If you are paid in one currency and living in another, the biggest risk to your money isn't the bank fee. It is the exchange rate.

Wallabies (Australian rugby union) winger Mark Nawaqanitawase has just finished his time with the Sydney Roosters in the NRL and is leaving for Japan. He has signed a two-year deal with the Saitama Panasonic Wild Knights from the 2026-27 season, and the Sydney Morning Herald reports he will earn $1.5 million a season. It's an Australian report, so I read that as A$.

How he will be paid has not been reported. But when a player is paid in yen and their life, savings and family are in Australian dollars, the contract has a fixed number of yen and a moving number of dollars.

To show what that means, I took the reported A$1.5 million, fixed it in yen at one end of a recent range and converted it back at the other end. This is a what-if, not his actual pay.

Over the last month the yen got stronger, so pay held in yen would have been worth more in dollars. Over the last 12 months it went the other way, and one season's pay would have been worth about A$244,000 less. Same contract, same yen. Only the rate moved.

Sources: Sydney Morning Herald/WAtoday, 8 October 2026 (reported pay and deal length); Japan Rugby League One club announcement (signing); TradingView, FX:AUDJPY daily highs and lows.

This is how we would set it up for a player in this spot, if the pay lands in yen.

Before each payday, the player knows roughly what most of the season is worth in Australian dollars. A swing like the last 12 months becomes a number they planned for, not one they found out about later.

The aim isn't to beat the market. It is to take the guesswork out of it.

SportsFX runs on Ebury's technology, the same payments platform Ebury provides to football clubs it has partnered with, including Southampton, Fulham, Aston Villa, Rangers and PSV, with my 11 years of experience on top.

Contract in dollars, paid in local currency. I see this with players all the time. The contract is in US dollars, but the club pays in yen, baht, dong or rupees. The club's bank converts it once, then the player converts it again to save or send home, so they pay the spread twice at two different rates. While it sits in local currency it also moves. In 2022 the yen lost about a quarter of its value against the US dollar in under eight months.

Recently I've had clients on US dollar contracts paid in Japanese yen, Vietnamese dong and Malaysian ringgit. Yen we can help with. Currencies like the Thai baht, Vietnamese dong, Indian rupee and Malaysian ringgit are much harder. Very few providers deal in them, and I'm on the phone to providers nearly every week looking for new ones.

Tim Pullman, a chartered accountant at Archer Sports Advisory in Adelaide, told me on the podcast that a net contract overseas doesn't always mean the tax is finished. Where you are a tax resident decides where you pay, and it isn't the same as your passport, so a partner or kids staying in Australia can keep you filing at home for the whole contract. If your home country taxes you on what you earn overseas, it may give you a credit for tax already paid abroad and still ask for the difference, which is the gap players often don't budget for. In his example, a net contract in India could still leave around 20% to pay at home. I'm not a tax adviser and this isn't tax advice, so before you sign, speak to a tax specialist who works with athletes. Tim is the person I send people to, and you can find him at Archer Sports Advisory.

American guard Elijah Bryant has won an NBA title with Milwaukee and a EuroLeague title with Anadolu Efes, and he now plays for Hapoel Tel Aviv. In his newsletter, Consistency Club, he wrote about arriving in Israel and spending more than two hours at passport control because his club hadn't filled out some paperwork correctly. He also wrote that in his rookie year his pay came 22 days late. He noticed that the teammates who stayed calm when things got hard had already sorted their contracts, family visas and savings in the quiet months. In his words, "Peace of mind isn't luck. It's preparation." I've been chatting with him, and his newsletter is worth a read for anyone about to play overseas.

Sources: Consistency Club newsletter, 3 October 2026; Hapoel Tel Aviv.

Thanks for reading. If you know a player about to sign overseas, send them this before they sign.

Chris Broadfoot
Founder, SportsFX

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