In Focus: Ebury - Reducing Transfer Finance Risk
How football finance grew up, and the business quietly becoming its backbone.
Transfer fees have never been bigger, and the clubs paying them have never had more currencies to worry about. fcbusiness looks at how football’s finance departments have grown, and why one fintech keeps coming up in the conversation. Transfer fees used to be simple. A club paid another using the same currency through a long-time local bank.
That model is gone. Premier League clubs routinely move over a billion pounds through transfer windows across multiple currencies, jurisdictions and continents. A modern English club might operate under US ownership, sell to Italy, buy from the Netherlands and pay euro instalments using dollars and sterling.
Agreeing the fee is the easy part now. Moving it safely, on time and without silently losing money to a bad exchange rate has become a discipline in its own right.
That shift created a genuine sports finance industry. A handful of fintechs and treasury specialists have now built products around football’s unique cash flow headaches, with one name standing out: London-headquartered Ebury has built a dedicated sports division alongside its core business that serves thousands of growing international firms.
Find out more at Ebury
Ebury started in 2009 as a foreign exchange and payments specialist for ambitious businesses long before football was part of the plan. Santander took a majority stake in 2019, helping the firm scale into a global operation spanning dozens of markets and thousands of staff. Its sports finance arm is a newer addition.
Still, it applies the same toolkit built for exporters and importers to a sport that has become one of Europe’s most internationally exposed industries. In practice, Ebury hasn’t built a football product from scratch. Instead, it offers clubs its core suite of accounts, hedging and payment solutions, delivered with a precision gained from working across dozens of clubs, agencies and ownership structures.
Why The Window Became A Currency Problem
Clubs routinely face currency mismatches. Revenue arrives in various currencies: dollars from US owners, euros from European broadcasting and sterling from matchday ticket sales. Meanwhile, transfer fees are predominantly priced in euros. A solvent club can easily lose real money holding the wrong currency between agreeing to a deal and settling it. This is where Ebury fits in.
“We’re not replacing any banking relationship,” says Maurits Zwart, Co-Global Head of Sports. “We’re just adding value where we can by providing multi-currency accounts and tailored hedging structures without tying up capital or requiring collateral. Clubs keep traditional banks for daily operations while we handle the currency risks that banks can’t price effectively.”
Villa, Fulham & Ipswich: Hedging The Fee Itself
Clubs like Aston Villa, Fulham and Ipswich Town show why currency management matters at Premier League level. Operating on domestic revenue alongside cross-border ownership and transfer activity, these clubs work with financial services firms like Ebury to navigate complex international transactions rather than hoping exchange rates stay in their favour.
Transfer fee structures make FX exposure far more pressing. A decade ago, large fees were settled within a year or two. Today, addons, sell-on clauses and staggered instalments frequently stretch payments over three to five years. This setup helps buying clubs with short-term cash flow, but it also exposes them to currency volatility over a much longer horizon.
A fee that looked reasonable initially can end up costing significantly more over time if exchange rates shift. Take a typical instalment sale: a player is sold for euros, paid in parts to an English club using pounds. Without hedging, the club faces euro-to-pound exchange rate changes with each payment, leaving the final amount in pounds uncertain until the money arrives.
To manage this, Ebury offers hedging solutions—a strategy used by international clubs such as Spain’s Real Betis. By securing a fixed exchange rate when a deal is signed, a club can lock in the exact value of future incoming or outgoing payments rather than gambling on market movements months down the line.
What sets these FX solutions apart is how they can be tailored to a club’s transfer schedule—aligning with incoming and outgoing cash flows. A fee agreed in the summer window might not be fully settled until the following January, and whether a club hedges today’s rate or waits depends on what else sits on its books at the time. It is less a static product than a running strategic conversation.
The Currency Risk Hidden In Domestic Transfers
Even sterling-only deals between English clubs can carry hidden currency risks. As Brooks notes: “If a foreign-owned club funds a signing through its ownership group, that money often has to be converted from dollars before it reaches the fee itself. The deal on the pitch looks domestic; the finance behind it isn’t.”
Where The Money Actually Sits
Ebury plays an even more behind-the-scenes role: acting as the receiving account for a buying club’s money. Rather than routing a fee bank-to-bank with a currency conversion in the middle, the counterparty pays directly into a dedicated Ebury currency account in the club’s name. From there, the club decides what happens next: convert immediately, hold the balance, or wait for the next instalment. Some clubs ask Ebury to pay funds onward on their behalf; others simply receive the money and transfer it into their own banking setup. Either way, the structure gives finance departments a clean, single point of visibility over funds that might otherwise be scattered across multiple currencies and accounts.
Competing For The Deals Banks Don’t Want
Ebury also differentiates itself by handling currencies traditional banks avoid. Mainstream banks rely on limited liquidity providers, which works for major pairs but leaves gaps elsewhere. Ebury connects with a broader network to handle trades in currencies banks cannot price well or even offer. In a global football landscape with ownership interests across South America, Africa and the Middle East, that capability is significant.
A Treasury Desk Football Didn’t Previously Need
Ten years ago, football finance rarely required this level of sophistication. Today, widespread foreign ownership, massive transfer fees vulnerable to currency swings and strict financial sustainability rules demand tight cash flow management.
This environment requires a specialised service built for deadline-driven transfer windows rather than general corporate FX. The need extends beyond transfers, including stadium projects, foreign sponsorships and overseas agent fees present ongoing risks year-round.
Modern clubs now treat these challenges as part of a single, continuous treasury function rather than reacting to one-off issues as they arise. Ebury’s pitch to clubs is simple: it does not replace traditional banks. Instead, it acts as a dedicated FX desk handling currency risk full time, stepping in where generalist banks stall on complex hedges, unusual currencies, escrow solutions and precise, scheduled instalments.
