Career Goals: From UCFB to Wigan Athletic

We caught up with a handful of the many UCFB graduates working at one of the 92 professional clubs in the top four tiers of English football.

Wigan Athletic is one club where a number of of its employees have come from UCFB, across a wide range of departments, from media to commercial and hospitality to the community trust.

The UCFB graduates we spoke to included:

• Jay Whittle – Media Executive – BA (Hons) Multimedia Sports Journalism
• Erin Rigby – Hospitality Sales Executive – BA (Hons) Football Business
• Bradleigh Cregeen – Partnerships Manager – BA (Hons) International Football Business
• Declan Habershon – Commercial Assistant – BA (Hons) Football Business and Marketing

Jay spoke about how great it is to see so many UCFB graduates making names for themselves across the football and wider sports industry at such an early stage of their career.

“I think it should be a real proud moment for everyone connected to UCFB, really,” he said, “to have graduates within the professional game and especially with multiple of us being at a club doing different roles from hospitality, commercial, media and the community side of things, as well.”

Bradleigh added with the same sentiment: “Now, four out of the five of the commercial team are now UCFB graduates. I think it’s obviously showing that it does work.”

It’s not just Wigan Athletic where UCFB graduates are changing the face of the sports industry. In the Premier League, UCFB have had graduates working at all 20 clubs, including West Ham United. Find out more about some of the multiple graduates who’ve gone from UCFB to thriving careers at the London Stadium.

Furthermore, UCFB have had graduates employed at all 92 of the professional league clubs across England’s four tiers in 2025-26, as well as all 12 Women’s Super League clubs.

At Wigan, Erin spoke about how UCFB was a vital part of securing her that role in the industry.

“At UCFB, I made some really great friends and really great memories,” she said.

“We saw a lot of guest speakers and had industry insight days, which were really good.

“That’s how I actually heard about this role initially, the internship, because I came to the industry insights day, met a lot of the team and it was just really interesting to find out about the different roles available, because you find out about roles you never would have even thought about.”

Learn more about the many places across football and sport where UCFB graduates have gone on to score their career goals.