With proven expertise in executive education programmes, online development sessions and targeted networking, our aim is to equip club football executives with knowledge and tools to strengthen the clubs from within. Our extensive international sports network enables us to bring insights from the best in class and a variety of sports, encompassing federations, leagues, clubs and players right to the core of the business.

The Extraordinary Session was designed to enable the club representatives to engage in networking, constructive discussion and knowledge-sharing in a relaxed and private setting, all while focusing on delivering key learnings and insights, with the following objectives:

• Discuss current challenges and trends in the football landscape and focus on solutions for a positive way forward
• Increase the understanding of change management with a case study of a club in transition
• Deep dive into German Football and learn about the key to sustainable success with input from different stakeholders that play an important role in the German football industry

Organising safe events during the pandemic period is a challenging task but with strict sanitary measures, such as daily testing and vaccine requirements, the event was carried out in order enable the valuable networking and exchange that so many have longed for during the long unwanted pandemic break.

• Thought-provoking discussions
• International effective networking

Football clubs are facing many challenges that are often perceived as being related to be external factors, however one of the main concerns is the creation of an efficient growth pathway for the internal structure. Talking the same language, efficiently associating employees with long term experience and younger staff, bringing a new perspective from other industries are the keys to build successful operations.

We develop tailor-made sessions to support C-level executives to have a better understanding of their resources, while helping HR to have better tools to implement club strategies, since strategies without people are as much a challenge as people without a clear strategy. In parallel, by facilitating cross communication between areas, we promote better horizontal and vertical collaboration between staff and departments.

• Providing benchmarks of successful club structures associated with roadmaps/planification
• Increasing common understanding and relationships between key positions (e.g. CEO-SD- Academy Director or CEO-CFO-SD)
• Psychological assessment to improve work performance
• Practical sessions on facilitating communication between departments, using traditional exercises (e.g. Chess) or technological tools (assessment and results oriented)

The goal was to create a guide to help football clubs in managing operations on and off the pitch. The idea was to share best practices in football clubs and to make them available to all club members of ECA. While preparing the guide, the aim was to share the knowledge and experience of club CEOs and top officials, who have a deep understanding of European club football. This publication aimed to gather information directly from clubs, to analyse and offer practical benchmarks and guidance. The goal was to make it simple and concise.

Co-authored by Olivier Jarosz, Konstantin Kornakov and Sten Söderman, the ECA Club Management Guide was a pioneering study published for the first time back in 2015. The Club Management Guide provides an in-depth study of a football club by way of sharing various best practices to current and future club officials, using real-life examples from different areas of club management. The guide does not attempt to provide one single solution for successful club management but offers great insight into effective club management methods from over 100 clubs of various sizes. The club management areas dealt with in the guide include operational, commercial, community and sporting activities.

• 150 interviews carried out with more than 100 club representatives
• 15 football club study visits were carried out during the course of the project
• More than 1000 copies published
• 3 reprints and revamped editions since 2016
• More than 400 clubs, leagues and National Association worldwide received a copy

At LTT Sports, we are committed to promoting efficient management and effective long-term strategic planning within football clubs. It is for this reason we are convinced that this guide is useful, not only as a source of information and inspiration, but also as an active tool to improve the sustainability of clubs.

A summary of the guide is available below or request the French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Portuguese, Croatian, Polish or Turkish version

 

Geographical reach of rights	I.e., local, regional, domestic, continental or worldwide
Actual rights given to the sponsors versus the club, its teams and individual players	What obligations does the club have to perform for the sponsor, do those obligations also affect individual players of the club and how does it correspond to the agreement between club and player?
Fee expected, and whether it is monetary cr in kind	Commercial, technical or mixed arrangement
Category of products covered	Sponsors increasingly may be looking to broaden their rights, while for clubs it may be valuable to be as specific as possible
Sponsor obligations	Does the sponsor have any obligations to the club, such as, for example, a marketing budget or sponsorship impact research?
Exclusivity of obligations	How exclusive is the arrangement between the club and the sponsor?
Terms of agreement	What is the duration?
Renewal rights	Now and when are the club and sponsor able to renew the sponsorship agreement; how and when can the club negotiate with alternative sponsors?
Post-termination rights and issues	Post-termination, there can be various outstanding issues such as continuing data or image rights, as well as data protection issues
External stakeholder influence	The club may be subject to objective external influences regarding sponsorship such as regulations from National Associations, domestic leagues, international football authorities or ordinary national or European legislation

 

 

CLUB VISION AND STRATEGY BUILDING

Shared vision + realistic plan of action + clear and robust thinking to back the plan
= ability to ensure the longevity of the strategy's implementation even in the face of sometimes extreme public pressure to do things differently or engage in short term thinking.

 

 

 

Oftentimes it is difficult to find relevant information on key, specialised issues for football, so there is a need for a forum for knowledge-sharing and a best-practices exchange. We regularly organise a series of debates with football experts – the aptly called Football Talks, where we discuss current key issues of the football industry.

