Like others in wealth management, Mikael Lemieux is used to talking about taxes and investing— he’s just sometimes doing it from inside a locker room.
Lemieux works in JPMorgan’s Athlete Center of Excellence, which launched in March as an educational resource for athletes. Part of Lemieux’s remit includes educating athletes about managing their money and quite literally meeting them where they’re at, whether they’re still in school or playing pro.
“I’ve been on 30 airplanes in the last two months or so, and all across the country,” Lemieux told Business Insider about his trips to teams and universities in July.
Lemieux feels right at home in a locker room, since he played major junior hockey in the Canadian Hockey League before transitioning to finance. Not to mention he comes from a sports dynasty: his uncle is Mario Lemieux, a hockey legend and part-owner of the Pittsburgh Penguins, and his father also played in the NHL. Financial literacy wasn’t part of his conversations as a young player.
The center is an educational tool, not a tool for courting clients, Lemieux said. It’s part of JPMorgan Wealth Management’s broader infrastructure to serve athletes throughout their careers. Wealth advisors at JPMorgan can come to Lemieux for advice on their athlete clients, too.
Athletes are not the typical private wealth client. Their careers are short, they make money younger, and when they’re less likely to plan for the future, and there’s an overarching “theme of unknowns,” Lemiuex said.
One of those unknowns for banks is which players will become the next handsomely paid stars, with likely complex banking needs. By getting to know athletes early on, banks might be firming up relationships with important future clients or even current high earners. Opendorse, a technology company that tracks the Name, Image, Likeness industry, estimated that the amount college athletes can bring in from merchandise or endorsements will reach $4.5 billion in the upcoming academic year, up 50% from previous estimations.
Wall Street firms are trying to cash in on the sports entertainment boom and celebrity status of many young athletes, especially after the NCAA started allowing college players to monetize their name, image, and likeness in 2021. Merrill Lynch, Wells Fargo, and Morgan Stanley also have dedicated sports and entertainment teams and partner directly with teams and universities.
Lemieux spoke to Business Insider about the specific financial challenges athletes face, and what it’s like to talk money management in the locker room.
Locker room talk
Universities have become especially interested in Lemieux’s locker room conversations and in providing athletes with financial information since NIL rules came into effect. New York Giants linebacker Kayvon Thibodeaux, an NIL pioneer when he played at the University of Oregon, often joins Lemieux and is a major help in getting athletes’ attention.
“They see a guy who was in their seats six years ago, and this is the guy that they all hopefully aspire to be,” Lemieux said.
Kevin Sabitus/Getty Images
If Thibodeaux isn’t there, Lemieux, often dressed in jeans and a sweater instead of his usual suit, will touch on his own experience playing hockey at a high level. He tries to get their attention early, using graphs, short-form videos, and interactive case studies rather than presentation slides full of financial jargon. The talks usually last 45 minutes to an hour and focus on an “athlete as CEO” framework — or as head coach or general manager. He encourages them to think about building their futures, not just spending money now.
Athletes don’t have to be financial experts, Lemieux said, but they should be involved in their own money. He answers practical questions about building relationships with people like lawyers, accountants, and financial advisors. Some athletes ask whether you have to pay an hourly fee for an introductory meeting (the answer for wealth advisors is no).
Certain questions come up often
The most common questions athletes ask are about investing. While Lemieux might not be able to give individual investment advice, especially in a sweat-soaked locker room, he can provide them a framework for thinking about it. The same reasoning applies for navigating new, sometimes awkward dynamics around money, since many of the athletes are first-generation big-money earners, especially in football, he said.
“That shifts the family dynamic incredibly,” Lemieux said. These athletes want to support the ones who supported them, but they also have a lot of people asking for funds.
By having an advisor, Lemieux said, they can “put up a wall” between themselves and their money and have someone to filter those requests. It’s much easier to tell people to talk to your financial advisor than to control the money yourself.
Social media and brand endorsement deals also come up often. Some of the biggest schools have podcast studios and other social media-specific facilities in the locker room. Financial advisors can help athletes think about how to “curate their personal brand” and take the right endorsements in the right form of compensation.
Some athletes who don’t need the cash can even take brand deals as equity stakes in a company, he said.
Athletes are part of a “sensitive community” based on relationships and trust, and they can be skeptical of financial advice. Advisors and others, Lemieux said, have to cultivate trust with athletes’ entire networks, including their coaches, agents, and, in the age of highly-paid college athletes, parents.
The immediate goal, as Lemieux described it, is not to turn the athletes sitting in front of him into JPMorgan clients, but it’s no secret that some of them will become wildly successful players who will, at some point, need a bank. It doesn’t hurt to get to know them, in their element, right at the start of their careers.
