Prepared by Paul Quinn / CWTE Limited
Date: 16th October 2026
Summary
Squad-value financing is high-cost, short-tenor private credit. It is sized against a mark-to-model estimate of what unsold players might fetch, but in practice it is secured on the club’s whole balance sheet.
It provides liquidity, not solvency or accounting profit. Given the current state of English football, boards and the IFR should treat it as a product that amplifies risk, and should require disclosure, LTV discipline and stress-testing before it scales.
Key messages
- What it is and what it costs. Lenders led by the Tifosy–Fasanara Sports Lending Fund and a relaunched 23 Capital advance approximately 25% of an estimated squad value, typically over 6–24 months. They take priority over some future sale proceeds plus wider security (Burnley’s 2025 Fasanara charges cover all property, including Turf Moor). The only loan-level pricing in the public domain clusters at between 8 and 16%, and Fasanara’s fund reportedly returns 10–12% without leverage.
- Why it matters now. The IFR’s draft State of the Game report (13 October 2026) finds 94% of clubs loss-making, £4.8bn of transfer payables against £1.5bn of receivables, and transfer financing up from £55m to £779m in four years. Lending against unsold players adds a further, more speculative layer to a system that is already heavily encumbered.
- The 2008 comparison. The product repeats several pre-2008 failure modes at a much smaller, but currently non-systemic scale: mark-to-model collateral, repayment that depends on asset prices rising, risk moving to lightly supervised lenders, and early signs of originate-to-distribute.
Summary of findings
- The product. Squad-value financing lets a club borrow a percentage of the estimated market value of its registered players, including players not yet sold. Transfer-receivables factoring advances cash against fees already contracted with a buying club. Squad-value lending is different: the main repayment source is a sale that has not happened, at a price not yet agreed, to a buyer not yet identified. The Financial Times reported on 15 October 2026 that discussions over such loans are increasing among English clubs and lenders; that 23 Capital has relaunched with squad-value lending as a core offering; that Tifosy and Fasanara have lent around a quarter of squad value across Europe; that clubs in Spain, Portugal, Italy, France and Belgium have used the structure; and that Burnley is among the few English clubs to have used loans sized partly against player valuations and secured on a broader asset pool.
- The lenders and their money. The current leading provider is a 50/50 joint venture between Tifosy Capital & Advisory (origination and squad valuation) and Fasanara Capital (portfolio management). Fasanara manages over $6bn, mainly for pension funds, insurers, banks and endowments. Behind the specialists stand much larger platforms (Apollo, Ares, Sixth Street, Oaktree, MSD) and, often one step removed, bank and insurance balance sheets.
- The cost. The contractual price of no squad-value loan to an English club has been disclosed. The nearest comparables put this market several hundred basis points above secured bank finance: Genoa’s Tifosy-arranged loan at “almost 11%”; Everton’s Rights and Media Funding facilities was at base rate plus 5%; Burnley’s reported loan range of 7.25%–12%; Apollo’s 8.75% Nottingham Forest facility; and Ares’s reported 11–16% to Eagle Football and higher at Chelsea’s holdco level.
- The risks. The collateral moves with the borrower’s own performance: relegation, injury or loss of form cut squad value just when the club needs to sell. The loans also encumber future transfer income that the Premier League’s new Sustainability and Systemic Resilience (SSR) liquidity test counts as a liquid asset, at 40% of squad market value. External demand is softening: for example, Saudi clubs spent $407m on international transfers in summer 2026, their lowest total since the 2023 buying spree.
- The regulatory position. The product sits in the gaps between regimes. It provides no profit, so it does nothing for Squad Cost Ratio (SCR) compliance. Lending to a company is generally not FCA-regulated. The IFR’s licensing regime is not yet in force to capture it. Structures that tie lender rights to the future transfer of named players come close to FIFA RSTP Article 18ter.
- The 2008 banking comparison. The analogy holds for the mechanism, not for the scale. The behaviours are recognisably the same: lending against modelled values, repayment that depends on prices rising, opacity, regulatory arbitrage, and loans moved into securitisation vehicles. The sums involved are not.
Purpose, scope and methodology
This paper asks whether squad-value financing is a harmless extension of football’s existing receivables market or a new source of financial fragility. It then sets out what boards, regulators and investors should do about it.
Evidence base and grading
The primary source is the paywalled Financial Times report of 15 October 2026, corroborated through Private Equity Wire’s same-day summary, a German-language summary on aktien.news, and the FootBiz #204 newsletter. Other evidence is graded as follows:
- A (primary or statutory): statute, central-bank and IMF/FSB publications, audited accounts and Companies House registers.
- B (reputable secondary): established financial and sports-business journalism and law-firm briefings.
- C (lower confidence): aggregators, fan analysis, and single-source or anonymous figures.
Some figures draw on my previous analysis, these are flagged.
Limitations
- Pricing opacity. No club, lender or league has disclosed the contractual terms of a squad-value loan to an English club. Pricing is inferred from comparable facilities.
