Madrid, September 2026 — Over two days at La Nave in Madrid, LIBERO Football Finance AG took part in the 10th anniversary edition of the World Football Summit (WFS), one of the most important gatherings in the international football industry.
Why the World Football Summit matters
The World Football Summit was founded in Madrid in 2016 and has since become the central meeting point for the business side of the game. Over ten years and 32 events, the platform has brought together roughly 42,000 attendees from more than 120 countries and over 1,500 speakers.
This year’s Madrid edition was the largest in the summit’s history. More than 2,500 attendees from over 80 countries came to La Nave, alongside 130-plus speakers, with LaLiga and J.P. Morgan as headline partners. Club executives, league and federation representatives, investors, rights holders and technology providers spent two days discussing where the industry is heading — from capital structure and women’s football as a commercial vertical in its own right, to digital transformation as a boardroom priority.
For a company operating at the intersection of football and finance, that concentration is hard to replicate anywhere else. Decisions about club financing are rarely made through cold outreach; they grow out of trust, shared context and conversations held face to face. WFS Madrid compresses months of such conversations into 48 hours — and it puts the people who shape the economics of the game in the same building at the same time.
Our two days in Madrid
Day one set the tone. Our CEO Dr. Dirk Rogowski delivered a keynote on the changing financing landscape in professional football. The response confirmed what we hear in our daily work: clubs across Europe are actively looking for financing structures that create genuine room to manoeuvre — beyond traditional lending models and short-term fixes. The conversations that followed the talk ran well into the afternoon.
Day two was about depth rather than volume. More panels, more meetings, and a series of discussions with clubs, advisors and potential partners about concrete situations: transfer periods, liquidity planning, and building financial structures that hold up over more than a single season.
Our takeaway
Football’s commercial framework is changing faster than many clubs’ financial structures can follow. That gap is precisely where LIBERO Football Finance AG operates. Madrid confirmed that the demand for professional, tailored financing solutions in football is growing — and that the industry is ready to discuss them openly.
We would like to thank the WFS team for a well-organised anniversary edition, and everyone who took the time to speak with us. We are already looking forward to the next edition.
