BA (Hons) Football Business & Finance

Location: UCFB Wembley & UCFB Burnley

Entry Criteria: 280-320 UCAS Tariff point score

Football business brings the study of finance into a highly stimulating context.

Course Content

This means that students can check their evolving understanding against the intensive media coverage of this global industry’s finances. It also means that what you learn in lectures, seminars and the library can be considered in the light of your own experience of how finance affects performance and performance affects finance in the football business. This joint honours degree is aimed at motivating students and preparing them for work in either or both of these two overlapping spheres.

The industry ranges from some of the most powerful brands and businesses in the world, such as Adidas, Nike, Umbro, Sky TV, UEFA Champions League, FIFA World Cup, Barclays Premier League, right through to the stories every season of clubs struggling with cash flow in meeting their responsibilities to the tax authorities and to other creditors.

The course explains that there is a common core to understanding the finances of a business, whether you want to be the finance director of a company with a turnover of hundreds of millions of pounds or the financial controller of your local football club securing the cash to pay the players’ wages that month.

So this course offers a good grounding in finance. It will bring the content of balance sheets and cash flow alive. It is of even greater significance for those who make their career in the football business. As the industry becomes more professional, there will be an increasing need to understand its finances.

Year 1

The first year of the course focuses on the foundations of finance and how it relates to football business. This focus on the basic principles of economics and accounting will enable students to develop an understanding of financial terminology and the role of finance in business management. Access to the accounts and financial concerns of local clubs form a practical introduction to the weekly rhythm of finance in the football business.

Year 2

The second year develops your understanding of how football’s global businesses are financed and managed, how to assess and improve financial performance and the role of finance in the most high profile of international football business matters, from takeovers to transfers.

Year 3

The final year sees the development of a finance and footballrelated research project on a topic chosen by you, together with modules providing a strategic view of international finance and a bridge into financial practice.