In Focus: Cambridge United Embrace Genie AI

With 14 new signings and three renewed deals, it’s been a busy transfer window at Cambridge United. But with the help of Genie AI, they have been able to navigate the transfer market and the players’ contracts quickly and efficiently using AI.

The club unveiled a groundbreaking partnership with Cambridge-born legaltech pioneer Genie AI earlier this year, becoming the first professional football club to execute all player contracts end-to-end using artificial intelligence.

By leveraging Genie AI, they are streamlining and accelerating legal workflows, relying on the platform to draft and review contracts for players, employees and commercial partners.

For many clubs, especially those in the Championship and below, they are running on lean teams and often don’t have full-time in-house legal counsel, with external spend estimated to be between £50k and £350k a year depending on projects.

By having access to cutting-edge legal AI such as Genie, they are levelling the playing field in back-office operations. 

Alex Tunbridge, Cambridge United’s CEO, stated that the platform has accelerated their processes by reducing their reliance on external legal firms, which are often time-consuming as well as costly.

He said: “We don’t have an in-house counsel; therefore, we thought there’s an opportunity here to use AI to upskill and also increase the quality of our work.”

As Cambridge look to bounce back to League One, the season-long loan signing of Millwall winger Adam Mayor on transfer deadline day was the final move in which 14 players joined the club and 14 left during the summer.

“In terms of the transfer deadline day, not being able to move at the quickest possible speed may mean we miss out on a player, or it may mean the player doesn’t get registered in time,” Tunbridge continued.

“One of the things that Genie has allowed us to do is input a contract and be able to get summaries or key information out quickly, but at the same time it’s also allowing us to draft contracts and agreements at far greater speed than we were able to before.”

Genie AI was founded in 2017 by Rafie Faruq and Nitish Mutha, both of whom studied for master’s degrees in AI machine learning at University College London, and now has a client base of over 150,000 companies all over the world using the product.

Rafie Faruq, Co-founder & CEO of Genie AI, said: “Our mission is to empower everyone at the club to draft trusted legal agreements. We’re empowering people with AI to reduce their legal fees and get access to law.

“It’s trained specifically for legal contracts, especially for businesses that are legally complex and have lots of moving parts like football clubs.”

Premier League clubs spent over £3bn on transfers this summer, increasing the pressure on player recruitment departments, as mistakes can have disastrous consequences for clubs both on and off the pitch.

Contracts carry regulatory and financial risk and non-compliance with Premier League, EFL or FA rules can lead to point deductions, fines, or failed registrations. Additionally, there is the risk of making costly mistakes such as an invalid clause or contracts which are non-compliant with the FA’s Safeguarding Standards Guide 2025/26.

Faruq continued: “We have a vast data set of over 5 million clause revisions across all different types of contract businesses and jurisdictions. We believe our AI is the most accurate and our customers typically say that Genie is more comprehensive, more accurate and more appropriate for their business.

“The two top-level desires we’re finding with football clubs is they want to reduce their legal fees, so they have more money to spend on players and the matchday experience, and they want to get things done faster.

“You don’t want a blockage when signing a player with a week to go on the transfer deadline. There is often a fear that a new technology comes in and messes up the way they currently do things, especially player contracts which must adhere to strict and specific FA guidelines.

“For player contracts, we’re not generating new language, we’re not reinventing the wheel. Instead, we are taking a club’s existing template and past contracts and generating what is effectively a fixed questionnaire which adheres to those FA guidelines. Then all they have to do is just drag and drop the clauses and fill in the details.

“About 30% of a contract is customised based on player bonuses, goals, clean sheets and other items. We’re using their past language and helping them finish it faster.”

At Cambridge, they are taking a holistic approach to using Genie, utilising the platform for a range of contracts across the club such as commercial sponsorships and vendor contracts, where time and accuracy are key.

For the club’s Head of Commercial, Neil Rowe, it’s been “game changing”. He said: “The biggest challenge I would say is timing. The season starts at a certain point and there is a strict deadline, a hard stop where we absolutely need to make sure that a contract is signed and sealed.”

Whilst there was typical reservation about using the platform, he was quickly reassured. “They speak in our language, and that was really key,” he said. “It was a bit daunting to sit down with an AI tech company from a legal industry point of view, it’s not our world.

“But for them to actually break it down and say this is really simple and we’re going to talk you through it, it was massively appealing.”

Experience Genie for yourself, book a demo at https://meet.genieai.co/