- Definitional blur. The lines between squad-value lending, all-asset secured lending and factoring are not clean. The FT describes Burnley’s loans as only “partly” determined by player values.
- Valuation data. Transfermarkt, CIES and proprietary values are estimates, not prices. No lender’s model was available for this paper.
- Rules in flux. At the time of writing, the binding Premier League SCR/SSR text (Handbook Section E) and the EFL Championship SCR text had not been fully published. The IFR report is a consultation draft open until 8 December 2026.
- Scope gaps. Several firms were not assessed against primary evidence and are not profiled: Arena Investors, Clearlake, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Tavistock, Vibra, XXIII, Elevate, Kroll and RedBird.
What squad-value financing is
Core mechanics
Three sources describe the structure: the FT, Bloomberg’s 2023 reporting on the Tifosy–Fasanara fund, and Farrer & Co’s 2023 legal briefing. Together they show five elements:
- Sizing (loan-to-value). Bloomberg reported in 2023 that the fund would lend up to a quarter of the squad’s value. The FT reports loans equivalent to around 25% of squad value. This is a policy ceiling and a reported norm, not a disclosed term of any individual loan.
- Valuation. Tifosy has built its own model for assessing the value of playing squads. The external benchmarks are Transfermarkt, which is crowd-sourced and editorially moderated, and the CIES Football Observatory, which is algorithmic. In the Levante restructuring, the squad’s Transfermarkt value was central to the repayment plan; it was said to have risen from €35.6m to €64.3m. Whether lenders commission independent valuers is not disclosed.
- Security. Farrer & Co say these loans may be secured against all the assets of the club or against specific assets, such as rights to the playing squad via players’ contracts or bank accounts into which transfer receivables are paid. Burnley’s charges in favour of Fasanara Capital Ltd, created on 15 January 2025, contain fixed and floating charges; the floating charge covers all the property or undertaking of the company, and the operating company’s charge describes the leasehold of Turf Moor. Sportico reports that Fasanara has sometimes taken equity in a club or stadium, or even the future transfer value of players, as collateral.
- Control of proceeds. According to the FT’s sources, the lender cannot force a sale. Once a sale occurs, however, it can have first claim over some of the resulting receivables. In practice this works through a controlled collection account and a cash sweep, which applies a pre-agreed share of each receipt to repayment.
- Tenor and repayment. Fasanara’s sports loans run for six to 24 months, with ticket sizes of $10m–$50m. The FT’s anonymous executive described the use case: buy in January, repay from summer sales.
Covenants, triggers and failure events
No covenant package has been disclosed for any squad-value loan. The table below shows the likely, not the confirmed, position, drawing on Farrer & Co, the Everton disclosures and standard leveraged-finance practice.
| Event | Likely contractual consequence | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Relegation | Mandatory prepayment, repricing or additional collateral | Farrer & Co: facilities may require repricing, additional collateral or part prepayment on promotion or relegation; Everton 2022/23 accounts: relegation would trigger a material repayment of debt with no contractual waiver |
| Player sold | Agreed share of receivable swept to lender | FT: lender has first claim over some proceeds |
| Player sold below modelled value | Smaller sweep; residual debt remains a full obligation of the club | FT/FootBiz: club remains responsible irrespective of whether anticipated transfer profits materialise |
| Serious injury | Squad value falls; possible LTV breach and cure requirement | Inferred from LTV-based structure |
| Player leaves on a free | That player’s collateral value falls to zero | Inferred; contract length is a core valuation input |
| Maturity with no sales | Refinancing, or enforcement against wider security | Inferred; Burnley/Fasanara security covers all property |
The decisive point is recourse. The debt is a full obligation of the club, so squad-value financing does not transfer risk to the lender. It is ordinary secured debt whose size is set by a modelled asset value. When the model is wrong, the club carries the loss.
How it differs from adjacent products
| Product | Repayment source | Collateral certainty | Typical tenor | Status in English rules |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transfer-receivables factoring | Instalments already contracted from a buying club | High: a contracted debt of another club | 1–4 years | PL Rule U.38.10 and EFL Rule 51.1.10 restrict assignment of transfer fees to “Financial Institutions” (UK-regulated deposit-takers), per Farrer & Co (2023) |
| Media-rights / central-funds financing | League distributions | High | 1–5 years | PL Rule D.31 restricts assignment of Central Funds to Financial Institutions unless an all-asset charge is granted (Rule D.30) |
| Bank revolving credit facility | General cash flow | Corporate credit, often all-asset security | 1–5 years, often renewed annually | Permitted |
| Owner loans | Owner’s discretion | None; usually subordinated, often interest-free | Open-ended | Permitted |
| Securitisation / bonds | Pooled receivables or corporate cash flow | Varies | 5–25 years | Permitted |
| Squad-value financing | Future sales of players not yet sold, plus general cash flow | Low: a modelled value with no counterparty | 6–24 months | Permitted via all-asset security to non-banks (Rule D.30 route), per Farrer & Co |
The last row matters for regulation. On Farrer & Co’s reading of the 2022/23 rules, a non-bank fund cannot take an assignment of a contracted transfer fee from an English club. It can, however, take an all-asset fixed and floating charge and size its loan by reference to the squad. The product therefore exists partly because it routes around a restriction meant to keep transfer-fee assignment inside the regulated banking system. Boards should check the current Handbook text, which has been revised since 2023.
