| In the early hours of this morning, the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Kansas City Chiefs by 40 points to 22 to win Super Bowl LIX in front of nearly 66,000 fans in New Orleans’ Superdome and an estimated 120m more around the world.
Like that other great American sport baseball, pro football is a game of statistics. Passing yards, rushing yards, kicking points, punt return averages, third down percentages, and many more besides.
How about these for statistics? Each member of the Eagles’ winning team took home $171,000, or about £138,000. Each of the losing Chiefs still went away $96,000 better off.
With the average salary for an NFL player standing at about $3.2m a year, not to mention all those lucrative sponsorship endorsements, these guys can’t possibly worry a day in their life about money, right?
Wrong. Some more statistics. About 16pc of NFL players file for bankruptcy within 12 years of retiring, and nearly four in five reportedly face serious financial hardships after retirement.
This seems incredible until we look below the headline numbers. The average NFL salary doesn’t reflect the wages the overwhelming majority of players can expect to earn. Vast salaries awarded to star players, particularly quarterbacks, distort the league-wide figure. Patrick Mahomes, the Chief’s losing QB, is tied to Kansas for 10 years by a whopping $450m deal.
Then there’s longevity. The average length of a career in the NFL is just 3.3 years, providing the narrowest of windows for players to maximise their earnings.
Most find their careers over at a young age, often by the age of 30. Most never earn at the same level again.
Pro ballers aren’t trained in budgeting, tax or long-term financial planning. Like the rest of us, they’d do well to listen to someone who is.
Martin Brown
Managing Partner |
