Insight Sport: Chloe Molloy reveals $20k debt and the brutal reality facing female athletes

AFLW star Chloe Molloy was the victim of her own success after a bracket creep left her with a massive tax bill to deal with. Check out her story here.

She’s one of her sport’s biggest stars, has a burgeoning career as a television producer and a growing list of companies wanting her to endorse their products.

But Chloe Molloy is $20,000 in debt.

Molloy is one of the biggest names in the AFLW — a Rising Star winner and two-time All Australian who last week was lured to the Swans on a huge five-year deal.

She also works part-time as an associate producer and on-air talent at Fox Sports, has a list of sponsors keen to associate their brands with her and receives payment for sharing her expertise at AFL clinics working with junior players.

But Molloy received a massive shock when her accountant prepared her latest tax return and revealed she was facing a bill for thousands.

Unlike her male counterparts whose endorsements and side projects are likely to make up only a fraction of their total income compared to their hefty contracts, Molloy, like so many of her female counterparts, has to work because the income from her sport is not yet equivalent to a full-time wage.

Chloe Molloy is one of the biggest names in the AFLW.

But it’s hard to account for the dribs and drabs of money that come in.

Like all her colleagues, she is not paid over 12 months of the year and fashioning a budget is incredibly difficult given the uncertainty of other work.

But finding out that her tireless efforts to make ends meet had pushed her into a higher tax bracket and would result in a bill that has put her in the weeds financially was a gut punch.

“I had started earning more through endorsements and put myself in such a bad spot because I was working so many jobs,” Molloy said.

“So I’m in 20 grand debt because I was earning too much trying to juggle so many jobs.”

It’s an amount that will take the 24-year-old significant time to repay but she is willing to share her story in the hope that it helps others.

“I’m not ashamed of it at all,” she said.

“It’s (helping raise) awareness that as female athletes we need to have knowledge on what’s coming into your account, the tax percentage (you should be paying) on it — you need to be aware of the money you are making.

“Sometimes we can think, this money’s awesome, we’ve never earnt this much before.

“But let’s be financially switched on because it will come back to bite you.”

William Tuffley, a partner for accountancy firm BDO, specialising in sports advisory, said as soon as athletes started supplementing their straightforward contract or government funding with other income, there could be complex tax issues.

“As soon as you get a few endorsement deals, a few speaking gigs, you’ve employed a full-time coach, and it looks like you’re actively trying to make this your job for the foreseeable future, everything becomes taxable,” Tuffley said.

Knowledge in this space, was power, he said.

While there were traps for athletes, there was a real opportunity for women to learn how to make the most of their money as professional leagues continued to expand rapidly, as well as how to capitalise on the skills and networks they would develop through elite sport to set them up for the future.

“It’s totally about education,” Tuffley said.

“And not education at the end, education from the very beginning.

“We should be looking at sport as a platform to build the rest of your business career.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re going to be a plumber, an electrician, a teacher, a CEO of a company, it’s an opportunity to really propel whatever you’re going to do next.

“From the skill sets that you learn, from the network that you gain and everything in between.

“That’s not how it’s looked at the moment but I think that’s where there’s a real opportunity in female sport.”

Chloe Molloy is willing to share her story in the hope that it helps others. Picture: Getty Images

Currently, long-term financial and career planning can be a nightmare even for Australia’s top-earning sportswomen, who can face real barriers as they try to buy property or secure bank loans.

“The way our payment schedule is, it’s not over 12 months,” Molloy said of what was a 10-round competition with a four-week finals campaign in the AFLW’s recent seventh season.

“Trying to go and get a loan, it’s a bit of a guessing game and then our contracts are only for two years.

“The banks say, well, you’re only going to earn this much money for the next two years, we can’t lend you money because we don’t know if you can pay it back.

“There’s all these little intricate things that you don’t really think about when you don’t get paid as much, or not over a 12-month cycle.”

But Molloy is not complaining.

An Australian under-19 basketball squad member in the same group as Opals and WNBA star Ezi Magbegor, she played one season of WNBL as a development player before turning her back on a college scholarship in the US to play footy.

“I never got paid for basketball,” Molloy said.

“The first payment that came through for my sporting abilities was my first AFLW pay after being drafted.”

AFLW player/commentator Chloe Molloy found herself $20k in debt

After being picked up by Collingwood for the 2018 season, Molloy, the eventual Rising Star winner and All Australian in her first year, made about $30,000 in “one of the better payments” in the league.

The 2023 season will see her suit up for the Swans after agreeing to a five-year contract — the longest contract in AFL Women’s history.

“We would be getting home at 9.30 at night, so you more did it out (of the love of the game). By the time tax comes out … I think people forget that when you work two jobs, that tax screws you too.”

But the ground being made — not just in the AFL but by women’s sports around the world - has to be celebrated.

The average base salary for AFLW players in last year’s season seven was $46,280, while Tier 1 players received $71,935 each — almost triple what the 16 marquee players earnt in the inaugural competition.

“It’s evolved. With the NRLW and the way that’s going up and even the investment into women’s cricket and Ash Gardner, I mean, my God,” Molloy said of the more than $500,000 Gardner was sold for at auction earlier this month ahead of the inaugural Women’s Premier League (WPL) in India.

Chloe Molloy will play for the Swans in 2023.

“You have to celebrate those moments because they’re instrumental in how we’re going to grow and have maybe one source of income which does come from sport.

“It is so exciting to think the benefits I’ll reap, but more so what the generations below me are going to benefit from because they’ll be the ones that do have the option to play sport full-time and can financially support themselves with their sporting talent and abilities.”

Ensuring the next generation had those opportunities was why it was so important for current sports stars to fight for what they were worth.

“You set a precedent for what you allow,” Molloy said.

“It’s just about kind of pushing the boundaries. The longer that goes by (with pay and conditions standing still) the more people coming through are going to have the same issues as I’m having with debt and not being able to get a loan and so on.

“It’s definitely on me and my playing cohort and women athletes for that matter, to push for change.

“We’re not going to go anywhere and we’ll keep making noise.

“There’s a long, long way to go but definitely being bullish is how we’re going to speed up that process.”

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