Parallels with third-party ownership (TPO) and third-party influence (TPI)
Two articles of FIFA’s Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players are relevant:
- Article 18ter prohibits any agreement under which a third party is entitled to participate, in full or in part, in compensation payable on the future transfer of a player, or is assigned any rights in relation to a future transfer or transfer compensation.
- Article 18bis prohibits arrangements that let a third party influence a club’s independence in employment and transfer matters.
The ban took effect on 1 May 2015 and has been upheld. In the RFC Seraing case, FIFA imposed a recruitment ban and a CHF 150,000 fine. FC Porto was fined CHF 50,000 in 2019 for an 18ter breach.
Squad-value lending is not classic TPO. The lender does not buy a share of a named player’s economic rights, and it takes no upside beyond interest and fees. Three design features, however, move it towards the prohibited zone:
- Player-specific proceeds rights. A security interest attached to the compensation from the future transfer of identified players is, on a plain reading, an assignment of rights in relation to a future transfer. A general floating charge that catches transfer proceeds incidentally is far easier to defend.
- Sale-forcing covenants. An LTV test that can only be cured by selling players, or lender consent rights over transfers, could amount to influence under Article 18bis even though the lender cannot formally compel a sale. Farrer & Co warn that care is needed to avoid breaching the rules on third-party influence, ownership and control.
- Upside participation. Any exit fee or return kicker linked to sale prices would make the loan functionally equivalent to TPO.
Assessment. Article 18ter is engaged by any structure tying the lender’s rights to the transfer compensation of named players. Article 18bis is engaged by any covenant that makes player sales the only practical cure. Clubs should obtain written regulatory clearance before signing, and FIFA, the Premier League and the EFL should publish guidance.
Who funds it?
Provider profiles
Tifosy Capital & Advisory. Co-founded by the late Gianluca Vialli and investment banker Fausto Zanetton, the chief executive. Tifosy began as a sports crowdfunding platform and is now a dual-regulated UK/EU investment firm with offices in London and Milan. It acts as both adviser and originator. It advised 777 Partners, and Iconic Sports on Eagle Football, so the same firm sits on the advisory, origination and lending sides of a small market. Tifosy puts global summer 2026 transfer spending at a record €10.8bn.
Fasanara Capital. A London-based alternative asset manager founded and run by Francesco Filia, specialising in receivables and fintech-originated lending.
- Size: Bloomberg reported $4bn of assets in 2023; in 2026 Sportico reported roughly $6bn and The Block over $6bn.
- Investors: mostly pension funds, insurance companies, banks and other large institutions, including the Texas Tech University System endowment.
- Sports deployment: Filia says Fasanara has deployed approximately $400m across more than 35 deals, has never had to seize any assets, and can direct up to 20% of firm-wide assets to such deals.
- Named counter-parties: Levante UD, Royal Antwerp, KAA Gent, Genoa CFC, Swansea City and Burnley.
- Stated thesis: large clubs such as Manchester United do not need this capital; smaller clubs are likely to need alternative sources of funding.
The Sports Lending Fund (Tifosy–Fasanara). A 50/50 joint venture described by Tifosy as a multi-product credit fund focused exclusively on sports receivables. Zanetton reported $50m of seed capital and a one-year track record across 10 deals before the fund opened to external investors in 2023 with a $500m target. Private Debt Investor reported an initial target of $250m; this paper treats $500m as the ceiling and notes the discrepancy. At launch the fund worked with about 10 clubs and aimed for up to 30.
23 Capital. Founded in 2014 by Jason Traub (formerly of Investec) and Stephen Duval. Before 2020 it built a reported $1bn loan book with backing that reportedly included George Soros. Its deals included an estimated €88m to Barcelona for Antoine Griezmann, €96m to Atlético Madrid for João Félix, a €100m-plus facility to Benfica against broadcast rights, and £25m to Watford secured on club assets. It was itself funded by Credit Suisse, Thomas Creek Capital and QBS Holdings. When Covid-19 hit loan repayments in 2020 it wound down, and Intertrust took over the loan book. Its 2019 pitch stated the product’s premise plainly: no traditional bank could make sense of lending against a pool of human beings, but 23 Capital could. Its current funders have not been disclosed.
The larger platforms:
- Apollo launched Apollo Sports Capital in September 2025 under chief executive Al Tylis, reported by Bloomberg as a $5bn strategy; Apollo says its funds have deployed approximately $17bn in the broader space. It lent £80m to Nottingham Forest secured on the City Ground, lent £40m to Kia Joorabchian’s Sports Invest Holdings at 10.25%, and acquired a majority of Atlético de Madrid at a reported €2.5bn valuation.
