THE FRIDAY RESEARCH BRIEF OVERSEASX

I’ve been reading more research this week on what happens to athletes during and after their careers, and I ended up spending a ridiculous amount of time reading about money.

One study published in Financial Planning Review looked at 252 active athletes and found something I thought was interesting. Knowing that financial planning is important isn’t enough. The athletes who felt capable of controlling their finances were more likely to intend to make good financial decisions. Almost 38% of the athletes in the study weren’t saving anything, and nearly 69% had no investments.

Which brings me back to my career. My income made absolutely no fucking sense compared to a normal job.

I could get a signing bonus, a monthly salary, playoff money, per diem, maybe some cash somebody handed you in an envelope. Then the season ends and you might not make another dollar from basketball for five months. Or the team is supposed to pay you on the first and suddenly it’s the 17th and the GM has apparently fallen off the face of the earth.

We knew how to play basketball. Nobodyexplained how to build a financial life around that kind of income.

Then I read another 2026 study by Jaco Moolman from the University of South Africa that got more specific. He looked at 20 different areas of financial literacy for professional team sport athletes and tried to figure out which ones require the most competence.

Savings and financial control were near the top. Preparing financially for life after sports mattered. Knowing how to select the right advisers mattered too.

I liked that part because I don’t think an athlete needs to become Warren Buffett.

You do need to know enough that when somebody tells you they have an incredible investment opportunity involving crypto, real estate and their cousin’s new sports drink, a small alarm goes off in your head.

You also need to know who has access to your money, what you’re paying people, what your contract says and how long you could live if the basketball checks stopped tomorrow.

The third study took me in another direction. Researchers in France interviewed 61 elite athletes about entrepreneurship after sports. They found athletes had a lot of the characteristics that can help somebody build a business. Discipline, resilience, handling pressure. Those qualities didn’t automatically give them the technical knowledge or professional network required to build one.

That one made me laugh a little because athletes are constantly told how transferable our skills are.

And they are.

Then you try to start a business and discover QuickBooks.

Nobody gives a shit about your ability to battle through adversity when you don’t understand cash flow.

Reading all three together changed the way I’m thinking about financial education for athletes.

I don’t want to teach somebody enough financial vocabulary to sound smart for an hour. I want the 24 year old overseas player to understand his own money. I want him to know what happens if his team stops paying him. I want him to recognize bad advice. If he wants to start something after basketball, I want him around people who can teach him the parts he doesn’t know.

I spent years playing all over the world and learned a lot of this stuff by getting older, making mistakes and figuring shit out.

We can probably give the next group a better education than that.

Sources I read this week:

Financial Fitness: Behavioral Drivers of Money Management Among Athletes in India, Financial Planning Review, June 2026

Beyond the Playing Field: Financial Literacy Competencies for Professional Athletes in Team Sports, International Journal of Financial Studies, March 2026

Entrepreneurship and Career Transition of Elite Athletes, Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, July 2026