RiskSmart has moved into professional football through a referral agreement with Lagom Sports Compliance, a specialist GRC and anti-financial crime advisory focused solely on the sport.
Under the arrangement, Lagom will run the routine parts of its retained advisory engagements on RiskSmart wherever it can, and will direct clients towards the platform when they need to hold their own compliance infrastructure.
The pair are also translating football’s regulatory requirements and associated controls into RiskSmart’s data schema. The aim is to let clubs, agencies and investors start on the platform with a ready-made, sector-specific framework instead of assembling an obligations library themselves.
The timing reflects how quickly football is being drawn into formal regulation. In England, the Independent Football Regulator will begin accepting provisional operating licence applications on 1 November 2026, with the regime taking binding effect from the 2027/28 season and covering roughly 116 clubs.
Across the European Union, professional clubs and licensed agents will fall within the scope of anti-money laundering rules from 10 July 2029. The English regulator has already deepened its ties with financial oversight, signing an information-sharing memorandum of understanding with the Financial Conduct Authority in February 2026.
The challenge facing clubs mirrors that seen in other sectors shifting from limited supervision to close scrutiny. Requirements pile up, accountability blurs, supporting evidence is scattered across email attachments, and reporting falls to a handful of staff. Many clubs are reaching this stage with compliance teams of just one or two people and frequently without any central record-keeping system.
Investors form another target audience. Private equity houses and multi-club ownership groups with holdings in English clubs bear the financial fallout of any licensing failure directly, while the regulator’s treatment of funds and holding structures in its suitability tests remains undecided. Together, that exposure and uncertainty turn robust, documented governance into a commercial priority.
RiskSmart provides GRC software to regulated organisations. Lagom now sits within its wider partner network, which already spans contract management, data intelligence, cyber security and regulatory content.
RiskSmart account executive Claudia Coutinho-De Somma said, “Sport looks different to banking or payments on the surface, but the underlying problem is the same one we’ve spent years solving: obligations that live in nobody’s system, owned by nobody in particular, until a regulator asks to see them.
“Football is about to feel that pressure fast, often with a compliance team of one or two people. Lagom knows this sector better than anyone, so rather than build football expertise from scratch, we’re building the infrastructure alongside people who already have it. That’s what this partnership is.”
Lagom Sports Compliance co-founder and director Jonathan Greenstein said, “Football clubs are being asked to evidence their governance to a standard that banks and payment firms have lived with for years, and they are being asked to do it inside eighteen months. Spreadsheets will not survive that. RiskSmart gives our clients a single place where obligations, controls and evidence sit together, and where a board or a regulator can see the position without anyone having to go digging.”
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