- Ares financed Eagle Football and Chelsea.
- Sixth Street bought 25% of Barcelona’s LaLiga TV rights for 25 years.
- Oaktree took control of Inter Milan after Suning missed a reported $428m repayment.
- MSD has lent to Burnley, Derby, Southampton, Sunderland and West Ham.
Provider comparison
| Provider | Model | Disclosed scale | Typical football exposure | Known clubs | Squad-value role |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tifosy–Fasanara Sports Lending Fund | Receivables and squad-backed credit | $50m seed; $500m target (PDI: $250m); c.$400m deployed by Fasanara | $10–50m; 6–24 months; up to c.25% LTV | Genoa, Levante, Antwerp, Gent, Swansea, Burnley | Pioneer in Europe (FT) |
| 23 Capital | Specialist sports lender | c.$1bn book pre-2020 | Large transfer and broadcast loans | Barcelona, Atlético, Benfica, Watford | Relaunched with squad-value as core (FT) |
| Apollo Sports Capital | Credit and equity | $5bn vehicle | Stadium-secured senior loans; equity control | Nottingham Forest, Atlético, Sporting CP | Not reported |
| Ares | Senior secured / holdco lending | c.€400–425m to Eagle Football (reported) | Holdco leverage | Eagle/Lyon, Chelsea | Not reported |
| Sixth Street | Revenue-rights purchase | €667.5m for 25% of Barcelona LaLiga TV rights | Long-dated revenue strips | Barcelona | Not reported |
| MSD | Secured term loans | £52m at 9% and £15m at 7.75% loan notes (TISE, 2020, per fan analysis) | Acquisition and working-capital loans | Burnley, Southampton, Derby, Sunderland, West Ham | Not reported |
| Rights and Media Funding | Specialist football lender | >£200m to Everton repaid in 2024 | Revolving credit, base + 5% | Everton | Not reported |
| Macquarie | Bank / receivables | Not disclosed | Receivables facilities | Burnley (charges from May 2022) | Not reported |
Ultimate sources of capital
The evidence shows four sources of capital:
- Pension funds, endowments and insurers as limited partners. Fasanara’s investor base is explicitly of this kind.
- Insurance balance sheets directly. Everton’s 777 Partners loans were sourced from A-CAP, a US insurance group. The first £40m reportedly reached Everton at 12.75%, and the New York Times reported that A-CAP funded 777 at 20%. Policyholder-backed money was financing a Premier League club through an intermediary that later collapsed. MetLife is reported as a creditor in the Eagle Football restructuring.
- Bank back-leverage. 23 Capital was itself bank-funded, so its Covid losses were partly bank losses at one remove.
- Securitisation. A 1 August 2026 notice in Italy’s Gazzetta Ufficiale records that receivables owed by Genoa were sold to an SPV, Project 1909 S.r.l. The loan had been originated by Fasanara Sports Italia, and the sale formed part of a securitisation linked to Fasanara Investments III “Digital Receivables”. This is football credit originated and then distributed. The notice was reviewed in summary form only.
Fund-level leverage at the Sports Lending Fund (subscription lines or NAV facilities) is not disclosed. Sportico’s anonymous source says the 10–12% return was achieved without adding additional leverage.
What it costs
Disclosed and reported pricing
No contractual price has been disclosed for any squad-value loan to an English club. The table collects the closest comparables.
| Borrower / facility | Lender | Price | Other terms | Source and grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Genoa CFC, €10m (2022) | Tifosy-arranged, Fasanara-funded | “Almost 11%” (current rate, implying floating) | Tenor, fees, security undisclosed | Primocanale citing Corriere della Sera; C |
| Genoa CFC, €20m (to 2024) | Fasanara Investments III S.A., SICAV-RAIF | Not disclosed | 18 months; repaid Sept–Oct 2024 | Genoa audited accounts ; A |
| Fasanara sports strategy (fund level) | Fasanara | 10–12% fund return, no added leverage | 6–24 months | Sportico, anonymous source; B/C |
| Burnley FC group borrowings | MSD, MGG, Fasanara (split not disclosed) | Fixed 7.25%–12% | Fasanara all-asset charge from Jan 2025 | Fan analysis of accounts — C; charges; A |
| Everton | Rights and Media Funding | Base rate + 5% (10.25% at 5.25% base) | £150m 5-yr, c.£52.7m 3-yr, €28m 34-month | Everton accounts; press; A/B |
| Everton | 777 Partners / A-CAP | 12.75% on first £40m (reported) | Junior to R&MF | Josimar; C |
| Nottingham Forest, £80m (2025) | Apollo | 8.75% (reported) | City Ground security | Paul Quinn (self-citation); B/C |
| Sports Invest Holdings, £40m | Apollo | 10.25% | Agency borrower | FT via City AM; B |
| Eagle Football (Lyon) | Ares | 11–16% (reported) | c.€425m | Goal.com; C |
| Eagle Football Group, €87.3m | EFH Bidco (shareholder) | SOFR + 8% | July 2025 rescue package | Paul Quinn (self-citation); B |
| Royal Antwerp (2025) | Fasanara | Undisclosed; academic estimate up to c.10% | Amount undisclosed | Erasmus University / HLN; C |
| Bolton Wanderers mini-bond | Retail investors | 8.5% coupon | Five-year, unsecured | Farrer & Co; B |
Not disclosed in any source reviewed: pricing for loans to Leeds, Southampton, Benfica, Porto, Valencia, Atalanta, Anderlecht, Standard Liège, Levante, Swansea or KAA Gent; arrangement, commitment and exit fees for any Tifosy–Fasanara or 23 Capital loan; and the LTV actually applied in any individual case.
