Women’s football in England does not look the same as it did in 2015. The Women’s Super League has standalone sponsors, broadcast deals, growing attendances, and professional infrastructure that would have been unrecognisable a decade ago.
Alan McTavish was one of the people building that infrastructure from the inside.
Over nine and a half years at Everton Football Club, he moved from commercial partnerships into the heart of the women’s game, eventually becoming CEO of Everton Women. He secured the club’s first standalone shirt sponsor for the women’s team, appointed the head coach who reshaped the squad, and pursued an MBA specifically focused on women’s football’s commercial landscape while doing the job. Then in March 2025, as new ownership restructured the club, he left.
This is the full career story.
Starting Out: TAG Heuer to Michael Page to Glasgow Rangers
Alan McTavish attended Hyndland Secondary School in Glasgow. His early career had nothing to do with football clubs directly. From 2002 to 2005, he worked as an account manager at TAG Heuer, the Swiss luxury watchmaker. That role gave him a foundation in brand partnerships, premium products, and commercial relationship management.
From 2005 to 2009 he moved into recruitment, working as a manager at Michael Page Finance. That shift built a different skill set, one focused on people, talent assessment, and professional networks.
In 2009, football entered the picture. He joined Glasgow Rangers as a sales manager, staying until 2012. Rangers at that point were a significant commercial operation, despite the off-field financial crisis that would eventually see the club liquidated in 2012. Working there during a turbulent period gave him an early education in football club business under pressure.
Watford and the Commercial Director Role
After Rangers, McTavish moved to Watford Football Club. He started as Head of Partnerships in 2012, then became Commercial Director in 2013, staying until 2015.
Watford at that time were working their way up through the Championship under the Pozzo family’s ownership. It was a club with serious ambitions and a sophisticated commercial operation for its level. McTavish spent three years as a key part of the senior management group, building the commercial portfolio and developing relationships across sponsors and partners.
That Watford experience was important. Running a commercial operation at a club with ambitions above its current size teaches you how to sell a vision, not just a product. You are not selling the Premier League. You are selling where the club is going.
That mindset carried directly into what came next.
Joining Everton: September 2015
In September 2015, Alan McTavish joined Everton Football Club as Head of Commercial Partnerships. It was his first role at a Premier League club.
The brief was clear. Strengthen Everton’s sponsorship portfolio, deepen commercial relationships, and grow the club’s revenue base. He delivered quickly. Within a year he was promoted to Head of Commercial. In June 2018, he became Commercial Director, joining the senior Everton Leadership Team at the Royal Liver Building.
During that period he was responsible for securing Everton’s then-record main partnership deal and the club’s first-ever sleeve partner contract. Both were significant milestones in a club that had consistently punched commercially below its historical stature in English football.
He was also a Trustee of Everton in the Community for more than four years, the club’s charity arm, which runs programmes across Merseyside in education, health, and social inclusion. That community role was not a title on a business card. It reflected a genuine investment in the broader work the club was doing off the pitch.
The MBA and the Women’s Football Focus
While working as Commercial Director, Alan pursued further education. He completed a Master of Business Administration at the University of Salford between 2018 and 2020, with the degree specifically focused on the role of CEO in a sporting organisation.
His dissertation earned a Distinction. The subject: the commercial landscape of professional women’s football in England.
That choice matters. He was not studying general business strategy. He was studying exactly the sector he was about to move into. By the time he was asked to lead Everton Women, he had already produced a postgraduate research paper on the specific commercial challenges and opportunities facing WSL clubs.
That preparation is unusual. Most football executives move into roles and learn on the job. McTavish had spent two years researching the field academically before taking the top job in it at Everton.
Managing Director and CEO of Everton Women
In October 2021, Alan McTavish moved from his commercial director role at the men’s club to become Managing Director of Everton Women. The timing of the move attracted external attention. It coincided with controversy around the club’s connections to Russian businessman Alisher Usmanov, whose assets were frozen by the EU and UK government amid sanctions. Everton disputed that McTavish’s reassignment had anything to do with those dealings. He continued and progressed with the women’s team regardless.
In June 2022, his title became CEO of Everton Women, placing him at the top of the women’s club’s leadership structure with full responsibility for operations, commercial strategy, and competitive ambition.
One of his first major decisions in that role was supporting the appointment of Danish head coach Brian Sorensen ahead of the 2022-23 season. Sorensen came with a serious coaching record, having won two league titles and a domestic cup across two stints at Fortuna Hjorring in Denmark, where he also made the club regular knockout-stage participants in the Champions League. That kind of appointment, bringing in a coach with European experience and a track record of developing young talent, reflected the ambition McTavish was trying to build toward.
He also secured Everton Women’s first standalone shirt sponsor and first sleeve sponsor, separate from the men’s team’s commercial deals. In women’s football, that kind of commercial independence matters. It signals to the market that the women’s team is a distinct commercial entity worth investing in, not simply an extension of the men’s club’s brand.
The growth of women’s football in England during his tenure was dramatic. WSL attendances increased. Broadcast deals expanded. The physical demands placed on WSL players and the investment in sports science and player welfare became mainstream conversations in top-flight women’s football, not afterthoughts. McTavish was operating in a rapidly professionalising environment and shaping how Everton positioned themselves within it.
The Friedkin Group Overhaul and the Exit
In March 2025, Everton Football Club confirmed that Alan McTavish had left his role as CEO of Everton Women with immediate effect. The club’s official statement was brief: the club wished him every success in the next step of his career and would make a further announcement on the leadership structure in due course.
His departure was part of a broader restructuring under The Friedkin Group, the American ownership consortium that had taken over the club and was implementing significant changes at executive level. Two new appointments to the senior leadership team were confirmed at the same time as his exit.
He had been at Everton for nine and a half years. On LinkedIn, he acknowledged the departure himself, noting the time had come to move on after nearly a decade at the club.
The Usmanov connection continued to be referenced in some coverage of his departure. Everton had maintained throughout that his earlier move from the men’s side to the women’s team had nothing to do with those commercial complications, and McTavish himself was never personally implicated in any wrongdoing.
Quick Facts
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Full name | Alan S. McTavish |
| Education | Hyndland Secondary School, Glasgow; MBA (Distinction), University of Salford 2020 |
| Early career | TAG Heuer (2002-05), Michael Page Finance (2005-09) |
| Rangers | Sales Manager, 2009-12 |
| Watford | Head of Partnerships, then Commercial Director, 2012-15 |
| Everton joined | September 2015, Head of Commercial Partnerships |
| Commercial Director | June 2018 |
| Everton Women MD | October 2021 |
| Everton Women CEO | June 2022 |
| Left Everton | March 2025 |
| MBA focus | Commercial landscape of professional women’s football |
What He Built and What Comes Next
Alan McTavish’s career at Everton is a case study in how commercial expertise translates across different parts of a football club. He arrived as a sponsorship specialist, built into a commercial director, then pivoted deliberately into the women’s game at exactly the moment it was beginning its most significant period of growth.
He had the research to back the pivot up. His MBA dissertation on women’s football’s commercial landscape was not written after the fact. It was written while he was figuring out where the opportunity was.
The first standalone women’s team sponsor. The appointment of a European-experienced head coach. The integration of the women’s team into the club’s strategic leadership structure. Those are the tangible outputs of his tenure.
He left Everton at 51 years old, in March 2025, with a career profile that spans luxury watches, financial recruitment, Glasgow Rangers, Watford, and nearly a decade at one of English football’s most historic clubs. His next role had not been publicly announced as of early 2026. Given his background, his research focus, and the continued growth of women’s football commercially, the field is wide open.
