BSC Young Boys CFO: I save a week of manual transfer tracking every year on Contingency AI

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by Jack Hyom

Chief Financial Officer says TransferRoom’s automated contract management solution can save the Swiss club money in the transfer market and save precious working hours.

The most important reason for us is that we can track transfer contracts. It’s one of the biggest pain points we have, and transfer recognition and earnings are really important for us. You can easily miss a huge amount of money if you don’t have all the data together.

Beat Flückiger

CFO, BSC Young Boys

Reducing the risk on every transfer

Modern football transfers and player contracts are more complex than ever, as clubs are increasing more performance-based contingencies and clauses to reduce the risk in every signing they make.

That ranges from sell-on clauses, salary reductions upon relegation, and reward for goals, assists, clean sheets, promotion and trophy wins.

But with that brings a huge amount of paperwork.

Clubs have several contingencies to track for every player they sign or sell, and those payments can keep coming in over many years. But typically their Finance teams are tracking these contingencies manually via error-prone Excel spreadsheets.

And that’s the problem that was faced by Beat Flückiger, the CFO at BSC Young Boys, the 17-time Swiss Super League champions and 2024/25 UEFA Europa League side.

But not any more, after Flückiger brought Young Boys on to Contingency AI, the automated solution for the management of transfer and salary payments.

Contingency AI allows you to track, manage and forecast contingencies at scale. No more manual tracking of player contracts and transfer agreements. Contingency AI establishes a single source of truth for any variable payments, through one easy-to-navigate dashboard.

Flückiger says in the video below: “For us as a club, transfer earnings are really important because we play in a small league, and the Swiss market is very small, so we don’t have huge TV contracts.

"The biggest volatility we have in earnings comes from transfers, and we have a club competition, so it’s really important that we recognise every Swiss Franc or Euro that we can get from transfers. Before we worked together with TransferRoom, we had a list of between 60 and 80 players that we tracked for earnings recognition.

"It started with very young players who had left our club, where we only had sell-on fees, and it extended to bigger transfers where we recognised how their sporting performance was at their new club - for example, appearances, qualifications for UEFA competitions, and so on.

“We had a large Excel file where we entered all the contractual figures manually using different data sources, but we never reached a point where it was 100% satisfying because transfer clauses differ so much from contract to contract that it’s nearly impossible to do it all yourself.

“The biggest risk is that you don’t recognise your earnings. When I went through the list, I always had a bad feeling because I was the only one doing this. There’s also the risk that if I leave the club, I leave behind a list based on my own logic and decisions. So, we were always struggling to have a reliable process.

“The most important reason for us is that we can track transfer contracts. It’s one of the biggest pain points we have, and transfer recognition and earnings are really important for us. You can easily miss a huge amount of money if you don’t have all the data together.

“We want to save expensive working hours and make sure we recognise earnings that could easily be missed. It’s also important for us because it makes forecasting a lot easier.

"TransferRoom has already proven to be a reliable partner in terms of data security, and I easily save one week of working time per year. I gain the security that I don’t miss any earnings from transfers - that’s the most important thing. It also increases the reliability of the forecasts I make.”

The fact that Contingency AI is powered by TransferRoom, world football’s transfer marketplace, also adds to the security and credibility for Flückiger and Young Boys.

He knows that the club can rely on TransferRoom, who have an online platform used by over 800 clubs and 550 Trusted Agencies across 130 leagues, to handle this very sensitive transfer and contract data securely.

“From day to day, we can see which expenditures must be made and which earnings can be expected within the next few months,” he added.

“It used to be a lot of work to track this manually, so we looked for a tool that could automate the process. For us, that was a very important step, because a new player in the market would have to prove that they keep data accurate and safe - and TransferRoom has done that.”