Interpretation
- The all-in cost is likely to be 10–14%. A 10–12% fund return is net of losses and fees, so gross loan yields (coupon plus arrangement and exit fees) must be higher.
- The premium over bank finance is large. Clubs with owner or bank credit support borrow on very different terms; Chelsea’s £800m 2022 financing was reportedly unsecured. Fasanara’s own pitch is that it serves the clubs banks will not lend to, and those clubs pay for that.
- The cost eats into the trading margin it is meant to unlock. A £30m loan at 12% for 18 months costs about £5.4m in interest before fees. That must be recovered from player-trading profit, which is uncertain by definition.
Market context
Transfer spending
According to Tifosy, global summer 2026 transfer spending reached a record €10.8bn, of which Premier League clubs accounted for 38%, c. €4.1bn. Independent tallies of Premier League gross summer spend range from £3.3bn to £3.56bn, depending on cut-off date and how add-ons are treated. FIFA reported more than $13bn of men’s transfer spending in calendar 2025, also a record. The Premier League’s record came in the first season of SCR, which counts player-trading profit in the revenue base.
Transfer debt and receivables in England
The IFR’s draft State of the Game report, published on 13 October 2026 using its statutory information-gathering powers, is now the authoritative source.
| Metric (IFR draft, 2026) | Figure |
|---|---|
| Revenue, top five tiers, last season | £9bn |
| Clubs loss-making | 94% |
| Transfer payables (2025/26) | £4.8bn |
| Transfer receivables (2025/26) | £1.5bn |
| Net transfer debt | c.£3.4bn |
| Transfer financing (factoring) | £55m (2020/21) to £779m (2024/25) |
| Total debt | £4.1bn (2024/25), forecast above £5bn by end of 2026/27 |
| Clubs unable to survive 30 days without owner funding | 32 |
| Clubs loss-making even if players were unpaid | 17 |
| Technically insolvent | Nearly two-thirds of clubs from Championship to National League; a fifth of Premier League clubs |
The IFR states that high net transfer debt and increasing use of factoring create future financial pressures, and concludes that English football is not self-sufficient and faces systemic vulnerability if economic factors worsen or investor appetite slows. Its chair, David Kogan, describes the game as standing on the edge of financial disaster.
What this means. Factoring has grown fourteen-fold in four years, and the IFR estimates that about £1.2bn of transfer receivables have now been monetised. Squad-value lending reaches one step further back, to sales that have not yet happened. With £3.4bn of net transfer debt already in the system, its marginal effect is to pull more future transfer income forward and commit it to creditors before the player is sold.
Demand-side risk
FIFA data reported by Semafor show Saudi clubs spent $407m on international transfers in summer 2026. That is their lowest total since 2023 and a 26.3% fall on the previous year. Al Hilal accounted for 42% of the spending, and player sales reached a record $105m. In July 2026 the Public Investment Fund was reported to have cut the combined 2026/27 budgets of its four clubs by $200m–$400m, and its 2026–30 strategy does not list sport as a priority. This is a softening at the margin, not a collapse. Any lender whose valuations still assume a 2023-vintage Saudi bid is overstating its collateral.
Growth of football private credit
Within three years the specialist market has moved from boutiques to institutions: Apollo’s $5bn vehicle, Ares’s reported sports fund, Fasanara’s c.$400m deployed and 23 Capital’s return. (The Fasanara figure is Sportico’s; in March 2026 Filia gave The Hedge Fund Journal a lower figure of $300m across perhaps 30 loans.) Filia estimates the mid-market club financing opportunity at $2bn–$3bn a year, and says banks originate 70%–80% of European football loans. That is modest beside an overall private credit market the FSB puts at $1.5tn–$2tn.
Risk assessment
The central risk: wrong-way collateral
In ordinary secured lending, the value of the collateral is broadly independent of the borrower’s distress. Here it is not. The events that make a club need cash are the same events that cut the value of its squad and thin the pool of buyers: relegation; a run of poor results; injuries to key players; a managerial change.
Wrong-way risk. This is the product’s most important feature and the one boards are most likely to underweight.
