Why high-earning former athletes keep going broke — despite knowing all the terrible bankruptcy stories
Brian Sozzi· Executive Editor
Thu, August 6, 2026 at 7:12 PM GMT+5:30
3 min read
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Closely monitoring your budget is paramount in retirement, even if you’re a former star athlete who has hauled in tens of millions of dollars
The reality is that continuing to spend lavishly on homes, watches, cars, and vacations like you did when the checks were flowing is a surefire way to go broke
“Let’s say you spend 10 years in the NBA, you’re collecting as a mid-range player, probably $8 million a year … But once you retire, you’ll still have a pool of capital and maybe you’ll have some good positive cash flow, but not adjusting how much money you spend on your lifestyle as well as what you do on a day-to-day is what leads to a depletion of existing funds,” Tom Zheng, CEO of the Players Company, said on the Power Players with Brian Sozzi podcast (video above; listen in below)
“You may have real estate all across the country, but you’re not that $8 million a year earner anymore,” he added. “And that’s why you have to end up liquidating at a fraction of your cost, your assets, because now you realize, oh man, I don’t have the cash cushion anymore.”
Zheng has seen and heard all the financial stories of athletes. He spent his early career as an NFL sports scientist — mostly helping players prevent injuries — for the San Francisco 49ers. Since then, he’s become an active entrepreneur and private investor
Alongside NFL veterans Richard Sherman and Sheldon Day, Zheng co-founded the Players Company, an athlete-built network dedicated to financial literacy and private-market access
As CEO, Zheng leads the organization’s mission to help professional athletes, founders, and high-net-worth members build generational wealth through educational programming, curated events, and joint investment opportunities
A widely cited Sports Illustrated investigation from 2009 estimated that 78% of former NFL players file for bankruptcy or experience financial hardship within two years of leaving the league. About 60% of retired NBA players face a similar fate within five years
Later analysis from the National Bureau of Economic Research confirms this trend, showing that nearly 16% of NFL players file for bankruptcy within 12 years of retirement
This financial vulnerability in retirement is driven by compressed earning windows, given that the average NFL career lasts only 3.3 years and the average NBA tenure spans roughly 4.5 years
