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Online executive education, designed in Montreal

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Executive Master Soccer Management

Categories: Business, English, Gestion

About Course

Today, the decisions that make or break a soccer club are taken in the boardroom: ownership, squad cost ratios, transfers, sponsorship, the stadium. This 39-hour online program prepares executives to run a professional club as a business, without losing sight of the pitch.

Each module rests on real cases from Europe and North America, from the Premier League to MLS, and ends with a decision tool you can use at your own club. You finish with a three-year strategic plan ready to present to your board. .

Register now and get a head start in your career !

What Will You Learn?

  • Read a club’s economic model in fifteen minutes and see who really makes the decisions
  • Assess an investor or a multi-club group before the deal is signed
  • Manage the squad cost ratio under UEFA, Premier League and MLS rules
  • Build a recruitment process and calculate the real cost of a transfer
  • Develop, extend or sell homegrown players at the right time
  • Sell, activate and renew commercial partnerships
  • Turn a social media audience into identified fans
  • Grow matchday and non-matchday revenue without breaking trust with supporters
  • Build a credible business case for a women’s team
  • Lead your first 100 days and handle a crisis in its first hours

Course Content

Module 1: The club, a business that does not chase profit first
By the end of this module, you will be able to read a club’s economic structure in fifteen minutes, say which game its owner is playing, and spot where decisions are really made. Why start here Many executives who come into soccer from banking, consulting or retail make the same mistake in their first six months. They apply a framework where profit is the goal and everything else is a means. In a club, it is often the other way round: money is the constraint, and winning is the goal. Until you have absorbed this reversal, you will propose measures that are sound on paper and fall on deaf ears in the owner’s office.

  • 1. Two systems, two logics
  • 2. Reading a club’s income statement
  • 3. Why loss-making clubs are worth more and more
  • 4. Governance: the organization chart often lies
  • 5. Case 1: Brighton and Union Saint-Gilloise, a model that survives departures
  • 6. Case 2: the MLS calendar change seen by a chief commercial officer
  • 7. Workshop: FC Riveneuve
  • Key takeaways

Module 2: Ownership, investment and multi-club ownership
By the end of this module, you will be able to: recognize an owner’s profile and what they really expect from the club; assess an investment offer beyond the headline price; anticipate multi-club ownership conflicts before they cost you a European place. Why this module matters for an executive The owner sets the frame for everything else: the time horizon, tolerance for losses, the level of ambition, sometimes even the choice of head coach. A CEO who misreads his shareholder builds plans that will never be funded. There is also a more direct reason. Club sales are multiplying, and executives in post often find themselves on the front line: preparing the data, receiving buyers and reassuring staff. Knowing how to read an offer is now part of the job.

Module 3: Financial regulation, playing with the ratios
By the end of this module, you will be able to: calculate a club’s squad cost ratio under European and North American rules; measure the headroom available before a transfer window; choose a contract structure that respects the thresholds; prepare a board of directors for a recruitment decision under regulatory constraint. What has changed, and why it concerns the whole leadership team For fifteen years, the question was “how much are we allowed to lose?”. It has become “how much are we allowed to spend on the squad, relative to what we bring in?”. The shift from losses to ratios changes the way people work: the sporting director must know the available headroom before negotiating; the finance director must be in the room when a contract is structured, not three months later; the commercial director becomes a player in recruitment, since every extra dollar or euro of revenue opens up spending capacity. In clubs that manage these rules well, a weekly meeting brings these three functions together during transfer windows. In the others, people discover the overspend when they read the accounts.

Module 4: Sporting direction, recruitment and the transfer market
By the end of this module, you will be able to: organize a sporting department that survives the departure of a head coach; build a recruitment process in which data, video and live scouting usefully contradict each other; calculate the real cost of a transfer over its whole life; apply the new FIFA rules on transfers and agents. Why recruitment is a club’s most expensive decision In most professional clubs, squad wages and amortization are by far the largest item of expenditure. Every signing commits the club for three to five years. A recruitment mistake is therefore paid for twice: during the contract, through a salary that weighs on the ratio, then on exit, through a resale value below book value. The paradox is that this decision is often taken in the rush of a transfer window, under pressure from a head coach, an agent or an owner. This module is about taking it out of the rush.

