Penny Finance, HSM Form Partnership To Assist Pro Athletes In Savings & Grow The Financial Mentorship Startup

In July 2021, the National Women’s Soccer League Players Association (NWSLPA) launched its No More Side Hustles campaign to advocate for increased player salaries. While the lives of professional athletes are generally associated with wealth and extravagance, this is simply not the case for NWSL players, many of whom work second jobs to make livings. The league’s minimum salary is $22,000, while the Players Association estimates that 75% of its players earn $31,000 or less in annual salary. Compare this to minimums in the WNBA ($52,000) or MLS ($81,375) — not to mention the NBA’s $925,000 — and you can see the large disparity and issues with these figures.

Well, this is where Penny Finance and Hochberg Sports Marketing (HSM) are seeking to make change. Penny Finance is a personalized and tech-enabled financial mentor app for women, arming its users with the education and tools necessary to grow their wealth. Once Penny founder Crissi Cole learned about the struggles athletes in NWSL and other sports such as AVP Beach Volleyball face to earn liveable wages, she was upset — but not fully surprised.

“Unfortunately, because of what I do for a living — fight the wealth gap at a fintech startup — it has become my reality that women are paid less for what they do in almost every industry, and are going to retire with much less than men while working just as hard,” Cole said.

“We can’t wait around for employers to do the right thing; we have to make our money and build our wealth another way. That’s where Penny comes in.”

Penny tapped five professional women athletes for its foray within athlete marketing — three NWSL players and two volleyball players — who have been provided complimentary platform access to leverage Penny’s services for their own financial literacy and wealth growth. In addition, the athletes, Danny Colaprico, Nikki Stanton, Vanessa DiBernardo, Jessica Gaffney, and Molly Lohman will be sharing their Penny journeys across social and digital media channels.

The goal of this partnership is two-pronged:

• To provide true value to professional athletes who are not given as many resources as their peers in other, more high-profile sports
• To assist Penny in its brand growth, generating awareness about its services, mission, and driving users to the platform

This continues HSM’s mission to provide its athletes with opportunities and resources that go beyond typical brand partnerships: aligning with like-minded companies, non-profits, and other organizations to progress their careers off the field and help them positively impact areas of society they are passionate about.

Penny was founded in 2020 and has opted against raising outside capital at this time. Therefore, the ability to partner with professional athletes who are not the one percent and/or celebrity-level athletes but rather those who have passionate communities of fans and followers with strong social media engagement rates will be a valuable part of their marketing mix to attract new members, grow the business, and ultimately assist as many women as possible in establishing their own wealth.

“We are so excited to partner with Danny, Molly, Jessica, Vanessa, and Nikki to highlight the power of investing, and the power of taking control of your financial future. You can make that money, you can make the numbers work, and you can do it on these sub-par salaries. You don’t need to make hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to build wealth over time,” Cole said.

“These five women athletes live that reality every day. They are such amazing role models, and we are excited to work together to close the wealth gap.”