We have created a forum for exchange of opinions on current issues in football, and we have been graced by many recognised experts, such as, among others: +30 CEOs and +50 experts. So far, we have conducted Football Talks on the following topics: ‘Women's Football’, ‘Europa League Club Sustainability Comparison’, Future of German Football. We continue to share knowledge with experts on several other important topics.

• The #footballtalks format has become an important source of knowledge as the content is backed by analysis from our Knowledge Hub. These types of debates and discussions provide a unique opportunity to get to know the opinions of experts on extremely important issues that concern the entire football community.

Nowadays, the largest football clubs, as well as medium ones, have significant budgets. Therefore the management staff of football clubs require exceptional skills in sports management. The ECA Club Management Programme (ECA-CMP) was the first executive programme for club executives of its kind, designed to provide tangible in-depth knowledge to senior club executives and administrators on a wide range of topics relating to club management. The ECA CMP was also a unique opportunity for networking that not only created useful knowledge but also long-lasting friendships between colleagues.

We are proud to have delivered the content of the curriculum, the design of the sessions and creating the practical group tasks. The #ECACMP was developed and delivered in collaboration with Stockholm Business School and provided its participants with the unrivalled opportunity to learn from the best practitioners in the football industry, as well as specialist academics in areas such as management, sport performance and leadership.

A key pillar of our approach was the extensive pool of professionals and academic speakers we have at our disposal from across the globe, whom we have assessed not only for the quality of their content, but also for the dynamism of their delivery, which is an especially important feature in an online executive knowledge-sharing setting. This allowed us to precisely calibrate the type and level of speaker to each individual session and presentation, in order to carefully organise the flow of each day uniquely, rather than being focused on matching in-house faculty to topics within the curriculum.

We delivered three editions making the programme the first ever club executive programme worldwide.

• 120 participants in total from 34 leagues from Europe with additional club representatives from Brazil, Mexico, Peru, South Africa and Ivory Coast.
• More than 440 hours of cases studies, lectures and practical exercises
• More than 30 clubs and stadiums involved, with numerous L&D exchanges in European clubs such as FC Bayern München, Chelsea FC, Real Madrid CF, Juventus, FC Porto, AFC Ajax, Olympique Lyonnais. From the US; NY Yankees and Atlanta United, to Asia; Birds Nest Beijing and Guangzhou R&C

Professional sports clubs have increasingly larger budgets and the influence of sport on the world economy is ever greater. Therefore, sports organisations nowadays require appropriate management, and their managers should have unique knowledge and skills. The Institute aims to build and develop the sports capabilities and skills of administrative and leadership professionals in the sports field. The Institute’s objective is to offer a first-class Team Management Course to its audience. The Institute was seeking an international partner to produce the course material which will include courses, practical tasks, business cases as well as a concluding satisfaction survey.

As requested by the Institute we created a Team Management course covering the following topics:

• Introduction to team management
• Understanding the elite sports performance environment
• Sources of information
• Understanding the needs of elite athletes
• Orientation on excellence

• Interpersonal communication
• Integrity in sport
• Sports operations
• Team management as a strategic tool

The information presented during the classes was as recent and relevant as possible and came from both the world of sport and science for highly effective learning.

• Managing discussions between stakeholders
• Organising a practical session
• International effective networking
• Creating an informal channel of discussion
• Updating the online platform with further dynamic content

LTT Sports actively contributes to spreading awareness and further understanding of how the different players in the football industry operate. Within the European context, there are a myriad of clubs and national associations. These partners are from diverse and varied backgrounds and possess heterogenic prowess. With a strong foundational knowledge base and access to a dynamic network, LTT offers a unique understanding and breakdown of the larger football concept in Europe and beyond. By working with future sport managers and leaders, thereby sparking intrigue and evoking inspiration, LTT Sports is working towards becoming a knowledge and network hub ensuring innovation and evolution of the beautiful game – emphasising on a post-covid world.

LTT Sports have organised and actively participated in various workshops, seminars, conferences with the wider football industry and its various stakeholders.

Events partnered and organised with – UEFA, ECA, Soccerex, WFS… Also various clubs, leagues, national associations and federations covering the football landscape.

Designed the first ever Club Football Executive course worldwide and involved in the launch of Management Committee of the UEFA MIP (Master of International Players) and the Stockholm Business School Knowledge Development & Research Center. Delivering lectures and publications for sport/football education courses and programmes

• AISTS - International Academy of Sport Science and Technology
• Geneva Business School
• Stockholm Business School Knowledge Development & Research Center
• EU Business School Barcelona campus
• University of Tsukuba
• ISDE - Instituto Superior de Derecho y Economía.
• UeP - Uniwersytet Ekonomiczny w Poznaniu
• ISDE - Instituto Superior de Derecho y Economía.
• Escuela Universitaria Real Madrid Universidad Europea
• Legia Sport Business Programme
• The FBA
• EAJF - École des Agents de Joueurs de Football
• IFBI - International Football Business Institute
• Molde University College
• UEFA CFM
• UEFA MIP