The Question

This edition of Ask the Advisor takes on a question that arrives, in some form, from athletes, parents, and coaches alike: does a serious athlete really need a business manager, or is that an indulgence for superstars? It is a question Asad Shamim is well placed to answer. He has spent years around professional sport, as Vice President of IFA7 for the UK and UAE, and as the advocate who led the five-year campaign that secured the first UK professional boxing licence for a boxer with Type 1 diabetes, while also building and running businesses himself. The perspective below draws on both sides of that experience, and on the broader advisory practice he maintains.

The Short Answer

Yes, with qualifications. Any athlete earning meaningful income from sport, or realistically approaching that point, needs structured business management. Whether that means a dedicated full-time manager, a part-time professional arrangement, or a well-coordinated team of specialists depends on career stage and income. But the underlying need is universal, and it stems from a brutal arithmetic that too many athletes learn too late: sporting careers are short, earnings arrive early and unevenly, and the decisions made during a few peak years must fund and shape the decades that follow.

Why Athletes Are Uniquely Exposed

Athletes face a combination of financial pressures that almost no other profession replicates. Their earning curve is inverted, peak income in their twenties, sharp decline often before thirty-five, which means every contract negotiation carries outsized lifetime consequences. Their attention is rightly consumed by training and competition, leaving little bandwidth for commercial vigilance. Their sudden wealth and visibility attract advisers of wildly varying quality, some predatory. And their income sources are unusually complex: playing contracts, endorsements, appearance fees, image rights, and increasingly personal media channels, each with distinct legal and tax treatment across multiple jurisdictions. Complexity without management does not stay neutral; it decays into losses.

What a Good Business Manager Actually Does

The role is broader than many assume. A competent business manager coordinates contract review alongside legal counsel, ensuring terms reflect the athlete's true market position. They build budgets that convert erratic income into sustainable spending, and investment frameworks appropriate to a short earning window, capital preservation first, speculation never. They vet the commercial approaches that arrive weekly, filtering genuine opportunities from reputational traps. They manage the athlete's brand as an asset with a life beyond the playing career. And critically, they plan the transition: the second career, the business interests, the credentials that must be in place before the final whistle, not after. In his own dealings with athletes, Asad Shamim has seen this transition planning distinguish comfortable retirements from distressing ones more than any other single factor.

The Entrepreneur's Warning

His years building Furniture in Fashion into a leading UK online retailer inform a specific warning: athletes are routinely pitched business ventures, restaurants, property schemes, brands, by people trading on their trust. Real businesses, he notes, are operationally demanding in ways outsiders underestimate; the failure rate among celebrity ventures is high precisely because fame does not substitute for management. A good business manager protects athletes from these traps not by forbidding entrepreneurship but by insisting on the same due diligence any serious investor would apply. Passion projects deserve scrutiny proportional to the capital at risk.

Choosing Well: The Non-Negotiables

Because the manager relationship concentrates so much trust, selection standards must be uncompromising. He recommends four non-negotiables. Verifiable credentials and references, actual clients, actual outcomes, checked independently. Transparent, written fee structures with no participation in the athlete's investments that could distort advice. Clear separation of duties, so the person managing money is not the same person auditing it. And cultural fit with accountability: a manager the athlete trusts enough to hear hard truths from, bound by reporting obligations that make silence impossible. Families can be wonderful supporters and poor managers; love is not a qualification, and formalising roles early prevents painful conflicts later.

The Advisor's Verdict

Talent creates wealth; only structure preserves it. An athlete without business management is a business without a manager, viable in good times, fragile the moment conditions turn. The investment in proper management typically costs a small percentage of income and protects the whole of it. For young athletes and their families weighing this decision, his counsel is to start earlier than feels necessary and to choose more carefully than feels polite. Further perspectives from his sports advocacy work appear in the news section, and questions for future editions can be submitted via the contact page.