01 / The Career Gap
In 2020, researchers surveyed 410 former elite athletes across 32 Olympic sports. 185 came from individual sports while 225 came from team sports. Here are the results:
Career Length:
Individual Athletes retire earlier than team sport athletes by an average of 4 years.
Higher Education:
Team sport athletes have a higher rate of education by more than 10%. This can help them better prepare for retirement.
Post-Career:
Team sport athletes are on average better prepared for life after sports. They have higher rates of financial planning and preparation.
02 / Both Athletes, But Different Jobs
Team sport athletes are employees. Individual athletes are contractors.
If you play in team sports such as the NBA, NFL, or Premier League, you are an employee. You have a guaranteed contract with predictable earnings.
If you play an individual sport like tennis, golf, or boxing, you are an independent contractor(self employed).
Costs
In team sports:
The team or organization covers the majority of expenses(hotels, meals, and flights)
Individual athletes
Usually have to cover their own expenses such as coaches, travel, hotels, physios, and equipment. Prize money has to cover all of it before they keep a dollar.
Sponsorships
Because salary is not guaranteed for individual athletes, most rely on sponsorships and endorsements deals.
While this works for the best athletes, endorsements only exist at the very top. Players outside of the world’s best have limited sponsors.
Team athletes get both. A guaranteed salary as the floor, and endorsements as the upside.
Individual athletes are more reliant on sponsorships and endorsements since most don’t have guaranteed contracts.
03 / Career Security
Team Athletes
In teams sports like the NBA, MLB, and NHL, contracts are almost entirely guaranteed. Tear your ACL in the first game of a five year deal, and the team still owes you every dollar. Teams often cover medical expenses as well.
Injuries hurt their careers, but not their income
Individual Athletes
In individual sports, if you can't play, you don't earn. At any level. There is no salary to keep paying you.
And the bills don't stop. Coaches, physios, surgery, and rehab come out of your own pocket. So the injured athlete is paying more at the exact moment they're earning nothing.
What Athletes Can Learn From This
01 / Understand Your Sport
Understanding the basic business of your sport is how athletes can protect themselves and plan for the future.
What happens if you get hurt?
How long is the average career?
Does my sport give me a safety net?
This becomes the foundation of how an athlete plans their career as well as their regular life after that career ends.
02 / Build Around Your Career
Your sport decides four things:
How you earn.
How much you earn.
When you earn it.
How long it lasts.
Many athletes are building around the career they think they will have, rather than the one they actually end up having.
03 / Build Early
By the time most athletes have to retire, they aren’t ready: mentally or financially.
But the athletes who are the most prepared for a life after sport are the ones who started building early. Some get degrees, while others start a side business.
It doesn't need to be big.
But it needs to exist before your career ends. Not after.
Your sport chooses your structure. But it does not choose your outcome.
The athletes who come out of the game with something built don’t wait for the system to protect them. They understood what their sport was and wasn't going to give them, and they filled that gap early.
Grow Beyond Sport.
This content is for educational purposes only and does not constitute to personalized career, legal, or financial advice.