Illustrative stress (my model, not a disclosed transaction)
The model assumes a club with a modelled squad value of £200m borrows 25%, or £50m, in January, intending to repay from summer sales.
| Scenario | Squad value | Effective LTV | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base case | £200m | 25% | Loan sized at policy ceiling |
| Loss of form, valuations down 20% | £160m | 31% | Possible LTV breach; cure requires cash or sale |
| Relegation, valuations down 35% | £130m | 38% | Prepayment trigger coincides with revenue fall |
| Relegation plus injury to most valuable player (20% of squad value) | c.£104m | c.48% | Forced selling into a market that knows it |
| As above, sold at 15% discount to model | c.£88m realised | c.57% | Shortfall falls on club and owner |
A facility that looks conservative at 25% of squad value can approach 50% of realisable value within one season, with no fraud or mismanagement involved.
Risk matrix
| Risk | Likelihood | Impact | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valuation error / mark-to-model collateral | High | High | No independent valuation standard |
| Wrong-way correlation (relegation, form, injury) | High | High | Core structural feature |
| Encumbrance of future transfer income | High | Medium–High | Reduces future flexibility; risk of regulatory double-counting (§7.2) |
| Forced or fire sales | Medium | High | Sweeps and LTV cures push sales into buyers’ markets |
| Creditor layering and intercreditor conflict | Medium | High | Everton and Burnley show how quickly stacks form |
| Refinancing risk | Medium–High | High | 6–24 month tenors and a small lender pool |
| Covenant breach / acceleration | Medium | High | Everton’s relegation covenant is the template |
| January-buy, summer-sell failure | Medium | Medium–High | A failed window turns a bridge into expensive term debt |
| Transfer-market liquidity shock | Medium | High | Saudi retrenchment; buying power concentrated in a few clubs |
| Integrity / conflicts | Low–Medium | High | Lender exposure to both sides; adviser-lender roles (§7.5) |
| Fraud / double-pledging | Low | High | Not alleged in football; First Brands, Tricolor and MFS show the failure mode |
Lessons from distress cases
- Burnley. The December 2020 leveraged acquisition was financed partly by MSD debt secured on Turf Moor. A sequence of lenders followed: Macquarie (charges from 2022), MGG (January 2024, satisfied February 2025) and Fasanara (all-asset charges from January 2025). Security over core assets has passed along a chain of specialist lenders.
- Everton. The capital structure was layered: senior revolving credit from Rights and Media Funding at base + 5%; junior 777/A-CAP loans; MSP Sports Capital debt over the stadium company; and a relegation covenant requiring a material repayment of debt. It was resolved only by owner equity, a JPMorgan private placement and a negotiated haircut on the 777/A-CAP debt. Expensive specialist debt was survivable only because a well-capitalised buyer arrived.
- Eagle Football / Lyon. Ares lent approximately €400m–€425m at holding-company level. Lyon’s debts were reported at €505m in November 2024. The DNCG ordered relegation in June 2025, overturned on 9 July 2025 after a €117.3m package including an €87.3m shareholder loan at SOFR + 8%. Eagle Football Holdings Bidco entered UK administration in March 2026 after defaulting on Ares debt. The proceeds of the Crystal Palace sale were required to go to Ares. This is the clearest case of a lender’s security dictating asset sales.
- Barcelona. Selling 25% of LaLiga TV rights to Sixth Street for 25 years raised €667.5m but commits the club to roughly €40m a year. The €40m Libero default on Barça Vision shows how counterparty risk emerges in improvised structures.
- Levante. In a court-supervised restructuring, Fasanara–Tifosy and Edmond de Rothschild obtained a priority repayment mechanism funded by player sales and the sale of the women’s team, running to September 2027 or 2028. This is what squad-value lending looks like after the fact: the squad becomes the repayment plan.
Derby County, Reading, Sheffield United, Valencia and Portuguese clubs were outside the primary evidence reviewed, and no specific conclusions are drawn from them.
Regulatory analysis
Liquidity, not profit
The financing is a balance-sheet liability. The cash received is neither revenue nor profit. For SCR it has three consequences: it does not reduce the SCR numerator (wages, amortisation and agents’ fees); it does not increase the denominator (football revenue plus player-trading profit); and it adds interest cost.
A club cannot borrow its way into SCR compliance. Borrowing can only buy time to make sales that generate trading profit, and that is exactly the bet that may fail.
The SSR liquidity test and double-counting
The Premier League’s SSR rules were approved on 21 November 2025.
- Liquidity test: clubs must show non-negative liquidity headroom after an £85m stress, and the calculation counts 40% of squad market value as a liquid asset.
- Positive equity test: this uses the higher of squad market value and net book value. Liabilities to adjusted assets must be no more than 90% in 2026/27, 85% in 2027/28 and 80% from 2028/29.
Double-counting. A club that has borrowed 25% of its squad value, from a lender with first claim on sale proceeds, has already committed most of the “liquid” 40% the Premier League credits it with. Unless the final Section E text deducts encumbered squad value, the same asset is counted once by the lender and again by the regulator. The Premier League has written the same mark-to-model assumption into its own solvency test, and should correct this before the rules are finalised.
