From Wall Street to the World Cup: dual-sector leader Ebru Koksal on managing risk in finance and football
16 JUN, 2026
Currently a Board Member and Senior Adviser at J. Stern & Co., an investment firm active in football finance, Koksal’s career spans the peaks of Wall Street and European football governance. After starting in high finance as a Morgan Stanley analyst and Vice President at Citi and AIG’s Blue Voyage Fund, she transitioned to sports leadership in what she describes as being "discriminated out of finance into football."
As the long-time CEO of Galatasaray Sportif A.S., Koksal orchestrated massive financial turnarounds, including a complex reverse merger and a $70 million restructuring package. Her extensive sports resume includes consulting for FIFA and UEFA, serving as General Secretary of the Turkish Football Association, and her current roles as Chair of Women in Football and Board Member of the Professional Footballers' Association (PFA).
In this exclusive interview, we sit down with Koksal to discuss the critical risk management lessons asset managers can learn from the pitch, the upcoming wave of intergenerational wealth transfer to women, and her ongoing mission to champion diversity and female leadership from the boardroom to the stadium.
How has your experience across finance and football shaped your view on progress in gender diversity and leadership?
Having spent over three decades in finance and football, I have witnessed remarkable progress in both sectors, but I have also learned that progress requires intentional leadership.
The biggest lesson is that diversity advances when organizations recognize it as a source of better decision-making, stronger governance, and sustainable performance. In finance, we increasingly have the data proving that diverse leadership teams make better long-term decisions and manage risk more effectively. Football is beginning to reach the same conclusion.
What continues to encourage me most is the growing pipeline of talented women entering both industries. What remains challenging is ensuring that leadership opportunities expand at the same pace. Representation alone is not enough. The real measure of progress is influence: who is making strategic decisions, allocating capital, shaping culture, and setting the agenda.
My own experience as often being the only woman in the boardroom taught me that leadership is about having the confidence and support to reshape the existing structures. The organizations that will thrive in the future are those that understand diversity as a competitive advantage rather than a compliance exercise.
What can asset managers learn from how football clubs manage risk and volatility?
Football clubs operate in one of the most volatile industries imaginable. Revenues fluctuate with sporting performance, player values change rapidly, fan sentiment can shift overnight, and a single result can materially affect financial outcomes.
Successful clubs have learned to balance long-term strategy with short-term uncertainty. The best clubs do not make decisions based solely on this season's results. They invest in infrastructure, academies, talent development, data capabilities, and brand building that may take years to generate returns.
Asset managers face a similar challenge. Markets create enormous pressure to focus on quarterly performance, yet long-term value creation requires patience and discipline.
Another lesson is scenario planning. Elite football organizations constantly prepare for multiple outcomes: qualification or non-qualification, promotion or relegation, player sales or injuries. Asset managers can benefit from adopting the same mindset by building portfolios that remain resilient across different scenarios rather than optimizing solely for the most likely outcome.
In both sectors, risk management is about being prepared for it.
How do major tournaments like the World Cup shift investment and capital into football and related sectors?
Major tournaments act as accelerators rather than creators of investment trends.
The World Cup provides global visibility that attracts capital, but the most sophisticated investors are already identifying opportunities before the spotlight arrives. What the tournament does is reduce perceived risk by demonstrating audience growth and commercial potential at scale.
We have seen this particularly in women's football. The FIFA Women's World Cup in Australia and New Zealand fundamentally changed investor perceptions of the market opportunity. New sponsorships, media partnerships, private equity interest, and infrastructure investments followed because investors could see the scale of consumer demand.
Beyond football itself, major tournaments stimulate investment in technology, media, data analytics, hospitality, urban development, and fan engagement platforms. Increasingly, investors are viewing football as part of a broader entertainment and consumer ecosystem.
The key point is that tournaments provide proof points. Capital follows track record and evidence, and major events provide evidence at a global scale.
What do investors most often misunderstand about football clubs as financial assets?
The most common misunderstanding is that football clubs should be evaluated using traditional financial metrics alone.
Football clubs are hybrid assets. They combine characteristics of operating businesses, media companies, consumer brands, intellectual property platforms, and community institutions. Their value cannot be fully understood through EBITDA multiples or short-term profitability.
Many investors initially focus on player trading or matchday revenues. The more sophisticated investors understand that the real value often lies in brand equity, audience engagement, media rights, data assets, and the ability to monetize global communities over time.
Another misconception is that emotional attachment reduces investment quality. In reality, fan loyalty is one of the strongest recurring assets any organization can possess. Few industries enjoy the level of customer retention and emotional engagement that football clubs generate.
The challenge for investors is distinguishing between clubs that are simply historic institutions and those that have scalable business models capable of creating sustainable long-term value.
The future winners will be clubs that successfully combine sporting success with disciplined governance and commercial innovation.
How will intergenerational wealth transfer, especially toward women, change investing and football ownership?
We are witnessing one of the largest wealth transfers in history, and women will be among the primary beneficiaries. This is likely to reshape investment priorities across multiple sectors, including sport.
Research consistently shows that women investors often place greater emphasis on long-term value creation, governance quality, sustainability, and social impact alongside financial returns. As more capital is controlled by women, I expect these factors to become increasingly important in investment decisions.
In football ownership, this could have profound implications. We are already seeing growing interest in women's sport, community impact, athlete welfare, and governance standards. These are areas where many female investors see both purpose and opportunity.
Importantly, this is about recognizing that a broader range of perspectives entering capital allocation processes leads to different questions being asked and different opportunities being identified.
The next decade may see a significant shift in who owns sports assets, how those assets are governed, and what success looks like. I believe football will benefit from that evolution because the sport's future growth depends on patient, purposeful, and responsible capital.
