English overview
Financial infrastructure for professional football
Value is there. Liquidity often is not. SportFund organizes the financial structures around a club, while the club retains full sporting control.
Why football financing is changing
Player development and transfer cash flows have become structural parts of club finance, not occasional events. Competing at any level increasingly requires earlier investment: in scouting, squads, youth development, facilities and data.
Much of a club’s economic value sits in player contracts, future transfer rights and staged payments. That value is not readily accessible as cash. Meanwhile, governance, compliance and transparency expectations around football finance continue to increase.
The market is growing, but the financial infrastructure around it remains fragmented: many existing arrangements are informal, dependent on individual relationships, hard to scale, or insufficiently transparent.
How it is set up
SportFund B.V. establishes a separate limited partnership for each club and each contract. Participants take part in that partnership.
SportFund B.V.
organizes, does not own
- structuring
- administration
- governance
- compliance
- investor relations
Club
- Enters into a contractual arrangement
- Receives capital and decides how to use it
Limited partnership
one per club, per contract
- Separated from other arrangements
- A single counterparty for the club
Participants
- Participate in this partnership
- No role towards the club
Never crosses over
- ownership
- control
- transfers
- selection
- playing time
- club policy
This means separation, not diversification. A single participation is tied to one club and one arrangement; there is no spread within it.
Two structures
They differ in what they rest on, how long they run, and how much the outcome depends on sporting results.
| Player-related investment | Cessions / receivables | |
|---|---|---|
| Basis | Future value development | Existing contractual cash flows |
| Duration | Longer | Shorter |
| Risk profile | Higher — performance-dependent | Lower — contractually based |
| Cash flow predictability | Variable, upside-driven | More predictable |
| Dependence on sporting results | High | Low |
Arrangements that fall outside both — facilities, stadium and complex financing, sustainability — are handled case by case. There is no standard form for them, and we do not present one.
Regulatory and compliance considerations
Anti-money-laundering obligations
Onboarding and fund flows are subject to Dutch AML/KYC requirements (WWFT), including verification of the source of funds.
FIFA’s third-party ownership (TPO) ban
Since 2015, FIFA's regulations (RSTP, Art. 18ter) prohibit third parties from holding economic rights that entitle them to a share of a future transfer compensation. Structures that link investor returns to transfer proceeds must be designed carefully to remain within this framework — this generally requires structure-specific legal review.
Financial supervision (Wft / AFM)
Offering investment participation — particularly to a broad investor base such as retail investors or supporters — can trigger prospectus, licensing, or disclosure obligations under Dutch and EU financial supervision law, depending on how the offer is structured and distributed.
No guaranteed returns
Outcomes remain dependent on sporting performance, transfer markets, and economic conditions. No return is contractually guaranteed.
Risk factors
- Sporting performance risk — value and payouts depend on results on the field.
- Transfer-market volatility — valuations and transfer activity can shift quickly.
- Economic conditions — broader market and club-specific financial conditions affect outcomes.
- Contractual and counterparty risk — outcomes depend on contracts and parties performing as agreed.
- Dilution — additional capital or player investment can change each party’s effective share over time.
- No guaranteed returns — there is no assurance of a positive or specific outcome.
- Concentration — a participation is tied to one club and one arrangement; there is no spread within it.
Talk to us
There are no terms, amounts or sign-up on this website. A first conversation is about the structures, the governance and the risks.