NIL moves athlete planning into the family kitchen

The call that used to come when a player signed his first professional contract now comes from a high school junior’s mother with a six-figure name, image and likeness collective offer on the table and no idea what she is looking at, advisors interviewed by InvestmentNews say. Matt LaPorta, an executive in residence at Dynasty Financial Partners who spent parts of five seasons in Major League Baseball before moving into wealth management, frames the shift as moving the entry point into an athlete’s financial life five years earlier, to age 17, with the parent as the decision-maker. Families are looking sooner, he says, and the advisors who educate rather than sell will get the first look at the money.

The work behind that window looks different from the old athlete practice. Brittany Hartnett, principal partner and chief growth officer at OpenArc Corporate Advisory, describes a recent client — a college freshman football player earning roughly $800,000 in NIL income — who had to evaluate an agent agreement, form an LLC, plan for taxes, make investment decisions and manage requests for money from relatives all at once. Hartnett says her firm coordinated the athlete’s agent, attorney, accountant and financial advisor so each piece worked together. OpenArc's $10.1 billion in regulatory AUM makes this a different weight class, and what Hartnett says should land with RIA principals is about habits, not assets: “We spend as much time helping athletes build healthy financial habits as we do managing their assets.”

Chris Brophy, a private wealth advisor at Americana Partners, describes the compressed timeline in two directions: players of 18 and 19 earn real money before they have had any reason to learn taxes, investing, entities or cash flow, so the right advisors around them early create opportunity while the wrong setup can create bad habits quickly. Brophy is describing a clock that runs backward from the usual advisory career — the earning window is something to protect before it opens, not something to stretch.

The advice being dispensed has a sharper edge than standard pro-athlete counsel. Hartnett tells athletes that time is one of their most powerful assets because peak earnings concentrate in a short period, and that they should build a team of advisors who will say what they need to hear rather than what they want to hear. LaPorta’s version is more mechanical: cap spending by age rather than by paycheck, put the core portfolio in the market and leave it alone. No venture deals, no alts, no restaurants, he says — the same forbearance any RIA would demand of a concentrated windfall, applied years earlier than the industry is used to.

Some platforms have already made a staffing decision around that earlier clock: in August, PWD reported that Dynasty added Greg Resh, a sports banker, to its executive-in-residence roster — a hire that added no client assets but put deal experience on the bench. LaPorta holds the same title at Dynasty, with playing time to translate for players and parents. Those two appointments point the same direction: the athlete relationship is being built before the pro contract, at the point where a parent is trying to understand a collective offer. Dynasty is positioning its RIAs to own the relationships of the next decade by being present for the recruiting years, not the signing day.

None of this makes NIL planning a standalone business: the checks are smaller than a pro contract, and the client is often the parent. But the engagement that starts at a high school kitchen table is the one that will be asked to structure the signing bonus, handle the endorsement entity and manage the post-career transition. The advisor who explains an LLC to a 17-year-old’s mother will be the call when the actual contract arrives; the advisor who waits until the player is 22 will find the seat already filled. The NIL era moved the entry point for athletes and for their families, and the RIA that understands which one is the client will be the one in the room for the contract that follows.