Liam McStravick and the minutes before kick-off

Before a coaching session could begin, Liam McStravick had money to collect. At Linfield’s football academy, the job of getting players ready to train came with a second occupation: getting their fees in. The ball could wait. The administration, apparently, could not. For someone who wanted to spend his working life in football, it was a rather particular way of getting his wish.

That recurring interruption became the starting point for TeamFeePay. McStravick, now its CEO and co-founder, wanted to recover time for coaching. The problem was small enough to describe without a presentation and persistent enough to build a business around. Football had provided the customer, the inconvenience and the person experiencing both. The original product brief could almost have fitted on the back of a team sheet.

There is a useful distinction between loving a sport and liking the work required to keep it going. A fixture needs organising. A registration needs recording. Membership money needs collecting. TeamFeePay operates in those minutes around the game, where enthusiasm meets a task somebody has to finish. Its founder arrived with experience of both sides of that meeting.

The appeal of this beginning is its lack of ceremony. No imaginary customer needed to be summoned into a workshop. McStravick had already been doing the task himself. The question was whether other clubs would pay for a better way to do it. Answering that question would eventually take him well beyond the academy.

A football education, with several businesses attached

McStravick’s route to software passed through sport, public service and a succession of businesses. He studied at the University of Ulster, with qualifications in sport, exercise and leisure and a master’s in marketing. His earlier work included sports development at Sport Belfast and Belfast City Council. Those are useful places to learn that a sporting ambition usually has a budget attached.

He founded Copius Group in 2004. Over the years, his ventures included sports development consultancy Copius Consulting, teamwear business ClubSport NI and B4B Telecoms. He also worked on the Football Management Company and Sector 3 Solutions. He exited Copius Consulting in 2020. The range matters more than a tidy label: clothing, consulting and communications each put him in contact with how organisations actually spend money.

Software therefore arrived after years of selling services and building companies. The founder of TeamFeePay had already encountered the distance between a good idea and a customer prepared to fund it. A club might want better facilities, clearer plans or new kit. Turning any of those wishes into something deliverable requires rather more than enthusiasm for Saturday afternoon.

Football remained a practical commitment throughout. His coaching experience includes Cliftonville, Linfield and Ballyclare. In June 2023, he received his UEFA A licence. The qualification sits alongside his role as a technology executive, a reminder that the coaching part of his working life continued after software became the business.

The first club is an audience of one

TeamFeePay launched in August 2021. Four co-founders started the business, and McStravick said in September 2026 that all four remained involved. In the beginning, the task was wonderfully unforgiving: persuade a club to use the product and make sure it worked when real people needed it.

He has described the anxiety of putting the system live. The code had been written and the tests completed; the night before launch still brought nerves. Loughgall Football Club was the first customer. In his account, seeing the product work in use supplied the moment of relief. A functioning registration or payment can look a modest achievement from outside. From inside a new company, it is the first piece of evidence that the whole arrangement might hold.

This was also a commitment with personal consequences. His ScaleX interview recounts remortgaging his house to keep his plans moving. That detail should not turn the story into an instruction to other founders. It explains what was at stake for this one. Capital was something he had to assemble, with choices reaching beyond an office and into family life.

The product has since expanded to cover payments, registration, scheduling and communication. The payment tool developed into a broader system for running a club. That is a revealing progression: one administrative problem opens the door, then the neighbouring tasks begin knocking. For McStravick, listening to the next request became part of building the company.

The footballer with the same name

There is another Liam McStravick in the family football story. The professional player is his son. In an April 2024 account of a busy quarter, the elder McStravick included watching his son score in Airdrieonians’ SPFL Trust Trophy final victory. It appeared alongside a list of company milestones, a family holiday and birthdays. The business update had become a family diary, and football had wandered into both columns.

He also wrote about returning to coaching at Cliftonville, supporting his eldest daughter as she started a business and celebrating his granddaughter’s second birthday. These are small, specific details that make the founder easier to place than a string of job titles. Work is prominent in his account, but it shares the page with dinners, exams and relatives’ achievements.

That same update recorded his continuing support for Black Mountain Shared Space, a peace-building charity in Belfast. A new shared building near one of the city’s peace walls was part of the project he celebrated. His interests reach into the community infrastructure around sport, where a place to meet can matter as much as an organised fixture.

The picture is of a founder whose connections repeatedly return to Belfast, family and clubs. TeamFeePay may sell software across borders, but the reasons he gives for caring about the work remain close to home. There is something pleasingly uncorporate about an investment update making room for a grandchild’s birthday. The diary, at least, has its priorities in public.

Learning to leave a little room

As TeamFeePay grew, McStravick also sought help with the job of leading it. He joined the ScaleX Accelerator after shareholder Martin McKay recommended the programme. His account of the experience concentrates on how he makes decisions: establishing a clearer purpose, taking a pause before responding to unwelcome news and thinking more deliberately about his role.

One habit is strikingly concrete. He described spending four days a month in Spain, walking and reflecting with his family. For someone selling clubs a way to reclaim time, setting some aside himself gives the idea a personal dimension. The diary needs an occasional gap if its owner is going to consider what should go in it next.

He places particular emphasis on recruitment and on bringing shareholders and investors into the business who contribute actively. Chairman Michael Black appears repeatedly in his accounts as a source of support and encouragement. McStravick’s idea of a team extends beyond the people on the payroll. Advice and conviction have jobs to do as well.

One line from his leadership interview states the obligation plainly: “We serve at the pleasure of our customers.” The wording puts the club in charge. Volunteers choosing a system have their own evening to protect, their own members to organise and their own tolerance for complications. A growing company still has to earn that evening’s attention.

“We serve at the pleasure of our customers.Liam McStravick · ScaleX Insider

A larger team sheet

In January 2026, TeamFeePay announced a £9 million equity funding round. YFM Equity Partners contributed £4.5 million, alongside the Investment Fund for Northern Ireland, managed by Clarendon Fund Managers, Techstart and private investors. The announcement outlined 75 planned new jobs over two years, spanning sales, marketing and product development. Funding bought room for a larger operation and a push into Europe.

The photograph from the announcement puts McStravick beside YFM’s Mike Clarke and Clarendon’s Stuart Gaffikin. It is a different kind of football photograph: the people helping finance the next stage, assembled in front of the names behind it. For the coach who began with fees, the sums involved had acquired several extra digits.

By September 2026, McStravick reported 2,200 club customers and almost half a million players, parents and coaches using the platform. He described an expansion into Spain and Italy, while keeping the company rooted in Belfast. Those figures belong to that point in the journey. They describe adoption, rather than a promise about where it ends.

His ambitions extend further. In January, he spoke of wanting a £250 million valuation. Later, he set out a three-year goal of 10,000 clubs. Both are targets. They ask different questions: what investors might eventually think the business is worth, and how many organisations it might persuade to join. Neither number should obscure the volunteer deciding whether a system makes this week easier.

There is a productive tension here. McStravick wants to build at a scale far beyond the club where the idea began, while explaining the mission through an individual coach’s lost time. The bigger the organisation becomes, the more useful that original test may be. A funding announcement can tell you who believes in the business. The person preparing training can tell you whether it helps.

The minutes before kick-off remain a good place to judge the work. A player needs somewhere to be. A coach needs time to coach. Someone must keep the club running. McStravick has built his next chapter around making that last job easier, so the people who came for football have more chance of getting to it.