Why Merrill, IMG Academy are teaming up for student athlete finance program

Student athletes are getting more financial opportunities at younger ages. Greg McGauley, Bank of America Head of Merrill Private Wealth Management, and Brent Richard, IMG Academy CEO discuss their plans to create a financial education curriculum for these young athletes.

McGauley explains that their partnership aims to "offer more education and resources around financial awareness to student athletes and their families." With extensive experience serving sports professionals, he believes this will "better prepare" students for "life in general."

IMG Academy CEO Brent Richard told Yahoo Finance, "We share one purpose which is to empower student athletes to win their future." He adds: "We believe sports is a platform for life," noting that this partnership will set them apart by promoting both sports skills and life skills through financial education.

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This post was written by Angel Smith

Video Transcript

Financial opportunities, whether through nil or other brand deals are becoming available for student athletes at younger and younger ages.

That's why Img Academy, the world's leading sports education brand and one of the top athletic high schools in the country is partnering with Merrill Wealth Management to build a financial education curriculum, to help prep young student athletes for the opportunities coming their way in the future.

For more.

We welcome in Greg mcgauley who is the Bank of America, head of Merrill Private Wealth Management and Brent Richard, who is the IMG Academy CEO.

It's great to have both of you here with us first, Greg.

I'll just start with you.

What made this partnership makes sense and what can students expect?

Well, uh Maryland Img Academy, you know, announced a three year partnership to offer more education and resources around financial awareness to student athletes and their families.

You know, we've been serving clients in the sports industry, players, owners, coaches and agents for a long time.

And a few years ago, Merrill created a dedicated sports and entertainment group of advisers who have experienced providing strategies for our our clients.

This program is going to allow us to provide a great amount of financial education to the students at a young age in order to help them better prepare for life in general, Brent.

Uh First, congratulations to some of the success that you've seen over at Img Academy.

I was taking a look at.

Of course, this most recent NBA draft that kind of cemented uh 10 year status of IMG Academy seeing at least two alumni selected in the NBA draft seven times including uh 2014, 2015, 2020 2021 2022 23 and 24 here.

I mean, this is kind of an incredible track record that you're really lining up here, but it comes back to not just sports preparedness but financial preparedness too.

You know, what do you want the students to take away from their experience off the quarter off the, the pitch or the mound or wherever and whichever sport they may be competing?

Yeah.

Sure.

Well, thanks for having me.

Uh first of all, and it has been uh incredible success at IMG Academy.

Um One of the more interesting stats is actually that we send as many student athletes every year to the Ivy leagues as we do the professional leagues.

And so on one hand, we have 15 current or former student athletes that are currently in the Olympics.

On the other hand, we had almost 30 student athletes last year that went to top 25 US.

News ranked academic schools.

So, you know, for all of our products, both on campus and online, we have camps, boarding school, online recruiting and coaching.

We share uh uh one purpose which is to empower student athletes to win their future.

We say preparing them for college and for life.

Uh We believe sports is a platform for life.

We believe sports is a platform for uh education.

Um We are in incredibly intentional about teaching life skills.

We have staff on this campus that all they do is teach resilience the same way that uh we teach algebra.

So I think this is what sets us apart in a lot of ways this combination of uh sports and school and life skills.

And it's just very obvious, especially in this moment that the next frontier of building this base of life skills is financial education.

It is a critical life skill.

It always has been a critical life skill.

I would say in this moment, it's very relevant to today's student athletes.

Um There's more financial opportunity coming sooner than it ever has before to student athletes all around uh all around the country.

And we have to be great in this area.

And I think with Merrill, we think that we can be