CEO summary — three minutes

Elite assembles and maintains the governance evidence behind your IFR application, working with your finance team and existing advisers. We do not replace your accountant or solicitor, and we do not promise approval — the IFR decides licences; we assemble the evidence.

First step: a fixed-scope Sprint, £7,500 plus VAT (a price we are testing). In three to four weeks from usable records we map every in-scope requirement to its evidence, owner and reviewer; build your entity and ownership picture; index your funding and ground documents; install one working process actually used in a workshop; list everything still unresolved with an owner and a date; and hand over an approval pack you decide whether to submit.

After that, an optional monthly Desk (£4,000 plus VAT, a price we are testing, up to 20 hours a month): a weekly digest from the digest preview, twice-weekly checks of the agreed official sources on the change tracker, a monthly hour with your sponsor and a refreshed pack from review and pack. No 24/7 cover, no minutes or secretariat in the base fee, and no silent stop on a deadline.

Sprint envelope

• One club, one home ground, up to three legal entities including the proposed licence holder, and eight relevant people, after whole-group triage. [LANE — roadmap, Oct–Dec controlled pilot] — envelope counters are landing-page text only; no counting surface yet.
• Up to two agreed principal owner/lender funding sources — evidence coordination, not financial assurance or forensic investigation.
• Up to 40 readable documents / 400 pages (whichever limit first); up to five selected funding/ground/governance contracts inside that allowance. Tracked on the evidence inbox. [LIVE — in this workspace now]
• Two structured interviews, one implementation workshop, one consolidated correction cycle. [LANE — roadmap, Oct–Dec controlled pilot] — no interview/workshop record objects yet; threads on messages partially cover.
• One agreed board, risk-review or action-follow-up process installed and rehearsed — followed up in the work queue. [LIVE — in this workspace now]

Six outputs

• 1. Scope and evidence matrix — every selected requirement with source/version, owner, evidence status, reviewer, open question. [LANE — roadmap, Oct–Dec controlled pilot] — no dedicated matrix view; queue + requirements partially cover.
• 2. Governance/personnel module — entity/role map, ownership/personnel facts, draft descriptions; unresolved interpretations flagged for the reviewer, never AI-settled. Delivered via requirements and registers. [LIVE — in this workspace now]
• 3. Supporting evidence index — funding and ground documents linked to approved versions; consistency questions logged; fan-record chronology. Delivered via evidence inbox. [LIVE — in this workspace now]
• 4. One implemented governance improvement — e.g. named-owner risk/action register configured, approved and used in one workshop cycle. Tracked in the work queue. [LIVE — in this workspace now]
• 5. Remediation and responsibility plan — every unresolved in-scope item with owner, priority, evidence request, target date. Tracked in the work queue. [LIVE — in this workspace now]
• 6. Indexed handover/approval pack — narrative drafts, evidence manifest, version references, open exceptions, review record, sign-off checklist, editable registers, read-only export. The club decides what to approve, submit and publish. Built on review and pack. [LIVE — in this workspace now]

Guided paperwork tracks: licensing wizards. Pack is not submission; internal approval is not IFR acceptance.

Acceptance tests

• Selected items mapped against a stated guidance version — see requirements.
• Sources traceable; gaps explicit; the agreed process approved and used.
• Editable records and export delivered; the consolidated client revision round completed — sign-off recorded on review and pack.

Acceptance concerns the agreed outputs, not regulatory success. An unresolved external dependency stays an expressly labelled gap.

Excluded — verbatim

Excluded: preparing/auditing financial forecasts and stress tests; certifying funding sufficiency; full strategic business-plan authorship; contested ownership/suitability opinions; forensic source-of-wealth investigations; complex property/tax/employment advice; player, agent and transfer negotiations; regulatory disputes; assurance opinions; full application submission/representation; guaranteed approval. Additional modules require a new scope and appropriate competence/permissions.

This workspace never shows a compliance score, never auto-approves, never auto-submits, and offers no minutes/secretariat surface.

