An A-League football match isn’t where you expect to hear a “plan for retirement” message, but that’s what happened last Saturday night at the Sydney FC versus Adelaide United game.
The retirement planning promo involved the merging of two of Mark Bouris’ interests: Yellow Brick Road (YBR), the financial services business of which is he is executive chairman, and the “contestants” on a television show, which I understand he hosts or is in some other way involved.
The event started with a couple of former sports people, including boxer Mario Fenech and – jarringly, I thought, at a soccer game – ex-AFL footballer Dermott Brereton, welcoming fans to the Sydney Football Stadium. Dermie was predictably larger than life and even autographed, unprompted, the flyer he was charged with handing out.
But the real pitch (if you’ll pardon the pun) came at half-time, when the contestants were divided into two teams along gender lines and required to present a live advertisement to the crowd promoting the benefits of early retirement planning in general and… YBR.
Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more cringe-worthy advertisement for financial planning or planning for retirement. At least in Bay 10 at the SFS we could barely make head or tail of what was being said over the public-address system. All we were aware of was a couple of dozen people dressed in bright yellow T-shirts shouting something about… well, what? It took a moment before the penny dropped and I realised that what I was seeing was linked to the flier that Dermie gave me.
From what I could tell, most of the people involved in the promo had enjoyed successful careers at some point in the past, but had failed to plan early enough for their retirement and were now – again, if I understood correctly – spruiking for a financial services company to help others avoid the same mistakes, and I guess to help make ends meet. I may be mistaken about that last part, but it sounded like something along those lines.
I don’t doubt that better and earlier retirement planning and a sound relationship with a competent financial planner can help almost everyone, and I imagine it can help people who earn high incomes for short periods of time – like sportspeople – even more than most.
And I’m all for spreading the message about the benefits of financial planning. But I didn’t think that the best place to do it was in front of a disinterested crowd at an A-League game over a dodgy PA.
Still, I suppose if the message gets out that it’s better to start planning sooner rather than later, that’s something. And I suppose the fact that here it is Friday of the following week and I’m still thinking about it means that it had some impact. I’m just not clear what the impact was on 15,000 A-League fans.
I think his name is Jeff – he’s the boxer and Mario is the former NRL player.