RiskSmart enters the sports market through partnership with Lagom Sports Compliance

MANCHESTER, September 2026 - RiskSmart, the governance, risk and compliance platform used by banks, payment firms, pension providers and other regulated businesses, has agreed a referral partnership with Lagom Sports Compliance, the leading specialist GRC and anti-financial crime advisory working exclusively with professional football. The partnership takes RiskSmart into a new sector – one that is subject to the kind of intense statutory regulation the platform has proven it can handle.

Football is becoming a regulated industry at speed. In England, the Independent Football Regulator will open provisional operating licence applications on 1 November 2026, with the regime binding from the 2027/28 season and around 116 clubs in scope. In the European Union, professional clubs and licensed agents come within the anti-money laundering perimeter on 10 July 2029. The regulator has already signalled how closely the two worlds now sit together, agreeing a memorandum of understanding with the Financial Conduct Authority on information sharing in February 2026.

The operational problem is familiar to anyone who has watched a firm move from light-touch oversight to full regulatory scrutiny. Obligations multiply, ownership becomes unclear, evidence lives in email attachments, and the reporting burden lands on a very small team. Football clubs are arriving at that point with compliance functions of one or two people and, in many cases, no system of record at all.

What the partnership covers

Where possible, Lagom will use RiskSmart to deliver the day-to-day elements of its retained advisory work and will refer clients to the platform where an organisation needs to own its compliance infrastructure directly. Alongside that, the two firms are mapping football's regulatory obligations and controls into RiskSmart's data schema, so that a club, agency or investor can adopt the platform with a sector-specific framework already configured rather than building an obligations library from scratch. Lagom joins RiskSmart's existing partner ecosystem across contract management, data intelligence, cyber security and regulatory content.

The partnership also opens a route to investors. Private equity firms and multi-club groups holding stakes in English clubs carry the consequences of a licensing failure directly on their own balance sheets, and how the regulator will approach fund and holding vehicles within its suitability assessments is not yet settled. That combination of financial exposure and unresolved regulatory treatment makes early, well-evidenced governance a commercial matter rather than an administrative one.

Comment

"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." - Claudia Coutinho-De Somma, Account Executive, RiskSmart

“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.” - Jonathan Greenstein, Co-founder and Director, Lagom Sports Compliance

The two firms will publish co-authored content across both websites and are planning a joint webinar on technology in sports compliance, with further detail to follow.

About RiskSmart

RiskSmart is a governance, risk and compliance platform founded in Manchester and built by risk managers who had lived with the frustrations of managing compliance in spreadsheets. The platform brings risk, policy, compliance, internal audit and third-party risk into one system, with regulatory obligation tracking, role-based access, configurable reporting and dashboards, and AI-supported risk management. RiskSmart works with organisations across banking, payments and e-money, pensions, retail, law firms, energy and utilities, technology and professional services, from mid-market to enterprise. RiskSmart is registered in England and Wales, company number 13014743. risksmart.com [RISKSMART TO CONFIRM: preferred boilerplate, founding year, and whether customer names, review scores or growth metrics should be included.]

About Lagom Sports Compliance

Lagom Sports Compliance is the leading specialist governance, risk, compliance and anti-financial crime advisory firm built exclusively for professional football. Founded by Jonathan Greenstein and Isabel Lemes, the firm advises clubs, agents, investors and competition organisers across the United Kingdom and the European Union on Independent Football Regulator licensing under the Football Governance Act 2025, EU anti-money laundering obligations, UEFA financial sustainability requirements, football agent regulation and operational resilience. Its consultants come from regulated financial services backgrounds and provide hands-on delivery capacity alongside advisory support. Lagom Sports Compliance is a trading name of Lagom Consultants Limited, registered in England and Wales, company number 15527181. lagomsportscompliance.com