Team work: Managing risk throughout the rich history of football in the London market

Authored by Guy Bonwick, Head of A&H International at AXIS Insurance

The 2021-22 FA Cup season has been a special one, as the world’s longest-running knockout football competition celebrates 150 years since its inception.

From the birth of the competition on 20 July 1871, a rich lineage of history and tradition have been forged. When Liverpool met Chelsea for the final in front of a brimming Wembley Stadium, it was a big moment in sport to celebrate all the more for the times we live in.

The competition has not been without its obstacles this season. Although given the greenlight to run without the same restrictions and uncertainty as the previous season, games were still affected by players’ ill health and isolation requirements, and some matches had to be cancelled due to the ongoing pandemic.

Throughout the pandemic, insurance has helped behind the scenes to keep the show on the road even if the show was often played out before an empty stadium. If ever there was a time for the London insurance market to flex its understanding of specialist risk and develop solutions to help clients through unprecedented pressures and new risk exposures, it was the past two years.

As an Accident & Health Underwriter at AXIS, providing specialist insurance to protect professional athletes against the risks they face, and as a football fan and ex-professional player, I am hardwired to think about the impact on players of developments inside and outside their or their clubs’ control.

Like all sports, the effects of the pandemic continue to take their toll on the beautiful game. For months, clubs in the UK and across Europe saw attendances decimated with an ensuing loss of financial income from broadcasting rights as well as ticket sales.

When the 2020-2021 season was extended to clear a backlog of postponed games and to address some of these issues, an essential step we took was to work with clubs, agents and players to ensure players who were effectively out of contract with their clubs and therefore potentially without A&H cover remained protected. These short-term coverages allowed players to plug gaps in coverage that existed because of extended seasons.

While the general risk to health of current strains of Covid is less severe due to vaccinations, we are yet to understand the impact of Long Covid, and so the health of players, and how clubs ensure they're looking after players, remains a topical issue for insurers as well as the world of sports.

As research and understanding of the long-term effects of Covid develop, it is an area that our industry will be following closely. We will also be using relevant claims data to build our understanding of this emerging area of risk and to ensure our learnings are reflected in our underwriting and how we service and communicate with our clients.

Serious reported cases of Covid among athletes remain low in number, which has been reflected in the claims frequency, however, concerns around myocarditis made headlines and medical research into this condition and possible links to Covid among apparently healthy individuals remains on our radar as a responsible organization. The successful return to professional sports of Eduardo Rodriguez, the Boston Red Sox pitcher who became the highest profile athlete to suffer serious Covid-related heart problems, was cause for optimism after he suffered months of serious, career debilitating symptoms. 

Rich sports data

Within professional football, where health data is king, the health monitors worn by players as standard during training has provided their teams with excellent reference points to assess the effects of Covid on players’ vital statistics.

For our industry, too, data is playing an increasingly important role in smarter, more accurate underwriting. In pro-sport underwriting, data is rich not least because of the availability of information on the internet, including injury history, training schedules and insights regarding individual players. And since managing risk aggregation is Insurance 101 for carriers, as an insurer of individual players’ accident and health risks – as well as teams – monitoring aggregation exposures by fixtures and club using up-to-date team information is another way in which we use data to assess our exposure in any one game or competition.

Cover matters

The matter of who is responsible for taking out cover for athletes varies by sport, level and sometimes team and so our client can be both the clubs and the players themselves. 

From a coverage perspective, an A&H policy typically covers accidental death, permanent total disablement and we can offer income protection if a player is ill or injured, which pays their wages for a certain period. That potentially would be something that could be bought by the players themselves for their future earnings, particularly from a career-ending perspective, or it could be bought by the club to protect their asset. In addition, we often see agents also taking out insurance to protect their own financial interest in a player they represent.

Asset value protection

As no risk is the same in sports insurance, developing a deep understanding of the individuals and teams we insure, and maintaining ongoing, open channels of communication, is essential to providing tailored coverage in this space. Twenty-four-hour asset value protection cover is available, depending on how much coverage clubs or individuals want. This can be purchased by the individual for future earnings based on their basic annual salary and depending on age, we would offer a multiple of that.

Pro sports are an exciting area for us and we are always keen to partner with brokers that share our commitment to this sector. The welcome return to sporting events in front of crowds is in many senses a return to business as usual for us, however as insurers there is no time for complacency when it comes to identifying and responding to new and emerging risks in this fascinating space. As we showed during the recent lockdown, we aim to go further when it comes to customer service, and alert to emerging risks, we’re looking to the future, whether that is investigating new data or responding to new challenges through our underwriting.

If you would like to talk to Guy to find out more about AXIS Insurance’s A&H sport proposition, CLICK HERE, leave a message and youTalk-insurance will pass your enquiry on

This material in this article is for general information, education and discussion purposes only. AXIS assumes no liability by reason of the information within this material.