Financial knowledge is a critical part of an athlete’s professional career. It is important, that athletes understand what their contracts mean, how they are constructed, and what financial rights and obligations come with such professional agreements. Due to a lack of financial literacy, many professional athletes don’t fully understand their contractual agreements, they are unable to appropriately manage their finances and are susceptible to scams and poor financial advice. On average there are still too many professional athletes that encounter severe financial difficulties, either after or even during their careers.
ELPA’s online seminar will cover different aspects of contractual agreements. The focus will be on helping ELPA members understand the basics of how contracts are constructed, players’ and clubs’ rights and obligations, general taxation rules & tax residency, image rights, salary/retribution, and main examples of “issues” with different types of contracts.
Kyle Hines, ELPA First Vice President: “Just as we work on our basketball skills, we should also dedicate time and improve our financial literacy. It is sad to see players with long professional careers struggling financially because of bad financial decisions. Decisions that some players make today can cost them in the future. That is why I am happy ELPA is providing players an opportunity to start learning about this very important aspect of professional careers.”
3-time Euroleague scoring champion Igor Rakocevic will also be joining ELPA members during the seminar. He will share his experiences about making contractual agreements and talk about the issues he encountered during his successful basketball career.
ELPA’s intends to regularly provide learning seminars to its members. After a very successful seminar in April (focused on players’ professional future and 2nd career), this is the second edition and more will follow.
Anze Blazic, ELPA Secretary General: “We remain concentrated on the mission of providing our members best possible tools to grow on and off the court. This seminar is one of the pieces of the big picture, which is to help players succeed financially. There are still many examples of players who are taking this topic too lightly. Providing them with the fundamental knowledge of this topic will steer them in the right direction of financial literacy.”
Fundamentals of Contractual Agreements seminar will be organized in collaboration with the experts from career coaching company Themoove and it will be available to ELPA members online, on Sunday 29 November at 6 pm CET.