ISTA celebrates our first year as an association

The International Sports Tax Association launched in March 2023 and what a first year it has been! Here’s a brief look at what ISTA got up to in the last 12 months…

Hosted the Sports Finance Conference at Wembley Stadium

Our biggest event of the year was the Sports Finance Conference, in partnership with UCFB, hosted at the iconic Wembley Stadium in London. We welcomed 100 attendees from across accounting, tax, law and financial planning sectors to hear leading experts discuss our conference topic of Finance in Football. Our experts speakers included ISTA members, football finance expert Kieran Maguire and Charlton Athletic co-owner, Charlie Methven.

You can read our full recap of the Sports Finance Conference here.

Published industry leading resources

We launched our association with the publication of Tax Implications of the FFAR (Europe). This industry leading resource included member opinions from the major European leagues including France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain and the UK.

Prior to the Summer Transfer Window, we also published Tax Opportunities for Players Transferring to Italy & England. This resource, with contributions from our Italian and English ISTA members, aimed to support agents, lawyers and players with an understanding of the tax opportunities available for players transferring to either jurisdiction.

Hosted networking events

We co-hosted networking drinks with the European Football Agent Association for members to meet football agents from across Europe. ISTA look forward to continue building our relationship with EFAA in 2024.

The above image shows our ISTA members and guests enjoying hospitality for a networking event at Crystal Palace v Everton. This networking event provided a great opportunity for our members to meet in-person and find opportunities to work with each other moving forward.

Provided a central voice on sports tax

ISTA voiced our opinion on the speculation of large-scale tax avoidance in the UK football system through the use of agents fees. We felt as an association that the media coverage of this topic did not fully understand the business of football transfers. You can read our full statement here.

We were also approached by The Athletic to explain the tax implications of hosting the Women’s World Cup across Australia and New Zealand. You can read the full article on The Athletic here (note: there is a paywall on this article).

Expanded our network globally

Our association has seen exponential growth in our first year. Having started as 10 members, we are now 34 members and 2 parter firms representing 14 countries. We have attracted sports experts across tax, accounting and law to create a global network that agents, clubs and governing bodies can go to for trusted technical advice.

Interested in becoming a Member? Find out more on our Memberships page.

About ISTA

The International Sports Tax Association is a professional organisation for tax and professional advisors that specialise in the sports industry. We aim to make it easy to find qualified tax advisors and other complimentary advisors through our Global Directory, provide global resources and research on international taxation in sport and encourage our members and associates to refer work across industries, countries and areas of specialism. We also verify professional qualifications of our members and associates to ensure that individuals within sports can trust our advisors.