Laurent Descout of Neo on where currency costs hide inside a football transfer, and why treasury discipline matters most to the smaller clubs.
Neo works with Wolverhampton Wanderers and the Belgian champions Club Brugge KV on their international payment and foreign exchange requirements. Its argument is that a football club now carries much of the financial complexity of a multinational business, recruiting across borders, paying instalments and add-ons across several seasons and running salaries in more than one currency, while its treasury team stays comparatively small.
According to an analysis cited by the company, more than £22 million was lost from Premier League clubs’ transfer payments through hidden foreign exchange fees in seven weeks last summer. The figure came to The Fintech Times through the company and has not been independently verified, so it is attributed here rather than asserted.
The Fintech Times put written questions to Laurent Descout, CEO and co-founder of Neo, on where those costs arise inside a transfer, what a strong currency strategy actually involves, and why he thinks the smaller clubs have the most to gain from getting it right.
Analysis last summer found more than £22 million lost from Premier League
clubs’ transfer payments through hidden foreign-exchange fees in just seven
weeks. Clubs increasingly operate as multinational businesses, so why do they
remain so exposed?
Football has globalised incredibly quickly, but the financial infrastructure behind it has not always kept pace. A club can now have the financial complexity of a multinational business while operating with a comparatively lean treasury team.
It may recruit players anywhere in the world, make payments in several currencies and manage contractual obligations that stretch over a number of seasons.
For Premier League clubs, that means operating primarily in sterling while regularly making payments in euros or US dollars. The sums involved are large enough that relatively small differences in exchange rates or FX margins can have a meaningful impact on the true cost of a transfer.
At the same time, many clubs have longstanding banking relationships and processes that were established before football became this international. Those relationships can be valuable, but clubs should still be regularly challenging whether the pricing, execution and infrastructure they receive remain competitive.
Football has become an international industry very quickly. The financial processes around it now need to catch up.
Transfer deals often complete under significant time pressure. Where exactly do payment delays, poor exchange rates and hidden fees creep into a transfer, and what can that cost a club?
A transfer deal is rarely one straightforward transaction. There can be an initial payment followed by later instalments, performance-related add-ons, sell-on clauses, changing creditors and strict compliance requirements. All of that has to be managed accurately, sometimes against a very hard deadline.
That complexity creates several points where problems can arise. Payment instructions need to be completely accurate, particularly when a deal is being completed close to a deadline. We have seen situations where unclear instructions, if not corrected, could have caused delays or potentially created problems around a transfer deadline.
Then there is the price of converting the currency itself. FX pricing can sometimes be accepted without being sufficiently benchmarked. On a transfer which is worth tens of millions, even a small difference in the spread can become a substantial cost.
So, clubs need to look beyond the headline transfer fee. The structure of the deal, the accuracy of the payment process and the price at which the currency is exchanged all determine what the club ultimately pays.
Neo supports Wolverhampton Wanderers and Club Brugge with their international payment and FX requirements. Without disclosing anything confidential, what do those engagements show about how clubs are professionalising their treasury operations?
What these engagements show is that clubs are increasingly treating international payments and FX as a treasury discipline rather than simply an administrative function.
Of course, there is a branding element to these partnerships, but for us the more important part is being able to deliver tangible value behind the scenes. A modern football club may have transfer obligations across several currencies and several seasons, while also managing salaries, commercial revenues and increasingly international sporting operations. That requires much greater visibility over future cash flows and currency exposures than clubs historically needed.
The professionalisation comes from putting more structure around those decisions by understanding upcoming liabilities earlier, identifying where currency risk exists, deciding when that risk should be managed and making sure the payment itself is executed accurately and efficiently.
Ultimately, the most meaningful measure of a partnership for us is not simply having the Neo brand associated with the club. It is whether the treasury team can say we have helped them manage their international payments and FX more effectively.
In practical terms, what does a strong FX strategy look like for a club: hedging, payment execution, multi-currency accounts, something else?
It starts with understanding the nature of the exposure. If a club has a committed future payment in another currency, it can decide whether locking in the exchange rate would give it useful certainty over the cost.
But football transfers also include payments that may never materialise, such as performance-related add-ons or sell-on clauses. Do you hedge something you’re not really sure is going to materialise? I’m not a big fan of that.
So, a strong FX strategy is not about hedging everything. It is about separating committed exposures from contingent ones, deciding where certainty genuinely adds value and managing risk accordingly.
There is no single tool that solves everything. Hedging, payment execution and multi-currency capabilities all have a role, but they need to sit within a wider treasury strategy rather than being considered transaction by transaction.
You argue these capabilities matter most for smaller clubs competing with better-funded rivals. Why is that?
For a club with a more limited budget, financial efficiency can become part of competitive advantage.
Smaller clubs increasingly operate in the same international transfer market as Europe’s biggest teams. They scout globally, buy and sell players across borders and face many of the same financial complexities, but they do so with fewer resources to absorb unnecessary costs.
A club cannot control how much a wealthier rival can spend, but it can control how efficiently it uses the money available to it. If money is unnecessarily lost through poor FX pricing, avoidable fees or inefficient processes, that is money that cannot be deployed somewhere else.
For a smaller club, those marginal gains matter. Resources preserved through better financial management can instead support recruitment, player development, facilities or other areas of the football operation.
Treasury will never replace good scouting or good coaching, but managing the club’s resources well can help it make more of the budget it has.
Beyond the transfer window, how do you expect football finance to evolve across salaries, agent fees and international operations, and what role will fintech play in that?
Transfers attract most of the attention, but they are only one part of the financial complexity clubs now manage. Salaries, agent fees, commercial revenues, international scouting networks and overseas sporting operations can all create cross-border payment and currency requirements.
That means treasury will become more closely connected to the wider operation of the club. Finance teams will be expected to support an increasingly international organisation while still maintaining control over costs, payments and financial risk.
Fintech can help by removing some of the operational friction involved. Better technology can make international payments faster and more transparent, reduce manual processes and give finance teams better tools to manage cross-border activity without having to build much larger internal infrastructures.
The game has already become global. The next stage is making sure the financial infrastructure supporting it is equally capable of operating across borders.
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