Claire O’Neill

UCFB Manchester

Course Leader

BA (Hons) Football Business and Finance

Senior Lecturer in Football Finance

As an ACA Chartered Accountant and Fellow of the ICAEW, Claire has extensive professional and industry experience. Having trained and qualified with Deloitte, she progressed to Audit Manager, working as an auditor, accountant and business advisor. On leaving Deloitte Claire pursued a career in education, completing her PGCE in Business Education, qualifying as a highly rated teacher.

Prior to joining UCFB Claire was a lecturer at the University of Manchester for 5.5 years where she lectured in financial and management accounting, strategic management, sport business, sport finance, and in her area of specialism – football finance. She is an experienced dissertation supervisor with her areas of expertise and interest being football finance and financial regulation in football. Indeed, at the University of Manchester she was awarded a number of accolades for her role in dissertation supervision and academic advising and also an award for outstanding teaching in the Faculty of Humanities.

Here at UCFB Manchester, in addition to being the Course Leader for the BA (Hons) Football Business and Finance, Claire is a Senior Lecturer in Football Finance both at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Prior to taking on the role of Course Leader for Football Business and Finance, in less than a year of arriving she was appointed as the Course Leader for the BA (Hons) in Sports Management for the academic years 2022/23 and 2023/24.

Adopting a student-centred approach in her teaching, Claire’s focus is on value added and having extensive experience in supporting students in a pastoral capacity, her teaching philosophy of ‘every student matters’ translates to excellent results and high student satisfaction.