🎙 IN THE POCKET

How I am seeing the field across sports, media, entertainment, wellness and CPG

“One in six NFL players file for bankruptcy.”

That line from JPMorgan's Kristin Lemkau at the Game Changers conference hit my feed and a few group chats this week. It traces to a 2015 NBER study: ~16% of players drafted between 1996 and 2003 were broke within 12 years of retiring. Was I shocked? Unfortunately, no.

I grew up in the 30 for 30 and social media era where athletes - or anybody with wealth for that matter - have the public closely watching any false move… and usually commenting on it. Bad crypto investment? There's probably an ad or tweet about it. Spend a lot of money on a 6-car garage and vintage Ferraris and then not make it to your next contract? That IG post is going to be viral. Head out on a boat with teammates the day before a playoff game? Well that's a lifelong meme. (Sorry Giants fans… had to).

The millionaire athlete going broke problem has been around as long as contracts have been. Antoine Walker earned ~$108 million over 13 NBA seasons, filed for bankruptcy in 2010, and said it himself: "The money came so fast without the education." Vince Young went third overall in 2006 with a $26 million guaranteed deal and a few years later was suing his former agent and financial planner, claiming at least $5.5 million was misappropriated.

What happens when you ask an athlete what they are going to do with the money from their first endorsement contract or deal? More and more now say "invest" or "save" it, and that's progress. But that first big number is often a signing bonus - a lump sum that lands before the first game does, and nobody hands over a plan with it. The college version is just in its early days, and there's so much white space for resources for these student-athletes stepping into what could and should be life-changing money. I wrote about it in Volume 32 with Final Whistle Wealth, and I still think it gets worse before it gets better.

Athletes do have something most people with a lump sum don't always have: premium access to an ecosystem of other high net worth folks, business propositions and the ability to allocate their wealth in different ways from a very young age. We're seeing the pattern shift toward ownership in real time. Kylian Mbappé walked away from Nike after ~20 years for an equity stake in On (which we got into on Episode 2 of The Colosseum). Roger Federer took equity in On back in 2019. Kobe Bryant put roughly $6 million into BodyArmor in 2014, and the stake was reportedly worth $400 million when Coca-Cola bought the company.

More athletes are building wealth by “owning” pieces of things, and the consumer side is moving in a similar direction. On the investing side, there's a new wave of team-index products I'll be digging into soon. And between sportsbooks, prediction markets and fantasy, there are more ways to bet on a sports-related event than ever before. But that comes at a cost - the general public is falling into the trap of associating betting with investing, when they are very different things. An investment is a stake in something that can produce cash flows over time. A bet looks great on a Sunday morning when you see how much the 10-leg parlay can pay out and you picture being a millionaire by the time the 4pm slate kicks off, but Gen Z sees them as the same. In Betterment's 2026 survey, 52% of Gen Z investors said they'd moved money meant for investing into sports betting over the past year, and 26% said they treat betting as part of their long-term financial strategy. That is scary stuff, and I dove deeper there in Volume 30 with LionStrike.

Meanwhile, the clock is the problem for athletes. The Wall Street Journal analysis found the average NFL career shrank from 4.99 years to 2.66 between 2008 and 2014. The oldest line in finance is that a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow. For an athlete, the money that arrives at the start of your career has decades to pay out and/or compound, but that next contract isn’t guaranteed. Time cuts both ways, though. The Mets deferred the $5.9 million they owed Bobby Bonilla at 8% interest, and he's collected about $1.19 million every July 1 since 2011. The deals that cost you are the ones that take a slice of your earnings with no end date, because they keep costing you long after the paychecks stop.

Thematically, we have three movements now coming to a crossroads.

That's the idea behind Agentiq: fans buy into a share of an athlete's future on-field earnings, the athlete gets capital up front, and a market where those shares can trade lets both sides win over the long run.

No Huddle got an early look at Agentiq as they emerge from stealth… more below 👇

📺 THE WATCH LIST

A mini investment memo on the stars of tomorrow

The Company: Agentiq Sports

The Business in a tweet: Agentiq is the stock market for professional athletes. Think Robinhood, but instead of buying shares in companies, fans buy a slice of an athlete's future on-field earnings, starting at $100, through SEC-regulated offerings tied to real contracts.

