00:00When you're thinking about wealth management, when you're thinking about financial advice for
00:04an athlete, a high-profile athlete, how does that differ from, you know, your run-of-the-mill,
00:11if you will, ultra-high net worth individual? Thank you for having me, first of all. Great
00:17to be with you, and it is such a frenzy down here in lower Manhattan, so happy to be able
00:23to share some of that enthusiasm. I think in terms of how we are engaging with our clients
00:28from athletes to team owners, there's a lot in common, and there are certainly some differences.
00:33So to your point in terms of how young athletes are thinking about their wealth, it's very much
00:39focused on the long-term plan and helping them develop that long-term plan, which is very similar
00:45to our clients who are earning their wealth over a much more extended period of time versus the more
00:53discreet and shorter earnings period that many of our athlete clients build their wealth around.
01:01And so lots of similarities, a few differences when you're 27 years old making those decisions
01:07versus 57 or 67, and we just help them try to see that journey over the next few decades.
01:13Absolutely, and something I have been wondering, you know, taking a look at all the different
01:17players on the Knicks team, for example, but also taking a look at, you know, their significant
01:21others' pages, their spouses' pages as well. It's not just the athletes who are, you know,
01:27being sponsored by brands, signing these endorsement deals. In a lot of cases, it's also their spouses
01:32and people in their family. And I wonder, you know, when you approach those conversations
01:37with athletes, you think about that long-term plan, how much of that is a family affair?
01:43Very much so. And it's exciting to have the full unit thinking about the objectives that they have
01:50that are specific to their needs or their role in the family. Oftentimes, the guys with whom we work,
01:56they just want to work. They just want to be on the court or the field earning for their families.
02:02And oftentimes, their team includes members of their family. And so whether we're talking
02:07with spouses about philanthropy or helping them think through generational planning,
02:13it's very much a team sport. And that way, in terms of helping each person make sure that their
02:20objectives are reflected in the goals that we establish with our clients.
02:24What type of questions do you get from those clients, particularly in terms of the types
02:29of investments and ventures that they want to make? I would assume it's gone way beyond just,
02:35you know, the traditional endorsement deals that we kind of know of from the previous era.
02:38Are they looking for ownership stakes in teams? Are they looking to start media companies? I mean,
02:43what are they really looking for? Yeah, all of the above. I think there's been a cultural shift over
02:49the past decade or so where investors who happen to be athletes are thinking about how they can
02:57extend their earnings. And so whether it is investing in sports, which they obviously know well,
03:04or investing in the ecosystem, or investing in businesses, they are thinking about ways to
03:10have areas that they are passionate about beyond their day job, and how to incorporate that into
03:19their wealth plan and the projections that they have. So it's pretty varied. It's gone from
03:24conversations that you may have heard a decade ago around looking at a car wash franchise only to
03:31looking at businesses and franchises and the opportunity to get our clients together where
03:37whether it's a client who is an entrepreneur and a tech founder, or a client who is thinking about how
03:43they want to invest in tech after their career. That conversation is very dynamic and fused with an eye
03:50towards where their career can be after their playing time ends. I am curious as to sort of,
03:57you know, what the approach is also to kind of protecting them from scams and fraud. I mean,
04:02we've seen this story play out time and time again, where, you know, they enter a bad investment
04:06because they trusted the wrong person and lose a lot of their wealth. I would assume particularly in
04:11this day and age with AI and all the technology advancements that to a certain extent have made
04:16fraud maybe a little bit easier to do. How do you sort of provide a little bit of a firewall
04:21to
04:21protect them from that? It's really a team effort. If you think about the folks that are around the
04:27client, it includes really strong infrastructure. And I think that whether it's the league or the
04:34Players Association or the other kind of institutional framework around a client, there is a very specific
04:43strategy around how to make sure that our clients are knowledgeable about the investments that they make,
04:50how to best incorporate technology, how to protect themselves from everything from
04:55cybersecurity threats to physical security threats. And so it really does make a lot of sense and take a lot
05:03of
05:03time to make sure that we're when we're thinking about protecting our clients, our athlete clients and the
05:11risks around them, that we're thinking about that broadly and in partnership with other parts of their trusted
05:16advisor team. I do also want to talk about the business of professional sports more broadly because
05:22in this championship run that the Knicks have had, there's been a lot of focus too on Jim Dolan,
05:28of course, especially when it comes to the parade today. But it's interesting. You think about
05:33institutional capital in sports. Certainly private equity has become a force there as well. How has that
05:40changed the ownership structure, especially as you see the valuations of some of these teams across
05:46sports really just rise in recent years? Yeah, it's been exciting to watch. I think the institutional
05:53push that we've seen has certainly been significant now that we have institutional ownership across
06:01the board, across all major leagues. We're starting to see that infrastructure and that institutional
06:08approach really, really show up across various leagues. And so whether it is the ability for
06:14institutions to provide a level of infrastructure and growth strategy, we're seeing private equity
06:21invest not only in teams, but around the infrastructure of teams. So whether that be stadiums or arenas or
06:29the real estate around them, we are seeing private equity very actively engaged across the field.
06:38And I think that institutional mindset is certainly showing up across different leagues in different ways,
06:43whether it is women's sports, which feels much more like a shift towards startup capital to growth capital,
06:50or more mature investments like the NFL. And the NFL really becomes a question of supply and demand
06:58and lots of opportunity there.
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