RiskSmart has moved into professional football through a referral partnership with Lagom Sports Compliance, a specialist GRC and anti-financial crime adviser focused solely on the game.
Under the arrangement, Lagom will run the routine parts of its retained advisory work on RiskSmart wherever it can. Where a client needs to hold and manage its own compliance infrastructure, Lagom will direct it to the platform.
The pair are also translating football’s regulatory duties and controls into RiskSmart’s data schema. This means clubs, agencies and investors can start with a framework built for their sector instead of assembling an obligations library themselves.
The deal comes as regulation reaches football quickly. In England, the Independent Football Regulator will begin accepting provisional operating licence applications on 1 November 2026. The regime will apply from the 2027/28 season and cover roughly 116 clubs.
Across the European Union, professional clubs and licensed agents will fall under anti-money laundering rules from 10 July 2029. In February 2026, the English regulator signed a memorandum of understanding with the Financial Conduct Authority covering information sharing, a sign of how closely football and financial supervision now overlap.
The challenge clubs face mirrors what other sectors experience when oversight tightens. Duties pile up, accountability blurs, supporting evidence ends up scattered across email attachments, and reporting falls on a handful of staff. Many clubs are entering this phase with compliance teams of just one or two people, and often without any central system for tracking their obligations.
The partnership also gives RiskSmart a path to investors. Private equity firms and multi-club groups with holdings in English clubs would absorb the financial impact of a licensing failure themselves. It also remains unclear how the regulator will treat funds and holding structures when it assesses suitability. Together, that exposure and uncertainty turn strong, documented governance into a commercial priority.
RiskSmart provides GRC software to regulated businesses. Lagom now sits within its wider partner network, which 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.”
Copyright © 2026 RegTech Analyst
Copyright © 2026 RegTech Analyst