Desk retainer

• Weekly — review the action/evidence queue, chase owners, flag deadlines, send one concise digest. Founder service queue + digest preview (prepare-not-send). [LIVE — in this workspace now]
• Twice-weekly scheduled source checks — check the named public sources in the agreed IFR coverage register; triage subscribed official alerts on business days; record checks and failures. Not continuous or all-law monitoring. Change tracker. [LANE — roadmap, Oct–Dec controlled pilot] — coverage register with recorded check events not yet surfaced as such.
• Monthly — one 60-minute sponsor review; refresh one fixed governance pack. Review and pack. [LANE — roadmap, Oct–Dec controlled pilot] — sponsor-review record not yet distinct from the weekly digest.
• Monthly bounded updates — up to ten existing-document updates / 100 pages and two short reviewed impact notes. Evidence inbox + change tracker. [LIVE — in this workspace now]
• On change — record the club-supplied change, assess within the perimeter, allocate approved actions, update the trail. Major ownership transactions, emergencies and contested regulatory questions are outside the base service. Change tracker. [LIVE — in this workspace now]

Agreed UK business hours; acknowledge within one business day. No 24/7 coverage; no implication all legal changes are detected. Board-meeting attendance, formal minute-taking and committee secretariat are NOT included. Exit: registers, evidence manifest, activity log and exports — never held hostage to a subscription.

Who does what — Elite / club / adviser

Elite prepares and runs the agreed process; the club decides and signs; specialist advisers own their opinions and financial inputs.

• Requirements and evidence: Elite builds the matrix (requirements); the club supplies records; advisers cover their sections.
• Ownership and control: Elite does the factual analysis; contested control goes to targeted English-law review — a referral, tracked in the queue, never AI-settled.
• Funding diligence: Elite writes the narrative; the club FD/accountant owns the model and assumptions; missing forecasts go to a finance specialist first.
• Board and committees: Elite drafts ToRs and matrices [LANE — roadmap, Oct–Dec controlled pilot]; the club adopts; articles changes need separate scope.
• Risk: Elite facilitates the workshop and register [LANE — roadmap, Oct–Dec controlled pilot]; executives own the controls — a register does not prove controls work.
• Fan evidence: Elite builds the chronology from existing supporter structures [NEXT — roadmap, after initial applications]; disputed representation goes to specialist advice; nothing invented, no endorsement claimed.
• Application integration and handover: Elite drafts and cross-checks (review and pack); the club supplies the model and makes the declarations.

Pause-and-refer triggers: stadium/property disputes, insolvency or contested suitability, sanctions/PEP or opaque funding, safeguarding/cyber/safety — specialist-led, Elite tracks evidence only.

Commercial terms — tests, not benchmarks

• Sprint: £7,500 plus VAT where applicable, fixed fee for the agreed module; three to four weeks after usable inputs arrive.
• Desk: £4,000 plus VAT where applicable per month, initially three months, up to 20 combined founder hours per month; re-tier band to test £2,000–£4,000/month.
• Payment: 50% at commencement, 50% on delivery of the agreed outputs.
• Quote only after a document sample, a short discovery call and a confirmed responsibility map.

Gaps: catalog lines the product does not yet deliver

• F1 (product): envelope counters (entities/people/docs/pages/contracts) are text only — LANE.
• F2 (product): no dedicated scope-and-evidence-matrix view — LANE.
• F3 (service-first): interviews/workshop/correction cycle have no record objects — LANE.
• F4 (product): coverage register with recorded source-check events not surfaced — LANE.
• F5 (service/product): monthly sponsor review not distinct from weekly digest — LANE.
• F6 (service methodology): ToR/delegation/conflicts templates and workshop record absent — LANE.
• F7 (product): fan chronology has no dedicated view — NEXT (after initial applications).
• F8 (commercial): landing-page Desk tier “£6.5k” is untraced to the cited sources — confirm or correct.

Full catalog with per-block source cites: output/swarm_wave20/W20-SERVICE-CATALOG.md. LANE targets the Oct–Dec controlled pilot; NEXT follows the initial applications — roadmap, never live.