UEFA and EFL
UEFA caps squad cost at 70% of revenue for clubs in its competitions, and the Premier League applies a 70% green threshold to those clubs. From 2026/27, Championship clubs move to an 85% squad cost rule with a £33m equity allowance over three years. On the information available, neither regime addresses the encumbrance of future transfer receipts. UEFA’s overdue payables rules catch unpaid transfer installments, but not sale proceeds committed to a lender in advance.
The Independent Football Regulator
The Football Governance Act 2025 gives the IFR an objective to protect and promote the financial resilience of English football; a financial plans condition requiring stress-tested cash-flow forecasts; an Appropriate Financial Resources requirement; and information-gathering powers. The draft State of the Game sets the timetable: club action plans before 2027/28, three stress tests by May 2028, and full licensing by May 2030. Chief executive Richard Monks has said the regulator is alert to “creative compliance”.
Squad-value financing is exactly what the systemic objective exists to capture. It is rational for each club, encumbering for the system as a whole, and invisible in standard accounts. Yet the timetable leaves up to three and a half years in which the product can scale without regulatory definition.
Disclosure gaps and integrity issues
- Accounts. UK GAAP accounts disclose borrowings and security in aggregate. They do not show the LTV basis, valuation method, share of sale proceeds committed, or covenant triggers.
- Companies House. A charge must be registered within 21 days; Burnley’s 15 January 2025 Fasanara charges were delivered on 5 February 2025. Registration shows that a charge exists and its general scope, not its economic terms.
- Lender influence. The risk is not a lender telephoning a manager. It is a covenant that makes selling a particular player the only cure for an LTV breach.
- Conflicts. A lender that holds security over a selling club’s receivables while also financing the buying club can face a conflict over price and timing. So can an adviser that originates loans while advising on club acquisitions. Tifosy’s advisory roles alongside its lending joint venture illustrate how these roles can sit in one firm. No allegation of misconduct is made; the point is structural.
FCA and Bank of England
- FCA. Lending to a company is generally not a regulated activity. The FCA’s reach extends to the fund manager and its conduct towards fund investors, not to the loan agreement with the club.
- Bank of England. The Bank’s second system-wide exploratory scenario (SWES) examines private equity and private credit funding of UK corporates. It was launched in December 2025 with 46 participants, and its stress scenario was published on 19 June 2026. The July 2026 Financial Stability Report notes that vulnerabilities remain, including high leverage, complexity and opacity. Interim findings are due later in 2026 and the final report in 2027.
Football lending is far too small to be a systemic issue for the Bank. That is the blind spot: the product is systemic for football but invisible to the macroprudential authorities, while the IFR has the systemic mandate but not yet the data.
Regulatory blind spots
- No rule compels disclosure of encumbrances over future transfer income from players not yet sold.
- The SSR test counts 40% of squad market value as liquid without, on current information, deducting encumbered value.
- Non-bank lenders can use the all-asset charge route to gain effective priority over transfer proceeds they could not take by direct assignment.
- No valuation standard governs squad value used as collateral.
- FIFA has issued no guidance on squad-value lending under Articles 18bis and 18ter.
- No authority aggregates lender exposure across clubs.
Pre-2008 banking parallels
The international authorities have spent three years describing private credit in language that would fit a 2006 mortgage market.
- IMF, April 2024 Global Financial Stability Report. It warned that credit migrating from regulated banks and transparent public markets to the more opaque world of private credit creates potential risks, that severe data gaps prevent a comprehensive assessment, and that authorities should consider a more intrusive supervisory and regulatory approach.
- IMF, April 2026. It identified “early fault lines in private credit”, saying high-profile defaults suggest loose lending standards.
- FSB, 6 May 2026. It warns that private credit remains untested at its current size and scope in a severe downturn, and that opaque valuations and private ratings heighten vulnerabilities.
Recent failures sharpened the point. First Brands and Tricolor filed for bankruptcy in September 2025 amid allegations of double-pledged collateral; some private credit funds had marked First Brands’ debt at or near par months earlier. Market Financial Solutions collapsed in early 2026, with creditors warning of a £930m shortfall from double pledges. Cambridge Associates argues, fairly, that these were company-specific frauds. But each was a failure of collateral verification in an asset-based market, which is exactly the discipline squad-value lending relies on.