Module 5: Academy and player trading
By the end of this module, you will be able to: measure what an academy really brings in; organize the transition of 17-21-year-olds into professional soccer; structure young players’ contracts under the new FIFA rules; decide, using criteria written in advance, when to sell, extend or loan a homegrown player. Why the academy is a matter for the chief executive For a long time, the academy was a cost centre attached to the sporting side, with a budget voted each year and few questions asked. Three developments have made it a matter for the chief executive: Accounting. A homegrown player has a book value close to zero. His sale is therefore almost entirely profit (Module 1). Regulation. In the Premier League, academy revenue counts in the squad cost ratio, but its costs do not. At UEFA, youth development costs are among the “relevant investments”, which must be covered by equity or shareholder contributions. Squad lists. Locally trained players fill mandatory places in squads registered for the league and for European competition. A good homegrown player frees up room in the market. Yet the academy remains a club’s most poorly measured asset. Many executives know what it costs; very few know what it brings in.

Module 6: Commercial partnerships, sell, activate, measure
By the end of this module, you will be able to: map what your club really has to sell; set a defensible price; build a proposal from the partner’s objectives; organize activation and measure results in a way that secures renewal. Why commercial revenue is the executive’s territory Media rights are negotiated collectively by the league. Matchday revenue is limited by stadium capacity. Player sales depend on the market. Commercial is the only major revenue line over which club management keeps almost full control. It is also the line that opens up spending capacity under the financial rules (Module 3). Every extra dollar or euro of commercial revenue raises the squad cost ceiling. A high-performing commercial director is, indirectly, a player in recruitment.

Module 7: Media, content and the direct fan relationship
By the end of this module, you will be able to: distinguish the media revenue a club is subject to from the revenue it can build; organize content production that serves commercial and ticketing; turn an audience rented from platforms into a base of identified fans, with indicators the chief executive can track. The initial misunderstanding You often hear that a soccer club must become a “media company”. The phrase is half right. For the vast majority of clubs, most media revenue comes from rights sold collectively by the league and by competition organizers. The club sets neither the price, nor the broadcaster, nor the distribution. What the club controls is something else: its own audience, its non-match content, its archives, and above all its direct relationship with fans. That relationship cannot be sold to a broadcaster. It feeds everything else: ticketing, merchandising, partnerships (Module 6) and, over time, the value of the club.

Module 8: Stadium, matchday and non-matchday revenue
By the end of this module, you will be able to: break down matchday revenue by segment; choose growth levers that bring in money without breaking the relationship with supporters; prepare a defensible pricing decision; assess what a stadium can earn on the other 340 days of the year. The stadium, caught between two logics Matchday has two faces: for the finance department, it is a revenue line that can be grown through price, hospitality and food and beverage; for supporters, it is a ritual, a family habit, sometimes an inheritance. The two collide as soon as you touch the price of a season ticket. This module starts from a simple observation: clubs that grow their stadium revenue sustainably almost never do it by first raising the price of the cheapest seat. They do it by filling the stadium better, serving better, moving upmarket on premium seats and using the stadium outside match days.

Module 9: Women’s soccer as a distinct asset
By the end of this module, you will be able to: read the real economics of professional women’s soccer, in Europe and North America; choose an entry or development route; build a business case that separates own revenue from group subsidies; present to a board a decision that rests neither on enthusiasm nor on social responsibility alone. Avoiding two opposite mistakes For a long time, many clubs treated their women’s team as a social responsibility line: an accepted cost, barely monitored, with no management of its own. In recent years, the opposite mistake has appeared: presenting women’s soccer as an exploding market where every investment is bound to pay off. The reality lies in between: Asset values are rising very quickly, particularly in North America. Most teams still lose money. Success depends on specific management choices, not on the general trend. This module treats women’s soccer as it should be treated: a distinct asset, with its own economics, its own audiences and its own partners.

Module 10: Leadership, the first 100 days and crisis management
By the end of this module, you will be able to: prepare and lead your first 100 days at a club; organize the relationship between the owner, the chief executive and the sporting department; take a decision on the head coach using criteria set in advance; manage the first hours of a crisis without making the situation worse. What makes leadership different in a club Running a club looks like running a mid-sized company, with four differences that change everything: The result is public every week. No other company sees its performance commented on by tens of thousands of people every Saturday. Stakeholders are emotionally invested. Supporters, former players, local politicians, employees: everyone has an opinion, often legitimate, sometimes very loud. Tenures are short. Head coaches, sporting directors and chief executives change often, and decisions are taken under pressure from results. Real power does not always follow the organization chart (Module 1). Most executives who fail in soccer are not lacking in competence. They misread the map of power, promised too quickly, or took their first big decision in the middle of a crisis.

Assessment