Best Professional Service Business Serving Football 2017
Coutts
The Coutts Sports and Entertainment team is a leader in the field of providing specialist banking and wealth management services to a demanding industry with unique challenges It has been our long term view that these requirements can only be met through a specialist team with expert advisers in the area of providing Private Banking and Wealth Management advice to the players.
KSS
KSS are internationally recognised as a leading sports architecture practice, specialising in stadia, indoor arenas and training centres.
We work with our clients to create venues of high quality and intense sporting and spectator experiences. We assist our clients in growing their business, driving increased revenue and developing their brand. We provide a full range of sports design consultancy services in master planning, architecture, interior design, branding, graphics and wayfinding.
From our main office in central London, we create intelligent energy-efficient architecture where the design is informed by site context, functionality and flexibility.
Our sports team leaders have over 25 years of experience in stadium design and are proud to have worked globally in this field. Key highlights are Coimbra Stadium in Portugal, The Amex Stadium in Brighton, Stade Océane in Le Havre, Sammy Ofer Stadium in Haifa and of course Anfield Stadium for Liverpool FC.
Pinsent Masons
Football is an increasingly competitive and commercially driven sport. Any advantage gained by a club in how it operates its business, particularly in securing talent and realising value through exploiting commercial rights, will be critical to success on and off the field. As a firm recognised for innovation and understanding of the sports sector, Pinsent Masons worked to create a digital solution to enable clubs to manage transfers and also contracts for commercial rights. In partnership with Everton Football Club it delivered a full electronic solution that enables the club to manage all transfers, in and out, electronically de-risking the process, ensuring consistency and enabling all steps to be taken much quicker. Having done so, the firm has subsequently developed a pioneering programme that audits all commercial agreements at a club, digitises them, provides intuitive information about the detail of these and then a system for creating new contracts and managing rights on an on-going basis. In all regards, innovation is delivered enabling business processes to be improved, costs reduced and significant value added to the clients Pinsent Masons works with.
Smith & Williamson
Smith & Williamson’s Sports Group has created a new service, the Footballers’ Private Office, which brings together all the services and specialist expertise that players may require.
Sportspeople experience unique earnings patterns and the nature of their career means that circumstances can change quickly. Football in particular has seen many players face financial difficulties, despite their earning potential. For a player to perform well on the field, their affairs off the field need to be in order.
We launched this service in November 2016, showcasing our expertise in developing a holistic financial strategy covering a range of services from pensions to image rights. Recognising the importance of strong relationships, and to ensure our advice is seamless, clients have one lead partner serving as their personal financial director across all our services.
With our unique position in the market having financial planners, tax advisers and investment managers all under one roof, a player benefits from a range of expert inputs. Our Footballers’ Private Office helps deliver peace of mind on financial security.
Players from youth teamers to established internationals can now have straightforward and complex financial issues handled under one roof, whereas previously they would have had engage with multiple advisers.
Verisona Law
Having been very influential in helping its fans save Portsmouth Football Club from it’s creditors some 4 years ago Verisona have provided legal services to the Club ever since, with one of their Directors, Mike Dyer, serving throughout on the Club board.
Following receipt of an expression of interest from a potential buyer, Michael Eisner (former CEO of the Disney organisation) and his Tornante company, Verisona advised the Club and its board throughout a complex negotiation made all the more difficult and sensitive by its fan ownership structure and its flagship status as the largest fan owned club in the country. Verisona’s specialist knowledge of that structure and it’s relationship and ability to work with the various stakeholders, including the relevant regulatory bodies, was a major factor in achieving a successful and in many respects unique outcome.
Verisona has also advised during the last year in relation to executive employment contracts at other clubs – including in the Premier League, and provided structural advice to Fan groups at 3 other football clubs.