Parallels matrix
| Pre-2008 feature | Pre-2008 example | Squad-value equivalent | Strength |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mark-to-model collateral | House-price-index LTVs; model-priced CDOs | Transfermarkt/CIES/proprietary squad values with no traded price | Strong |
| Repayment reliant on asset appreciation | Subprime refinancing on rising prices | January signings repaid from summer sales at assumed values | Strong |
| Originate-to-distribute | Mortgages pooled into RMBS | Genoa receivables sold into SPV Project 1909 securitisation (Aug 2026) | Moderate, emerging |
| Shadow-banking migration | Risk moved to SIVs and conduits | Transfer-fee assignment restricted to banks; non-banks use all-asset charges | Strong |
| Opacity | Off-balance-sheet vehicles | Undisclosed pricing, LTVs, covenants and valuation methods | Strong |
| Maturity transformation | Short-term funding of long-term assets | Short loans against multi-year contracts, but fund capital is locked up | Weak to moderate |
| Procyclicality | Falling prices force sales | Relegation lowers values, triggers cures, forces sales | Strong at club level |
| LTV creep | 90%–125% mortgages by 2006–07 | No evidence beyond c.25%; SSR already credits 40% as liquid | Watch item |
| Covenant-lite | Cov-lite leveraged loans | Not evidenced; lenders take heavy security | Weak |
| Liquidity mistaken for solvency | Wholesale-funded banks | Loans that defer, not solve, structural losses (94% loss-making) | Strong |
| Insurance and pension capital in risky credit | Monoline and AIG exposures | A-CAP money behind 777’s Everton loans; pension/insurer LPs | Moderate |
Verdict. Squad-value financing repeats the core behavioural failure of pre-2008 lending. Credit is sized against a modelled asset value, repaid only if that value is realised, provided outside the regulated perimeter, and written on terms nobody outside the deal can see. It is not a threat to financial stability. It is a material threat to the resilience of individual clubs and, in aggregate, to the resilience objective Parliament has given the IFR.
Conclusions
- Squad-value financing is debt, not risk transfer: the club keeps full recourse, and the lender is protected by all-asset security.
- Lending against players not yet sold carries higher wrong-way collateral risk than any adjacent football finance product.
- Pricing is opaque, but probably 10–14% all-in.
- English rules let non-banks gain economic priority over transfer proceeds through all-asset charges.
- The SSR liquidity test risks double-counting squad value already pledged to lenders.
- Structures tied to named players’ future transfers engage FIFA Article 18ter, and sale-forcing covenants engage Article 18bis.
- The IFR has the mandate but not yet the data or the timetable to capture the product before it scales.
- The pre-2008 parallel holds for mechanism and behaviour, not for systemic scale.
Recommendations
For club boards
- Make squad-value borrowing a reserved matter, supported by an independent written valuation.
- Cap borrowing at 15%–20% of independently valued squad value, below the reported 25% norm, and at no more than 50% of a realistic twelve-month sales plan.
- Model relegation, injury to the two most valuable players and a failed window together. If the owner could not repay in that case, do not borrow.
- Refuse player-specific proceeds rights, sale-forcing cures and returns linked to sale prices, and obtain written league clearance on Articles 18bis and 18ter.
- Negotiate intercreditor terms explicitly, covering how sweeps interact with existing factoring and stadium debt.
- Disclose in the annual report the lender, amount, rate, fees, tenor, LTV basis, security, and the share of future sale proceeds committed.
For the Independent Football Regulator and the leagues
- Introduce an encumbrance register under the financial plans condition, showing lender by lender every charge, sweep or priority over transfer receivables and future transfer proceeds.
- Deduct encumbered squad value from any liquidity or resources assessment. The Premier League (SSR) and the EFL (Championship SCR) should do the same in their final rule texts.
- Consult on an LTV ceiling, suggested at 20% of an independently valued squad, and on a valuation standard for squad collateral.
- Include squad-value debt in the first club stress tests (by May 2028), using a prescribed relegation-plus-injury scenario.
- Aggregate lender exposure across clubs and publish anonymised concentration data.
- Close the gap between the Financial Institution restriction on assigning transfer fees and the all-asset charge route.
- Issue joint guidance with FIFA under Articles 18bis and 18ter, and share data on football-exposed funds with the Bank of England and the FCA.
For institutional investors
- Demand look-through to security, intercreditor ranking, covenants and valuation methodology.
- Back-test valuation models against realised sale prices, especially for relegated clubs.
- Ask about leverage and distribution: subscription lines, NAV facilities and onward securitisation.
- Assess regulatory and reputational risk, including FIFA Articles 18bis/18ter and enforcement against community assets such as stadiums.
- Price wrong-way risk explicitly, rather than relying on the absence of historical losses.
Caveats and Unverified Points
- FT article. It is paywalled, so its content is reported here via Private Equity Wire, aktien.news and FootBiz #204.
- €10.8bn and 38%. These are Tifosy’s figures, from a market participant with a commercial interest in the sector’s growth.
- Pricing. Several figures are single-source or Grade C: Sportico’s 10–12% fund return (anonymous source), Burnley’s 7.25%–12% range (fan analysis, not attributed by lender), Genoa’s “almost 11%” (regional press) and Ares’s 11–16% (Goal.com).
- Genoa securitisation. The notice was reviewed in summary form only.
- IFR figures. The report is a consultation draft, and its figures may change in the final version due in 2027. Net transfer debt appears as c.£3.4bn in most coverage and c.£3.3bn in some.
- Self-citation. Some figures on Everton, Apollo and Eagle Football draw on the author’s own published analysis on The Esk.
- Stress model. The stress in §6.2 is illustrative, not a disclosed transaction.
- Sources not reviewed. ECB, BIS and IOSCO material on private credit was outside the evidence reviewed.
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