The 101:

If you’re interested in learning more or meeting the team, respond to this email or reach out to [email protected].

📶 THE SIGNAL — NO HUDDLE'S TAKE

The most visible earlier attempts to let retail fans invest in athletes either shut down, never achieved meaningful retail scale, or stayed in private capital. Agentiq thinks the timing is finally right to take this mainstream.

Fantex went first. It launched in 2013 and sold tracking stock tied to an athlete's brand income. Fantex signed dozens of athletes, completed six athlete-linked IPOs totaling $25.8M, which averages out to roughly $4.3 million a deal, and closed to individual investors in August 2016. Forbes's Mike Ozanian (who is now at CNBC) argued at the time that the structure left public shareholders with the thinnest slice.

With Fantex, fans bought athlete-specific tracking stock issued by Fantex - not a direct stake in the athlete’s earnings. The shares were tied to the economic performance of the athlete’s broader brand income, which could include both playing compensation and off-field revenue, with dividends paid by Fantex under the offering’s terms.

On the flip side, Big League Advantage took the private capital route. By Sportico’s count, it had signed more than 400 players by 2022, but it never sold to fans. It’s also part of the reason athletes are wary of these deals. Padres superstar Fernando Tatis Jr. took $2 million as a teenager in exchange for 10% of his future earnings. After Tatis blossomed into one of MLB’s best players and signed a 14-year, $340 million extension, the deal’s projected value to BLA is roughly $34 million from that contract alone. Tatis challenged the agreement in court, but lost in arbitration. This May, a San Diego judge ruled against him again, and he has said he'll appeal.

With Agentiq, fans buy units in a separate, athlete-specific Series LLC rather than shares in Agentiq itself. In the Ronny Cruz offering, that series is entitled to up to 10% of his future on-field baseball earnings. Investor distributions, if any, are paid from the series’ available cash flow after fees, expenses, taxes, and reserves.

So why now? Agentiq is emerging from stealth at the intersection of four megatrends:

Each of these trends has already produced companies, and some big winners. Agentiq touches all four with a regulated security underneath, which is why I think mass adoption is possible here in a way it wasn't for Fantex in 2013.

Athletes are now also seen as distribution channels. A player promoting his own series to his followers is the cheapest marketing in this category, and GameStock's creator-led playbook in Volume 25 points the same direction. A brand that already sponsors an athlete could pitch its customers on backing him too.

The other reason I take this seriously is how the team has operated. The regulatory review ran in private while athletes were being signed. By launch week there are five series, an app in App Store review and a seed round from Defy and the owners of two European clubs, all assembled quietly before most of the category knew the company existed. Zach played D1 baseball, owns a bat company whose customers are pro players and has spent his career in startups. Reuben was employee #10 at Pave and an engineer at NerdWallet. One founder has the clubhouse access and the other built the part that moves the money. Getting a player to sell a slice of his future is a trust sale, and I think it's very hard to do from outside the sport.

Before the enthusiasm gets ahead of us, here's what Agentiq can't fix. It can't diversify a fan out of single-athlete risk until baskets exist. It can't shorten a lockout. If one runs into the 2027 season, the players on big-league rosters stop getting paid, and distributions stop with them. And it can't take an athlete's conduct out of the equation. Finlete's Emmanuel Clase, who has pleaded not guilty to charges that he rigged pitches for bettors, has been on unpaid leave since March.

Agentiq's underlying bet is that a fan who will put $25 on a parlay will put $100 into a share of a player's career if the share pays out. The first few weeks of investor demand in the Martinez and Cruz offerings are the first test of it. Time will tell if that is true. I’ll be watching closely.

If you’re interested in learning more, or meeting the team, respond to this email or reach out to [email protected].

No Huddle is for informational purposes only and is not financial or business advice. The content in this newsletter does not represent the opinions of any other person, business, entity, or sponsor.

FROM THE ARCHIVE

Volume 32 on Final Whistle Wealth looked at the athlete side of this story. The first big payment often lands before anyone hands over a plan. Agentiq gives athletes a new way to take cash up front, and the same planning questions come with it.

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