‘My Sport Won’t Pay the Bills Forever’: High-Performance Athletes’ Need for Financial Literacy and Self-Management

Hee Jung Hong,Ian Fraser

doi:10.3390/jrfm14070324

Hee Jung Hong, Ian Fraser

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm14070324

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Abstract

This paper investigates high-performance athletes’ development of their financial literacy and self-management skills and the related organisational support available to them during their athletic careers. The data were collected from 20 retired high-performance athletes (10 male and 10 female) representing six different countries (Japan, Mexico, Portugal, Singapore, South Korea, and the UK). Thematic analysis was applied to the processing of the data and five themes emerged: (1) Funding battles: financial challenges and misjudgements; (2) Coping Strategies; (3) Support from sponsors, parents, and sport organisations; (4) Development of Financial Literacy; and (5) Life After Sport. The data indicates that athletes experienced financial challenges due to a lack of organisational support, reduced or terminated funding, and limited opportunities to access sponsorship. Typically, athletes developed their financial literacy and self-management skills by ‘self-help’ or ‘trial and error’. The findings contribute to both literature and practice by providing empirical evidence on the coping strategies adopted by athletes in order to overcome financial challenges and on the methods used in order to develop their financial literacy and self-management skills. These findings inform sport organisations and governing bodies to develop support schemes for high-performance athletes as well as deepen our knowledge of athletes’ career development and transitions focusing on the financial aspect.

Highlights

High-performance athletes’ experiences when transitioning out of sport are of increasing interest both to academic researchers and more generally
Eight of the 20 participant athletes were fully funded by sport organisations including National Olympic Committees (NOCs), federations, and relevant governmental departments, while the remainder were partly supported by such bodies with the shortfall met by self-funding, parental support, and fundraising: “We did a lot of fundraising events (Athlete 5)”
This paper provides empirical evidence on high-performance athletes’ experiences focusing on the financial challenges experienced by them, and on how they manage these, as well as insights into the importance of organisational support for developing financial literacy and self-management skills

Summary

Introduction

High-performance athletes’ experiences when transitioning out of sport are of increasing interest both to academic researchers and more generally. Research on sport career termination was initiated in the late 1960s (e.g., Mihovilovic 1968) and many studies on career development and transition, including athletes’ retirements, have been conducted since the 1980s (Stambulova et al 2009). From the 1960s to the 1980s, research focused on athletes’ retirements using non-sport frameworks with the focus shifting in the 1990s to a ‘whole-career’ perspective and within-career transitions (e.g., junior-to-senior transition), applying sport-specific frameworks. Many recent studies (Brown et al 2018; Knights et al 2016; Knights et al 2019; Torregrossa et al 2015) focus on athletes’ retirements

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