Imagine a career where you spend your mornings in meetings with the likes of Serena Williams, LeBron James, and Lionel Messi, your afternoons solving challenging puzzles and creating innovative strategies, and your evenings sitting courtside. Thankfully, you don’t have to imagine it because a career in accounting exists.
Score the Position You Want
When you think of the sports industry, your first thought is probably not accountants. But maybe it should be. Without accounting, some of the biggest trades in history wouldn’t have happened. Yeah, we said it. LeBron to Miami? Over with. Neymar to PSG? Not happening.
That’s where sports payroll accountants come in. This is not your average payroll manager. They ensure that the team has the available money to recruit and retain top players and coaches in order to win games. To ensure the payroll budget is sufficient, they have to study player contracts to see how the market is evolving. However, their responsibility doesn’t end there. They also track the sponsorships and advertising deals for the team.
If that’s not your cup of tea, there’s an entire position devoted to monitoring merch sales. Merchandise accountants handle all merch related revenue. With diehard fans lining up online and in the stadium store to purchase their favorite player’s jersey, this role is actually quite significant. To put it in perspective, regular season NFL merch sales are about $4 billion dollars. 🤯 Imagine how well the Chiefs will clean up after winning the big game!
As you’ve probably realized, the amount of money going in and out of one team’s stadium is… a whole dang lot. And you know what they say… more money, more problems. With the amount of money coming through everyday – from ticket sales, players’ salaries, concession stand profits, heck even parking fees – there is a lot to keep track of. That’s why the internal auditor and tax accountant are here to save the day.
An internal auditor confirms that all funds are being handled correctly. If you got a rush from being the hall monitor, this is your jam. They find problems and spotlight them so that the team remains compliant with applicable laws and accounting standards. On the flipside, a tax accountant works with the team and the athletes to make sure that taxes are being filed in a timely and legal manner. They ensure clients stay in the IRS’ good graces and avoid fines (or even jail time).
And the amazing part about all of these positions? Most of them are seasonal, so you can pursue your own passions during the off season.
Making a Difference
If you’d rather use your skills to focus on players, that’s also an option and an important one at that. Consider Humble Lukanga, a wealth manager who employs dozens of accountants at his firm to help secure players’ post-retirement futures.
Playing professional sports comes with an average retirement age around 30 years old. With only so many years in the game, athletes need to make sure they have financial longevity and take charge of their money as early as possible. Professionals like Humble and his team of accountants do more than just keep track of their big-name clients’ coins and file their taxes. They also spend a lot of time teaching them how to understand their finances and empowering them to make strong financial decisions. Take, for example, Humble’s client Bobby Wagner. Bobby, aka the NFL’s MVP investor, has acquired so much knowledge from Humble, that he was invited to the investor day hosted by Marcy Venture Partners and its founder, Jay-Z. It’s not an exaggeration to say Humble and his team of accountants are changing lives.
See how they were able to create this bond and establish a legacy for Bobby and his family that extends far beyond football.
Where Accounting Can Take You
Accounting isn’t just about where you are, it’s where you could go.
You could become the next Omar Khan, who used the accounting principles he learned in college to earn the title of Pittsburgh Steelers’ General Manager.
Or, maybe you want to become the next Jim Solano, a CPA by day, a professional sports agent by afternoon to over 800 athletes and coaches, and an accounting professor by night. Talk about a triple threat.😩 He says that the accounting knowledge he’s acquired in his accounting career gave him “a great foundation to start a business on his own.”
You might have let your dreams of being a famous athlete fade for a number of reasons. But let’s face it – your love for the game isn’t going anywhere. You have the opportunity to be in the NBA (or the NFL, WNBA, NHL, MLB), just like you have the skills to be in accounting. Let us help you take the next step!
