Why is UK football club hiring booming, with data analyst roles surging?

Football clubs in the UK are advertising more jobs than ever, with recruitment rising sharply in recent years and the share of data and analytics roles growing significantly. Football is increasingly becoming an industry for international investors while technology has already become a significant part of the sport. Global hiring platform Indeed announced that football club recruitment in the UK has tripled since 2018. Data and analytics roles now account for a record 3.2% of professional football club hiring. Their share has more than doubled over this period as clubs invest in professionals who help shape recruitment, performance and tactical decisions. The data focuses on the UK, but European football is highly interconnected. Data and analytics are also playing a significant role in the top European leagues such as Spain, Germany, Italy and France. For example, LALIGA in Spain became the epicentre for big data in football in 2024. “Data is revolutionising the football industry, with clubs using it for both match preparation and post-match analysis,” a LALIGA release stated. “Furthermore, in the context of economic control rules, this data helps clubs to identify key players within the competition, allowing them operate more intelligently in the transfer market.” Indeed data shows that professional football clubs accounted for 714 job postings per million UK jobs in 2025. This was 247 in 2018. That means the figure almost tripled between 2018 and 2025. Their share is expected to grow in 2026. Indeed estimates that it will reach 722 job postings per million UK jobs. "Football clubs are no longer simply sporting institutions. They are complex media, data and commercial operations, and their hiring reflects that. Alongside coaches, clubs are recruiting chefs, stewards, marketers, community officers and, increasingly, data analysts,” Jack Kennedy, senior economist at Indeed, said. Bigger slice of a smaller pie Football club hiring is on the rise, but football remains a small part of the overall job market according to Indeed. Only 0.07% of UK job postings relate to this sector. The share of retail is 4% and around 2.3% in software development. Football’s share is closer to that of a specialist field such as aviation. “Football-club hiring held broadly steady, so clubs now make up a bigger slice of a smaller pie,” Kennedy said. What roles do football clubs hire for? Sports and coaching remain the largest category of club hiring. They accounted for 11.0% of UK professional football club job postings by occupation between July 2025 and June 2026 according to Indeed. These roles include coaching, football coaches, sports coaching, football managers and personal trainers. Food preparation and service also had a double-digit share at 10.8%. Management roles also have a significant share at 9.7%. Administrative assistance accounts for 6.0% of football job postings, followed by therapy at 3.8% and sales at 3.7%. Arts and entertainment and marketing also have more than 3% share. The share of data and analytics roles is growing Data and analytics roles ranked ninth in football club job postings with 3.2% share. Despite its relatively small share, it has become a central role for professional football over the past decade. The share of data and analytics roles in club hiring has more than doubled, from 1.5% in 2018 to 3.2% in the year to June 2026. Most popular titles in data and analytics roles are performance analyst, analyst, data scientist, data analyst and data science intern. “What began with basic performance tracking now supports player recruitment, tactical preparation, injury prevention and commercial strategy,” Kennedy said. “The challenge is not acquiring data but knowing what to do with it, and the clubs that can translate analytical insight into better decisions, on the training ground, in the transfer market, and in the dugout, are increasingly the ones pulling ahead.” 40 times the size of the playing squad The number of staff in football clubs largely vary. Some of the biggest clubs now employ as many as 1,000 staff according to Indeed. This is around 40 times the size of a Premier League playing squad.