• Financial Psychology

Financial psychology relates to our behavior towards personal finances and financial decisions regarding money, budgeting, investing and so on.  Family, society and culture play a huge role in the development of the athlete’s financial psychology.  Money is a social tool, and our attitudes, beliefs and practices connected with it, are heavily influenced by the people who surround us.  In this lesson we discuss how the pursuit of money is all about trying to meet either emotional or psychological desires and identifying these desires will give professional athletes greater control over their financial behavior.

• Creating your Winning Team of Advisors

Professional athletes are advised to have a support circle which will help them in the implementation and management of their financial and life plan.  They first have to deal with fulfilling their support needs by having a mentor, an athlete mindset and performance coach, etc.  In addition, athletes need to become acquainted with how to assemble a competent financial team to help them design their financial future.  There are important lessons to be learned from a plethora of athletes who have financially failed, and this is what we are communicating to athletes in this lesson.  A common denominator often, is the trust athletes have placed in the wrong professionals.  We have all heard of a number of cases all over the world, where lawyers, accountants, investment advisors, agents, etc. have defrauded athletes by advising them to invest in various potentially “high and fast profit” schemes.  In a lot of cases, athletes not only lost the money they had originally invested but also ended up being accused of tax fraud.

• Personal Financial Planning & Money Management

Personal financial planning is a lifelong process, and athletes are guided through the specifics of it in this lesson.  Professional athletes are and will be making financial decisions all their life; sometimes they will foresee situations and plan deliberately, sometimes, well, things just happen, and they will be forced to make instant decisions.  Creating their financial game plan means making deliberate decisions now that will allow professional athletes to get closer to their goals while reflecting the realities of being an athlete.

• Banking, Credit & Debt

It is very important for athletes to develop an understanding about how banks work so that they can manage their banking to their best interest.  Properly managed bank accounts can reduce expenses and protect the athletes’ personal information.  Making purchases on credit is a major part of everyday life to the point that it is being frequently abused and may be transformed into excessive debt which is not manageable.  By understanding ‘good’ and ‘bad’ debt, athletes will be able to utilize debt when and where it best suits their overall financial and life plan.  In this lesson we present the basic banking operations that most closely relate to the athlete’s current and future needs and discuss the different banking risks associated with credit, debt, and credit history.  Moreover, this lesson discusses the risks of loans and being in debt, as well as presents ways of keeping debt under control.

• Risk Management & Insurance

It is important for athletes to identify and manage potential risks as well as recognize different types of fraud so that they can take measures to protect themselves from such risks.  Athletes can protect themselves and their personal finances in a number of ways, whether that means buying different types of insurance to cover basic and sport specific needs, protecting their wealth and their family or limiting the disastrous financial effects of a divorce.  This lesson outlines the elements of risk and insurance.  It also discusses the concepts associated with risk and insurance and offers advice as to how professional athletes can treat these elements at different points of their lives, both within and outside of sport.

• Investments & Creating Long-term Wealth

Bad investment decisions contribute greatly to the financial problems of professional athletes.  Athletes have been an easy target for many shady financial predators, who promise them ‘sweet deals’ with huge returns in a short period of time.  With so many ‘get rich quick’ schemes out there which try to sell the improbable dream, athletes need to have the knowledge which will help them make educated decisions for themselves and control their emotional responses to risk and the market.  In this lesson we will go through the process of getting prepared to invest and we will pinpoint what to look out for and what the risks are.  We will also look into the importance of investment diversification, and we will go over real estate investment.  At the end of the lesson, we will present the ‘being investment ready’ checklist which will inform athletes whether they are aware of what they need to know to be investment ready.

• The Economic Environment, Contracts & Taxes

Personal financial planning is affected by several macroeconomic factors.  Therefore, when professional athletes plan their financial lives, they should consider conditions in the wider economy and in the markets that make up the economy. Since professional athletes enter into various types of contracts, whether sports contracts, sponsorship contracts, endorsement contracts, etc., it is important that they are well-verse with some basic information about contracts and how taxes affect their income.

• Building and commercializing your Personal Brand, Name, Image and Likeness

Professional athletes have a relatively short career playing sport, living most of their life from earnings made off the field, which is why it is important that they are proactive when it comes to their financial planning. One of the many pillars of good financial planning is building the athlete’s personal brand in order to maximize their earning potential off the field during and after their sports career. Indeed, an athlete’s sports career may end, but a strong brand will continue to exist, assisting in building wealth beyond the athlete’s playing years.  By developing their personal brand, professional athletes will be able to monetize the success of today in the long-term.  A well-crafted brand strategy can transform an athlete from a sports-related VIP to a business-related VIP with a lifetime duration.

• Business Fundamentals, Entrepreneurship & Post Sports Career Development

Every athlete will retire from sport at some point.  Research shows though, that athletes are often unwilling to plan in advance for their post-sport careers.  The transition to a post-sports career becomes even harder because most athletes don’t have any previous work experience in a full-time job and may have missed out on education due to their sporting commitments.  In order to avoid suddenly finding themselves lost, athletes need to plan ahead for life after sports.  In this lesson we provide an overview of the world of work as well as entrepreneurship and we present athletes with various post-sport job career and entrepreneurial options.

Through this program, athletes will:

• Realize that a sports career is short and that they need to have a greater life plan.
• Learn to consult and surround themselves with trustworthy professionals.
• Be able to set a budget and follow it.
• Be conservative with their finances.
• Learn to say “NO” to family and friend requests for money.
• Prepare themselves for a second career.
• Make smart financial decisions.

In short, the targets of this program are:

• To alert athletes of the necessity of a greater life plan
• To give athletes the tools to design, implement and project-manage their life plan and adapt it as needed
• To make sure that athletes obtain a basic financial understanding, which will help them make sound financial decisions because such decisions usually have a lifelong impact
• To educate athletes, so that they are able to identify who the right people to advise them are and create a strong support system which will help them realize their full potential to thrive financially
• To make athletes aware that developing their brand and working on their personal marketing strategy will help them stay up-to-date and in the spotlight for much longer than how long their athletic miracles endure

Lesson wrap-up

In this introductory lesson, we discussed the hard realities surrounding the lives of professional athletes and focused particularly on the financial vulnerability of athletes.  We looked into our course components and how they can help athletes design and implement their life plan.  We briefly addressed the most common factors that underline the vulnerability of athletes, which in turn make them prone to financial failure and gave a few stats in support of it. We have demonstrated that the solution to the problem is financial literacy through which athletes can acquire the necessary financial and life skills to design, implement and project-manage their greater life plan.

At this point, we will wrap-up today’s lesson.  First, we will go over the learning objectives of this lesson and we want your feedback as to whether they have been achieved, and then we will address any questions you may have.  Please feel free to ask anything you’d like in relation to today’s lecture, and we would love to hear how the concepts we discussed today relate to you and your greater life plan.