Giving Treasury a Sporting Chance
Published: August 13, 2025
Behind every successful football club is a professional treasury function. Peter Brooks, Head of Sports and Entertainment at specialist finance and technology firm, Ebury, tells TMI how some of the footballing world’s big-name teams and players achieve their financial goals.
There is one factor uniting all of the best known and loved football teams in Europe: each understands that without a robust financial function supporting diverse activities such as player signings, global merchandising, sponsorships, advertising, and large-scale capital expenditures (such as stadium development), their competitive edge is significantly dulled. And in this industry more than most, being competitive is everything.
Achieving strength on and off the pitch means selecting the right players. For clubs such as PSV Eindhoven, Southampton, Rangers, CD Leganés and AIK Stockholm, among others, regulated specialist finance and technology firm Ebury has been their preferred partner when tackling a range of financial arrangements including payments, FX risk management, and credit facilities.
In a significant coup, Ebury announced in July 2025 that it had signed English Premier League (EPL) club Aston Villa to its roster of clients. While the finer details of this arrangement cannot be discussed, Brooks explains that Ebury’s first undertaking with new clients is always to run a comprehensive programme of due diligence.
“We need to understand how a client currently operates in terms of bank and technology partners, where significant financial risks arise, and how it mitigates those risks. We’re seeking to establish the source of any financial inefficiencies so that we can begin exploring how best to streamline that client’s financial operations.”
This sporting life
From a financial risk standpoint, one of the most significant concerns for top-tier clubs such as Aston Villa is cross-border transactions. It’s a risk that can be introduced via player trading or involvement in European competitions, for example. “We have to look at how this risk impacts the club, and how it is currently managing it,” says Brooks. This discovery process, he declares, is guided in no small way by Ebury’s focused sports industry knowledge.
The unpredictable nature and demands of this industry can discourage the involvement of some traditional financial providers, particularly where they lack the specialist insight. Indeed, Ebury supports a major club in Belgium, where Brooks says banks are often reluctant to work with football clubs due to their somewhat particular needs. However, with its industry focus, he says Ebury is largely comfortable with handling that credit risk.
“It means we’re able to take a straightforward view for instance on how clubs are operating with their player trading, the forms of risk management they currently have in place, and where they may have net imbalances of expenditures and income.”
Player trading is an interesting case in point. Transfer fees are normally set over multiple years, and may include various add-ons (meeting individual performance targets or assisting club promotion, for example). Each contract can be structured quite differently, depending on the buying or selling club’s model and, increasingly, player agent interventions.
Accordingly, a club may find itself incurring more or less credit or FX risk across a specific transfer. “We’re not party to deal-making, but we are able to discuss outcomes and implement collateral-free long-term credit facilities, or manage the FX risk around that player with a particular currency pairing or direction,” explains Brooks.
Right product, right time
For an EPL club such as Aston Villa, revenue streams will be heavily euro-centric, notes Brooks. Incomings and outgoings are in the main derived from player trading and European competition, so the focus will be on a sterling/euro pairing. For the upcoming 25/26 season, Aston Villa has recruited players from teams in Spain, France, Germany and the Netherlands, for example, and it will again be competing in the UEFA Europa League.
However, notes Brooks, there may be other currencies required that will come to light as that relationship develops. These can be quickly set up within the structure, he says, with Ebury offering access to more than 130 currencies, including coverage of 19 emerging markets.
As with many traditional corporates, putting the infrastructure in place to remove any market volatility with hedges – or at least providing the optionality to do so, depending on jurisdiction – is a positive step for clubs engaging with multiple cross-border transactions, especially with current market volatility.
When hedging is chosen, Brooks notes that usually it will be through spots or forwards (Flexi or Window). This helps mitigate the risk inherent within a defined buying or selling price, with clear timelines as to when these transactions need to be placed.
“The aim is to work with the club, to consultatively appraise the right product at the right time to meet its requirements,” stresses Brooks. “These can be variable, dependent on aspects such as the opening and closing of transfer windows [the strictly controlled periods during the year in which clubs can buy and sell players] where sometimes deals can happen very quickly.”
Regular “proactive” communication with a client is important, says Brooks. This is driven not only by the speed of some transactions but also by the fact that payments on some transfers can stretch over multiple years. A player’s transfer fee is often amortised, spreading the cost of over the length of their contract, rather than recording the entire fee in the year of purchase. This helps clubs stay within spending limits set by financial regulations such as UEFA and EPL’s Financial Fair Play. Such costs need to be managed, for example by securing price certainty.
Flow state
The player transfer market is fluid, and with multimillion-pound deals being made globally, player recruitment can be a significant investment for any club. Florian Wirtz’s 2025 transfer from Bayer Leverkusen to Liverpool, for example, will cost up to £116m with add-ons.
Clubs engaged in a player transfer will typically see payments channelled between various banks. To help manage these flows, Brooks explains that Ebury is often asked to open collection accounts on behalf of its clients. “Opening a new account with a bank can take time – weeks or months sometimes – but we can do this on a client’s behalf, providing them with their own IBAN, almost instantaneously,” he says.
These accounts are designated ‘segregated client fund accounts’ (also known as safeguarding accounts). They are held with Tier 1 banks, and are managed entirely separately from Ebury’s own operating accounts. “They are quick to set up, and a single or multicurrency account used to securely send and receive money from within a single location, at short notice if needed, enables quicker fund processing and access too.”
Looking after the ecosystem
“When we are looking to identify risk from a credit standpoint, or even undertake more generic requirements such as payments, we will consider the needs of the whole ecosystem,” comments Brooks. “We don’t just work with the club itself, we also make these services available to its high-earning players, and to the players’ agents .”
From a player’s perspective, as well as being recruited into a team, they may be sent out on loan to other teams, either domestically or overseas. “We work with many athletes on an individual basis, globally,” says Brooks.
A UK-based footballer on loan to a major European team may wish to take their salary in euros. That player may be looking to return to the UK post-contract, or move to another country with a different currency. And in some cases, an individual playing overseas may wish to repatriate a percentage of their earnings, requiring the setting up of a client account to process more exotic currencies.
The challenge for such players is that within these arrangements, they may face high currency exchange costs, compliance complexities, and the risk of currency fluctuations negatively affecting their earnings. In response to one high-profile player client’s needs, Brooks says Ebury was able to mitigate currency fluctuation issues by providing salary conversions, managed through forward contracts spread over a number of years.
One perhaps unexpected aspect of running a football club is the occasional need for trade finance. “This could be related to the support of catering, travel, or event management, which can present quite substantial upfront costs,” reveals Brooks. In Ebury’s case, an unsecured and uncommitted credit line can be granted.
“In each case, we will look at the client’s overseas cash flows, and the related services its incumbent banks are providing. We may find that we are better placed to offer unsecured trade finance alongside our cross-border payments and FX risk management products.” This, he explains, can extend terms by up to an additional 150 days, while the club’s suppliers are still paid on time.
So much more than a game
The EPL, and indeed other top European leagues, has seen an influx of overseas ownership, especially from the US, in recent years. Fans may or may not approve, but the additional capital injected into the EPL alone has built an estimated brand value of £7.2bn, according to Statista.
With “many more moving parts” in the commercial life of football than most fans would ever consider, today’s ‘beautiful game’ is as complex and challenging in its on-pitch performance as it is in its financial endeavours, notes Brooks. There is no denying that effective management of financial activities is now an essential part of a club’s overall success, and in some cases, survival.
While nothing will replace the sheer thrill of a goal scored, that success is made possible only through a deep understanding of, and response to, the financial machinations underpinning the entire club ecosystem. With the support of its treasurer, and capable specialist partners, the club itself, its fans, ownership group, players, agents, sponsors and advertisers, media firms, and all the supporting functions from catering and travel to merchandising and medics, will continue marching on together.